Jacob Wells: I feel like fear is holding me back from confidently pursuing a big next role. How do I silence those voices?

• Choose challenge or choose confidence, you don’t get both, so embrace hard things knowing you will lose confidence and gain growth through mistakes, failure, and learning.
• With a growth mindset, give yourself space for learning mode where you ask questions, fail openly, and actually improve instead of hiding and feeding imposter syndrome.
• Assess opportunities by asking if you know enough to not get fired by Friday and if the environment allows learning, not just immediate performance.
• Face it until you make it. Use fear of gaps in skills as fuel to learn faster and prove to yourself you can figure things out.
• Stop speculating stories about why you weren’t chosen. Without evidence, you’re feeding imposter syndrome instead of focusing on what you can control and improve.
• Separate fixed mindset from growth mindset, you’re not “not good enough,” you simply lack skills right now, which means you know exactly what to learn next.
• Check your financial runway to confirm if you really need to take the job for the money or might have the option to take something that is in alignment with your creative needs.
• Leverage your generalist skills as your advantage, solving random problems and adapting makes you more valuable than specialists in uncertain, evolving environments.
• You can only control the path that you choose. Reduce overwhelm by focusing on what you have to do next instead of defining your entire career.
• Embrace the imposter syndrome if you want challenge and growth. Reframe failure as fast feedback, the faster you fail the faster you learn, making you more valuable instead of making failure mean you are the problem.

Useful Resources:

The Performance Paradox – How Only Focusing On Performance Leads to Performing Worse | with Eduardo Briceño

Managing Limiting Beliefs, Imposter Syndrome, and all the “Chatter” In Our Heads | with Ethan Kross

How We are “Wired to Create”, What It Means to Be a “Creative”, and How We Can Leverage Our Unique Gifts | with Scott Barry Kaufman

Carol Dweck’s Book: Mindset

Eduardo Briceño’s Book: The Performance Paradox

Adam Grant’s Book: Hidden Potential

Ethan Kross’ Book: Chatter

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