We were lucky to catch up with Ian L. Haddock recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ian L. , first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
I don’t know if you ever truly get over imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is built into the very fabric of how society is structured where people who aren’t afforded particular capabilities and capacities are made to feel substandard to the rest of the population. All the way back to grade school where standardized tests were used to equate intelligence to adulthood where class, gender, weight, and race play a part of the societal elite, we find that it is engrained into our psyche to believe we must judge our worthiness on the next individual. In this way, overcoming imposter syndrome is a continuous cycle of re-languaging, reframing, and recentering on purpose. For me, the journey is in getting clear that even if we all define success within the same parameters, i.e. wealth, influence, and societal acceptance, the journey will be different. And the journey is where you find the value; the outcomes of success are but a response to the inputs of the journey. My journey won’t look like reality television stars, politicians, and other business owners– and that is not devaluing anyone’s experience. This is simply the context in which I can celebrate the accomplishments where they are while feeling ‘comfortable in my skin, cozy with who I am’.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
When we started The Normal Anomaly in the summer of 2016 as a blog, it was in response to the imposter inside of myself that I wanted to silence. I wanted to create a space where I could begin to talk with the community on my journey of self-acceptance as a Black, queer man. Since then, the vision has been embraced by thousands of people along the way and we joined a nonprofit incubator at the Montrose Center in October 2018. Through that program, we have gained six employees and received our nonprofit status in December 2021. Since then, we have provided eight programs to the community including direct services such as employment, transportation, and a community burial fund along with advocacy and capacity-building programs to develop businesses, politicos, and activists. We have also developed Texas’ first Black Queer Music Festival.
This year, we are launching Black Queer Advancement Festival week, a week full of events that focus on arts, culture, politics, health, and wellness. The festival will be May 3-7, 2023, and will have a Forum, Music Festival, Sunday Service, and a Beach Party. Some of the special guests are Keke Wyatt, KenTheMan, Kidd Kenn, Greg Mathis, Jr. (Judge Mathis’s son), and Tiffany Andrews (from Sunday’s Best Season Nine). More information and tickets can be purchased at www.normalanomaly.org/BQAF; this event centers on Black queer people but is open to everyone 18+.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities and skills that I think are important for building oneself are perseverance, flexibility, and passion. My deepest understanding of the journey to self is that it will not be a linear path. It will be filled with twists and turns that will require all three of the things mentioned. Above all, I think the most important one of those is passion. In my conversations and when I speak, I often intertwine the term passion with ‘finding your why’. This is the true reason behind what you do and how you show up in your work, love, life, and friendships. If you keep your ‘why’, you will always be able to return back to the obstacle with flexibility and the ability to persevere.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
The book that I constantly return to reading is ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ by Mark Manson. I picked up the book because one of my mentors told me that it would be a good read in my journey to self. When I started to read the book, I was immediately attracted to the carefree and direct language but as I read on it literally transformed how I saw myself. One of the most valuable things I received from the book was this reframing of narcissism. Oftentimes, we see narcissism as this idea that people are full of themselves and only want to do things that benefit them in the immediate and long term. The book continues this definition to consider narcissism as simply the belief that you are the only one in the space that you are in. In other words, narcissism is the idea that life is only happening to you. In that, it made me reconsider the imposter syndrome showing up in me not feeling good enough to be in certain places while also evaluating how I respond to people who are critiquing, observing, or uplifting me to acknowledge that truths exist with and without my whole self being involved.
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