Why I’ve Sucked at Success

I’ve been fighting Imposter Syndrome all my life. It is only recently that I learned what has been holding me back from true and proper success, and that it actually has a name. I thought that I simply lacked motivation to see things through. Starting with the decision to not accept a merit scholarship to attend university in the US (not a decision I regret, by the way) to not completing the edits on a book that was accepted by a publisher ( a decision I very much regret), my life has been peppered with “almosts”.

At some point I realised that I had a deep subconscious belief that I didn’t have the right to be successful. I did the groundwork to figure out where this subconscious belief came from and after much soul-searching, meditation and shaking my fist at the sky, I saw that my feeling of unworthiness was mainly attached to two things: my lack of tangible identity in South Africa, and a questioning of my right to success when so many people suffer a lack of it due to unfair systems. I have been loath to talk about the identity part, because I belong to a diverse group of people who were thrown together and told we are all the same. I am loath to talk about the crisis it brings me because no matter what I say about my perceived fragile identity, in whatever context and under whatever guise, I will be mercilessly criticized. And since I suffer under enough of my own criticism, I’m not sure I’m ready for more. But the bottom line is, under my upbringing under Apartheid, subconsciously I believed the lie I was told, the lie I was indoctrinated with, that I am not good enough. I can claim a certain amount of success in my understanding that there is enough space for all the achievements to exist, and that despite this, we are limited, for various reasons, in our capacity to access them.

But today I had a breakthrough in my understanding of how the myth that I am not enough has been perpetuated. There has been a slow build-up to this moment of personal revelation. Tiny bits of truth have been thrown at me over the years, but thanks to crafty indoctrination that led me to believe that it is simply not possible for me to be worthy of remarkable success, it all circled around a realisation that as much as I have told myself that the prejudices against me were untrue, deep, deep down inside, I still believed them.

I remember being genuinely shocked when my cousin told me that I am the smartest person he knows. I was perplexed when my sister who is studying for her doctorate told me she regularly tells people that she is the sibling with the degrees, but I am the sibling with the brains. My boyfriend keeps telling me how I am “objectively, smarter than most people.” The parents of my students regularly let me know the positive impact I have made on their children’s confidence in their abilities. My yoga teacher has hired a ‘social media content expert’, yet I am the one who rewrites her copy so that it properly passes on the message and connects with a wider audience. Just the other day I used the word ‘psychosomatic’ correctly in casual conversation and was congratulated for it. Over and over again I have received confirmation that I am good at whatever I do, that I am smart and intelligent. And yet, I haven’t quite believed it, and I have played it down.

What I realised today is that I have grown up in, and am living in, a system that celebrates mediocrity in order to maintain the status quo of white superiority. When I look at the industries in which I can make an impact, I see how I have been demoralised by not finding a way to compete with people who are given a chance by the virtue of their skin colour – whether I am better at them when it comes to completing the task at hand or not. There are gatekeepers in the content creation market, in advertising, in publishing, who have established a network that ensures that their own are taken care of. In South Africa it is the reason why food production is owned by people who started their enterprises at the height of the Apartheid regime and still today enjoy economic success. Same with banking, chain supermarkets and everything else vital to daily living. It is the reason that the most successful businesses in South Africa, while they employ a majority of black people, are still majority white-owned with majority white boards of directors.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am not having a pity party. Rather, I am experiencing a reality-check. This is where we are. And this is why I have allowed my success to be kept on a backburner. And this is where I understand what I need to make momentous change within myself to enable my success. I need to overcome these obstacles in my personal capacity. The best-case scenario would be for me, through my own journey, to inspire others to do the same, so that they too create their own platform within which to enjoy success, instead of trying to compete in a system stacked against them.

Alright, that’s enough rambling for now. It’s time to put in the authentic work.