This is my forest. I am not afraid.

This one is called Imposter Syndrome and a Bad Strategy.

Immediately I reached out to an old friend and coach to ask for tips on dealing with a crisis of confidence, a pivotal scene from the seminal Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto popped into my head. After a miraculous escape from a beheading atop a pyramid built solely for human sacrifice, Jaguar Paw and the remaining captives are set free by the Mayan god-king to find their way back to their villages through the thick Amazon forest. This turns out to be sport for their captors, and a vicious hunt begins. One by one, Jaguar Paw’s friends are eliminated, until he finds himself sole prey for a pack of bloodthirsty ravagers. Driven by stark fear and the rush to unite with his pregnant wife, Jaguar Paw momentarily forgets he comes from a long line of a noble people who lived in perfect harmony with the ‘dangerous’ forest around them. A goosebumps inducing scene in the movie is when he suddenly stops running, and reminds himself that the forest belongs to him, and not the god-king’s soldiers from the Mayan capital. After this declaration to himself, Jaguar Paw uses the available resources at his disposal to kill off his adversaries, playing to his advantage against enemies far out of their depths.

It’s very easy to get accustomed to victimhood, especially after something unjust, real or perceived, has happened to you. An illness perhaps, redundancy, a job loss, an unfair dismissal, or a generally bad economic environment like what we witnessed during the pandemic. Jordan Peterson says it best, playing victim is a bad strategy as it often results in anger and resentment. We play the hand we are dealt to the best of our ability, not because its a winning strategy, but often times its the only strategy at our disposal. However, I go further and posit that a bigger pitfall is the resulting crisis of confidence and imposter syndrome that follows, as this to me is a prolonged death by a thousand cuts. It’s very human to doubt oneself after consuming so much negative energy around you, or after circumstances rob you of control over your affairs.

So how does one formulate a ‘winning strategy’ or eliminate imposter syndrome? I have no idea! What I do know is HOW to recognize it’s presence, because I suspect I have discovered this is the missing link between my ‘potential’, and the struggle to manifest the same. Start by asking yourself, do people say good things about you at work but you think they are just being nice/kind? Do you often find yourself wondering why you are under-performing yet you know fully well what you need to do? Does a day goes by and you don’t feel the sense of accomplishment because you probably spent a larger portion of it dwelling on something that happened in the recent past? How, if you have, do you recognize victimhood/crisis of confidence/imposter syndrome manifest itself in your own life?

I started by acknowledging that everything that happens to me does not have to define me. I discovered I suffered severe anxiety (a previously laughable notion to silly old me) after a long medical journey in my family that drained me in ways I am yet to fully comprehend. I knew it was only a matter of time before this trauma spiraled into a full blown mental issue. One simple trick I had forgotten about is to change the dialogues happening in my own mind every waking moment. If you don’t talk back to your inner voice when it spews out negativity and doubt, they become all that echoes through our fragile minds. Past failure, trauma, underperformance, dismissals, unemployment, have particularly LOUD resonance. It won’t matter how many job opportunities you are handed; you will struggle if you don’t address and shift these internal dialogues.

And so like Jaguar Paw, it’s time to stop running, and remind ourselves who we are. I was handed a few simple ideas to start from by my friend Esther Katiba. Everyday, write down 3, just 3, accomplishments you can remember from your past, no matter how trivial. Choose a trusted source of motivation to listen to as you prepare breakfast, or dress up, or stretch/yoga in the morning. I have discovered that my mind is more alert after a few good old push-ups. Intentionally speak to yourself before every task, and maybe, just maybe, this will replace any thoughts of doubt and lack of confidence.

The world, and more specifically, your employer, will nay care about your rationalizations or even the reality of your struggles. Victimhood (that results into/from crisis of confidence) is a losing strategy; I believe we can, and should, gain our confidence back, because our families and society at large needs us to perform at full capacity. We do this by not only acknowledging the emotions that surround the traumas and tragedies around us, but deliberately shifting the tone of the internal dialogues that spawns from them.

I don’t know if this will work, but I do know that my previous strategy was not a winning one. Day three of mindfulness and early morning rituals and I feel more optimistic about my days, so I intend to keep at this. This is my forest, and I am afraid no more.

What are some of the ideas and thoughts on how to deal with crisis of confidence/imposter syndrome? Let’s talk, I would love to hear your strategy in the comments below…