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How Being an Eternal White Belt Helped With My Impostor Syndrome
I know you may be thinking the article’s headline is definitely a metaphor.
But let me start with a spoiler: It’s not.
I love martial arts but I don’t hold the treasured black belt in any style. Instead, I’ve spent the last years of my life just being a white belt in different styles over and over again.
If you are really interested in the details, I got a blue belt in Shotokan karate approximately 1,000 years ago. Then I quit and I’ve started different styles. Tai chi chuan, aikido, wing tsun… I’m completely sure that if I edit this article in some years, the list would only keep on growing.
Of course, every time I started a different style, I had to start from scratch. In the martial arts world, this usually translates as a white belt.
When I’ve started starting new styles, there were mixed feelings for me, maybe as a product of my own insecurities. One of these feelings was close enough to the impostor syndrome.
Sometimes I would feel like I should be knowing more, even if I was just a white belt. After all, I had way more experience than those other white belts, I should just know better how to use my body, how to understand everything… right?
