There is a view that how we keep our surroundings reflects how we are within. It shows up in Thoreau and Hegel, as well as motivational speakers. The view, to use Hegel's language, is that we externalize ourselves or press our minds into stuff. We work things by imposing ourselves on them.
This view is usually introduced as a one way street: when I form stuff in the world, how I am influences how it comes out. But it can also be run backwards: if you would be a particular way, then you must conform the world around you to express that. The relation of expression is not unidirectional, as Merleau-Ponty points out. There is experimental evidence to back this up, particularly in the realm of the emotions, but it is also the whole reason that practice works. When we express ourselves, we also form ourselves. Thus, how we are is a product of what we do, and what we do is a product of who we are. It is a reciprocal relationship.
It is therefore possible to express our way into being as we want to be. The more one acts a particular way, the more one will become the kind of person who acts like that. If thinkers like Hegel and Merleau-Ponty are right, then this works much more generally than habits narrowly construed. The more you speak in a certain way, the more you will act like those who speak in that way, and vice-versa. By identifying with a group in little ways, one sets oneself on the path to identify with them in bigger ways.
Imposter Syndrome can be described as a conflict between how one expresses oneself (usually successfully) and how one sees oneself. In hegelian terms, it is a conflict between the self in-itself and the self for-itself. This conflict is sustained by a belief that if one were really what one looks like, then the expression would just flow out of one. Instead, in all areas of life, to succeed we must set ourselves against our natural inclinations and develop ourselves by expressing and incorporating better ways of being.
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