Once upon a time there was this Impostor.

In life, there are moments and occurrences where you feel you are hitting the same stone twice. These repetitive mistakes, or scenarios where you find yourself taking the wrong decision sometimes prompt you to take a new direction but many of us go through life with these scenarios on auto repeat. We do this for reasons mostly unbeknownst to us. There is a likelihood that we were exposed to something during our upbringing or formative years that makes us react in ways, and make decision in ways where the underlying reasons for reacting or deciding are not understood let alone identified. The only thing we know is that our reactions or decisions are leading us away from an uncomfortable feeling that we were having and that was building up prior to the reaction or decision that we made. Once we have reacted and decided, we feel safe again.

This uncomfortable feeling that can present itself in wide variety of symptoms is called anxiety. Some symptoms of having anxiety might be moderately light such as having trouble concentrating or making decisions or maybe not catching sleep immediately. When anxiety is exasperated some of the symptoms are sweating, shaking and having heart palpitations. People that having feelings of anxiety are often tense and can come across irritated or disconnected and distracted.

I always believed that stress and anxiety had no power over me. I was in control of who I was and I always found strength in knowing that I was in control of wherever I was going. That belief led me to being relatively successful in my career as I rose through the ranks within Marriott and ended up opening 4 hotels as General Manager. I say relatively successful because although I won awards, I never felt to celebrate my success as special or extraordinary. When I won the Marriott Edge Award, an award that was given to 5 people worldwide yearly, I travelled to the company's Headquarters in Washington DC to collect the prize and upon return gave my two young sons the trophy which was a tall glass statue. It was a beautiful award, and it came in a well-designed case. A mere couple of weeks later, the glass fixture had all edges chipped off and was covered with stickers. My sons sure knew what to do with their "gifts" and I laughed it off. A couple of years later I won the Marriott Mustang Award for leading in an adverse climate for one of my hotel openings. Also that award went missing in action. My work approach has always been pretty straight forward. I basically get my job done and then move on to the next thing at hand. So far so good, you would say. Just a hard working guy who focuses on the job at hand.

It wasn't until I started finding myself in a repetitive situation in my personal life, when alarm bells started to ring. I was feeling uncomfortable and distracted and I was avoiding what was ahead of me. My avoidance was impacting people around me that I cared about and I didn't understand why I was in that situation acting the way I did.

This was the moment where "Mr. Cool & In Control" decided to speak with a therapist to see if there were any underlying reasons for me to struggle the way I did, and finding myself in similar situations over and over again. The realization that it wasn't other people, but me who was causing the problem and impacting others in the process, made me see something I couldn't unsee and for me to understand myself better that deep dive with a therapist was needed. What started with a simple question from my side ended up becoming a journey of discovery, confrontation and plenty of difficult moments. Once I realized that a lot of what makes me ME is because of how I was raised, I started looking at my life differently. The unpacking of the impact my parents had on my upbringing and my formative years and my adult life lead to a big shock to my system and ended up with me having to acknowledge that the forthcoming anxiety was a present part of my life. Realizing that I never felt "seen", and that leading to feelings of unworthiness, not being good enough and consequently being insecure shook me up. From growing up I was always shown that if I just stayed out of trouble, things were fine, but that's not how I saw and see my life. I wanted more for me, and I wanted to be special and make a name for myself but that feeling of maybe not being good enough, smart enough or worthy enough to be that person kept eating away at me for years until I truly could put a name to it.

I was an Impostor. The Impostor syndrome speaks to the subjective experience of perceived self-doubt in one's abilities and accomplishments compared with others, despite evidence to suggest the contrary. I simply believed I portrayed myself different, more successful, more intelligent than I actual am, and it was just a matter of time for people to find out about me and see through the facade. That translates in a variety of output and behaviors such as not stepping up for recognition, accepting recognition, allowing others to step up for exposure and keeping self more to the background. Even sabotaging behavior is a part of this. In retrospect I have found myself guilty on all of the above. Then there are the awards becoming part of my sons' "demolition derby" and you get the idea. Understanding WHO you are or have become is one part of being in therapy, the other part is living with who you REALLY are and ensuring that you rediscover the love for yourself and the validity of your presence and output. This is not easy; how do you change from feeling not good enough to stepping up and through those related feelings of anxiety?

I don't know. Just kidding, I actually have an idea on how to. It is all about leaning in to your anxiety and not letting your anxiety take you in the direction of your perceived safety. Once you actually pick up on the specific sensations the anxiety comes with (mentioned earlier) you can choose to lean into it and choose a different "unsafe" response. Imagine someone complimenting you on this well put together financial report you spent a weekend on. Instead of brushing that off (Safe anxiety response) you could respond with "Thank you, I really appreciate that". Addressing anxiety is done through recognizing the moments, leaning into them, challenging your prior sense of safety and creating a new one.

Going through this process has been so incredibly enriching on personal and professional levels as my leadership has become more multi-sensory and my personal life more gratifying and meaningful now that I recognize the mental and emotional roadblocks ahead and trust me, I have successfully navigated quite some already. I am still not very comfortable being singled out for praise, but I have come to realize that I am damn good at what I do. Writing is another element where I felt to be an Impostor. Who would actually be waiting for my message or vision in a book, or blog, talk or speak for that matter? The fact that you are here reading my story, will tell you what I did with that Impostor. Let me tell you that he will raise its ugly head once in a while, but I know I have the power to bench him and I will continue doing so.