Written by Amaka Akinteye

One major sign of imposter syndrome that has ravaged the face of the world through social media is what I call the “identity confusion”. This can be likened to an identity crisis which is a psychological issue requiring some sort of treatment, which starts typically during adolescence. To deal with the identity crisis, Erik Erikson identified the eight stages of psychosocial development, such that successful completion of these stages will result in a healthy personality and acquisition of basic virtues which can be used to resolve subsequent crises if they occur in adulthood. However, it is obvious that in our world today, a lot of people were unable to go through all these stages in their early years in life before adulthood and if they did it was an unsuccessful journey.

Identity according to the Oxford dictionary is “ the fact of being who or what a person or thing is’. While, according to the Cambridge interpretation, oh I love this! identity is “who a person is or the qualities of a person or group that make them “different” from others”. The qualities that make them unique/special from others, unfortunately, this uniqueness is being discarded by people because of the reasons I will discuss later in this article

What do I mean by identity confusion? Take a look around you very carefully including yourself, turn on your subconscious alertness, you begin to see a lot of people put up an identity of themselves today and a totally different one tomorrow. What do I mean? today on Drake’s social media handle,  or introductory messages, he states- I am a growth specialist, then the next time he is a financial expert and then the next time he is a coach and the next a motivational speaker or gender advocate, I am actually getting confused, so will everyone who follows his trend. Get me right, your identity can evolve over time within the same terrain but not by making a consistent dramatic shift as a result of the trendy profession or career loitering around.

Why do we have increased identity confusion? It is because of the need to feel among in the world of today, Abraham Maslow in his hierarchy model on motivation, calls it “esteem needs”, it is the social need factor driving one’s identity choice. The need to push out our identity out there so that we can measure up with the status quo. The desire to meet up with the social standard that has been defined by the online community. Finally, it can be the need to meet up with our financial needs by offering service through our self-acclaimed identity.

In order to avoid joining the bandwagon of identity copycats, you must first compete with yourself not with others in order to create yourself. Everything boils down to competition, first make a list of your strengths and what those can translate to. The question you must answer is – why compete when you do not have a competitive advantage, this means before you compete or display your identity, you must first- Review your strengths, Accept who you really are and what you can do, Mould your skills by developing it into what you envision it to be,  and then Project your image/identity (RAMP) through your capabilities/skills/competence in such a way that you will find it difficult to be swayed by anybody’s post on social media rather all you do is to keep Ramping your skills/competence/capabilities, this I call the “identity Ego”.

Your identity ego intelligence (IEO) is the confidence you have in your uniqueness, even in the face of raging intimidation and scenarios that question your identity. This allows you to block off every tempting identity trend no matter how lustrous and enticing they may look, instead, it pushes you to RAMP up your identity. Thus, helping you evolve into a more refined and up-to-date identity which in turn increases your IEO quotient.

Remember, what you consistently say or project about yourself supersedes what anybody thinks or says about you!

Reference:

Oxford Dictionary, Meaning of identity, 2021, https://www.lexico.com/definition/identity

Cambridge dictionary, Meaning of identity, 2021, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/identity

Erik Erickson, Psychosocial stages of development, 2018, https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html