The Commendation Letter Hidden for 10 Years: Beating Imposter Syndrome with John Mollura

Have you ever been recognized for a big win, like a promotion, award, or a shout-out in front of the whole team, and instead of feeling proud, you feel like a fraud? Like any second now, someone’s gonna figure out that you don’t actually deserve it. That’s imposter syndrome, and here’s the cruel part. The more you achieve, the louder that voice gets. My guest today received a letter of commendation from the Defense Department, had a panic attack waiting on stage for his name to be called, and then hid that letter in his desk drawer for 10 years. Today, he shares what finally broke that spiral. welcome to The Introverted Leader. It’s a podcast helping introverted leaders embrace your underrated, quiet strengths so you can get promoted and start earning what you deserve. I’m Greg Weinger. I have over 25 years of leadership experience, and yes, I am an introvert. John Maura is a fascinating guy. He’s an introvert that everybody thinks is an extrovert. He’s a former defense engineer turned confidence coach, and he built a practical way to catch your inner critic before it takes the reins. Before we start, if you’re feeling stuck at work right now, you don’t have to go it alone. Tell me what’s going on at gweinger.com/stuck. That’s G-W-E-I-N-G-E-R.com/stuck, Just leave a sentence or two, and I’ll write back personally. Let’s get into it. All right, John, welcome to the show Hey, thanks so much, Greg. I appreciate you having me on here Right, we gotta kick off with the question everyone wants to know. Do you consider yourself an introvert, extrovert, or other? if you ask people, they’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, John’s an extrovert.” He’s so good at c-connecting with people.” But I’m most definitely an introvert. I need to recharge my batteries after, doing keynotes or events. That kind of stuff does not energize me. So definitely an introvert We’ve spoken before and you you were in the military, just jumping in, I was military adjacent. I supported the military as an engineer, so I wasn’t wearing a uniform, so I always like to be clear about that. Okay, got it. Yeah. You were working with the military? Yeah And at one point you received a letter of commendation, and this was a pivotal event in your life. Could you walk us through that? we were working on a job for years for, a government agency on a seemingly borderline impossible project. And long story short, we were very successful, and over 20 years later, it’s still out doing what it needs to be doing to, keep the US safe. And being civilians working on, this defense project, it was a big deal that they issued team members from the company I worked at letters of commendation. Official letters from the government Department of Defense saying bas- basically attaboys and attagirls. But very cool honor. So they made a big event at our company where the company president and the executive staff was gonna be issuing these letters in front of the whole company. And I remember standing there waiting for my turn, and my last name’s Melora, so, I’m in the middle of the alphabet. And as soon as it started getting closer and closer to me getting called, all of a sudden I started… I realize now I was having a panic attack. But, my vision started getting black from the outside in. Heart started going. I started getting a little bit woozy and wobbly, and I’m thinking, what is going on?” And all of a sudden these intrusive thoughts just got really loud in my head. They’re like, “They’re going to realize you don’t deserve this letter of commendation. And when you get up there, the company president is going to pull it out of your hand and say, ‘We realize you’ve been BSing us all these years.’” It, like, out of nowhere. And I don’t even remember them calling my name in alphabetical order and walking up there, shaking the hands, getting the letters, and standing on the side. I don’t really remember it. I just mechanically went through it, and then when they dismissed us, I didn’t stay for cake. I just went and left, and took that letter and put it in a manila folder in the deepest, darkest drawer I had in my desk, and I didn’t pull it out for a decade, Greg. I didn’t want people to say, “Do you really deserve that?” Because I ju-ha- just had this belief that I was a fraud. You know, now we know it as imposter syndrome, Mm-hmm. that feeling like a fake, that you’re, you’re going to be found out d- despite having high levels of skill and expertise. But in 2005, in a paramilitary-type environment, like we didn’t have that vocabulary. You didn’t talk about things like that. So for years, I just felt shame and just felt like I had to continually prove myself by taking on more challenging, more potentially hazardous, you know, tests and projects and mission supports. But spoiler alert, earning more accolades didn’t make me feel any more worthy. It actually built that house of cards up even higher till I had all this success, but I just felt like I was just kind of swaying in the breeze up on top of this. So it caused a lot of inner turmoil Thank you. that really kinda lays bare the mechanism of imposter syndrome. It’s Mm-hmm. a hole that can never be filled. Yeah That is every time you hit that next achievement, the goalposts are set higher Right there’s still that part in you not believing that you’re worthy, you’re Mm-hmm. of it. Yeah, absolutely And had you recognized, it sounds like that was a really impactful event for you. Had you recognized that pattern? At what point do you think you to see that, hey, there’s a pattern here? It wasn’t until years later that I’d already hit an emotional rock bottom in my life a few years after getting that letter of commendation with the death of a very close friend, that really caused me to start seeing the world differently and start seeing myself differently. And I realized, like, I was an elite performer, you know, for all my life, like, sports, academics, obviously working with elite teams and units in my professional career. But that also meant I was an elite asshole. That was my armor to protect myself. Pardon my French, but I can’t say it any better than that. an award for that. I, I probably earned a couple of those, but it was a defense mechanism, because it tied back to that feeling of unworthiness, and I thought, “I’m going to push people away or cut the legs out from under them verbally to prevent them from seeing that I don’t deserve to be here.” And when I hit this emotional rock bottom and found my faith, that started me looking inward to when I would start reacting to people in a meeting. And I started realizing, you know, I, I was a test engineer. My job was to get data. That was literally my job at its core function, so I started getting data on myself. I’d kinda do little postmortems after a meeting where, I’d lose my temper, with someone And I started realizing how my body was trying to tell me something before it happened.I started realizing I could physically feel it in my body when I’d get ready to snap on someone. So I started, incorporating, breathing exercises just, pausing so I could respond instead of reacting. So that was a period of years where I started really stop being so abrasive to people. And so I was already on this journey of healing, and I remember I was on extended mission support in California at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and I was waiting for my coworker to come out of, the changing room because, we had to get dressed up in, the white coats and the hats and stuff ‘cause we were working on spacecraft, um, you know, just, just like in the movies. And they had this billboard up of, like, things to do, and it said, “Symposium on Imposter Syndrome.” And I looked at it and went, “Ugh, that doesn’t sound good. What’s that all about?” So as we’re walking back to our rental car, my coworker said, “What are you thinking about? I can tell you’re chewing on something, John.” And her name was Lori, and she was very well-educated in psychology and human behavior. And I said, “I was looking at this thing on this bulletin board about imposter syndrome.” is that? That doesn’t sound good.” And she said, “Oh, it’s when you’re a high performer and you feel like a fake and not worthy.” And like when she said that, it was like I stopped walking. I’m like, “Wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You mean this is a thing and like there’s not something wrong with just me?” And she stopped and she turned around and, you know, very kindly just said, “No, John, this is a thing, but no one talks about it.” So that was the moment. That was probably like 2011, 2012, where I actually learned what imposter syndrome was and thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m not just some freak who is the only person experiencing this.” Wow. I can feel that moment of just like, being seen that way. Yeah. “Oh, it’s not just me.” Right obviously what you had developed as a defense mechanism and partly out of the environment you’re in, you’re working with military and in some of these situations. Did that start earlier or was that kind of part of your professional development? that stems way back from childhood that I can point to specific things and be like, “Okay, that… I can understand why I developed that mechanism when I did,” and then unfortunately continued to hone that ability. Yeah what, what it, it, it was actually, I, I was, you know, I’m a, I’m a nerd. Like I’ll just come out and say it. Like I still love Star Wars and all such things, right? Probably not a big stretch for someone who worked with NASA for all those years, like Star Wars. But I always say I relate a lot with like Darth Vader, you know, where he like used the f- he was very talented with the Force, but used it for dark the side. I was very much like that with my ability to read people. That’s how I was able to wound people so quickly and so severely. So Hmm. when I started realizing that’s what I was, that I was reacting to people and I needed to pull that back, that’s actually become one of my greatest strengths as a coach and a speaker, and just communicator is my ability to connect with people. But now I use it, for good, So you’ve developed a bunch of frameworks as a Mhm and these navigators, which I really enjoyed. I’d love it if you can walk us through some of these modes, maybe with a practical situation. Yeah, absolutely. So I developed the navigator’s framework, and what it is, is to give people insight into, these voices in our head, you know, of what steer the course of our life. And I, you know, as a recovering engineer, I of course like graphs. So if you think about, just a, like a T chart, from side to side. on one side there’s judgment, and then the other side there’s curiosity. The up and down line, there’s autopilot and then awareness. And I have four navigators that live at the intersection of these. So the one that lives at the intersection of autopilot and curiosity I call the drifter. The drifter’s very open-minded. The drifter’s, curious about the world. But the drifter is that part of us that can take the controls whenever maybe things get difficult or scary or, we don’t know what to do. That’s the thought that’s like, “Oh, I’m just gonna clean my desk before I do this,” or, “Oh, maybe this program, that’ll solve all my problems. I’m gonna ditch this other program that was supposed to solve all my problems and go to this one.” That’s the drifter. And the reason why I talk about these navigators is not to tell people that these need to go away, because that would be folly. They’re part of just being human. The key is to recognize when the three that aren’t serving you show up. So the drifter’s the first one that’s not serving you. The second one is the blamer, and the blamer lives at the intersection of autopilot and judgment. The blamer is that voice where it’s like, “The world is happening to me. Everybody’s out to get me. I can’t believe this happened. If the economy would do this, then I could do that. I’ll start my business when I get the 12th certification,” you know, “that I’m going after.” Like, that’s, that’s the blamer mentality, and that obviously can sometimes feel good in the moment, and I was a ninja-level blamer, right? I was really good at twisting things to why I should not be held responsible for this. But the problem with that is you surrender all of your agency when you blame other people. You surrender all the power that you have, and it’s a way to hide. So what’s real important to always ask ourself, I always say ask yourself, “What’s my 1%?” when something goes wrong and you hear the blamer start chirping up. And what’s my 1% means as adults, we’re never entirely blameless. Like, yes, things can happen and be like, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming,” but at the end of the day, we need to own the fact that we did something, maybe not in the past day, week, month, or even year, to land us where we’re at. And I tell people to ask what’s my 1% not to make them feel bad, but to help them realize, “Okay, I do have some agency in this. I do have some control over things What’s your 1% of responsibility Yeah. in that situation? Yeah, and sometimes it can go up to 99%, right? It might be mostly your doing that landed you where you’re at, and it can be frustrating. I’ve been there. I’ve been there recently where I’m like, “What was I thinking?” But then, like Maya Angelou says, “Once you know better, now you have the responsibility to do better.” Yep. So the drifter and the blamer are the two. And then the last navigator that gets in our way lives at the intersection of judgment and awareness. This one is one that I’m sure we’re all very familiar with, and that is the critic, right? The critic knows what’s going on. The critic knows all your secrets, knows everything that you’re capable of, and it takes that hyper-awareness in what’s happening and twists it, and a lot of times uses it in a court against yourself, right? And the ironic part about the critic is the critic is there to actually protect us. It’s there to keep us playing small so we don’t do something outlandish to do what would’ve been considered a threat back in the days when we lived in like kingdoms and, villages. The critic wants us to play small because it doesn’t wanna rock the boat and get us kicked out of the tribe, the group, the clan, the club, the whatever it is. But the issue is it takes the truth a lot of times and twists the facts. So what I always say to shift out of the critic is, what would I say to a friend in this situation? ‘Cause I guarantee we wouldn’t talk to a friend or give the friend the same counsel that we give ourselves, right? No, no, and the critic is not kind No, absolutely not. And again, the critic deals with just enough facts, but it’s the way it presents the facts, you know, in the case against yourself. Mm-hmm. but once we can start realizing that the critic is presenting things that aren’t necessarily true and also looping in feelings, then we get the opportunity to do what I call separate the data from the drama And ask yourself, what’s true? What’s the data? What would a camera have recorded? Yeah. So how do you depersonalize seems extremely personal? Yeah. Yeah Yeah. Like, like for instance, like a few hours ago, I got a message from, from a, a potential client, and they said they’re, they’re— someone was more aligned with their needs. “Thanks for your time, Jon.” Like, number one, I appreciate them letting me know. And number two, you know, they just said, “Hey, not the right fit.” That’s the data, right? The drama, and I’m gonna tell you that I put on top of this myself, I coach on this stuff, I wrote a book on this stuff. The drama I put on it is, “Oh my gosh, you know, I’m awful at this. Like I can’t connect with people. You know, I’m never gonna land another client. I thought they were a really good fit.” Like all these stories, like that’s the drama I’m putting on. But the data is no, they just, for them, they felt it was a better fit. So as-asking yourself, you know, what’s the data? Separate the data from the drama is a great interruption, especially when the critic starts chirping, because where we wanna get to is the fourth navigator. The fourth navigator I call the seeker, and the seeker lives at the intersection of awareness and curiosity. So the seeker is not putting its head in the sand. The seeker is curious about what’s going on, but it’s making decisions that are going to move us forward with curiosity and awareness. that’s the positive side of the one that draws you into distractions when you don’t need them, Absolutely it’s, it is looking out on the horizon and finding things that are potentially really Mhm. Mhm. or, growth-oriented for you Yeah, absolutely. And also it allows you to see what’s the next bottleneck or what’s the next realistic roadblock. ‘Cause the critic does a great job of pointing out roadblocks, but it’s gonna tell you down to level 17 everything that can go wrong instead of like looking ahead with curiosity and being like, “Okay, I’m getting this sorted out. What’s the next area so I can proactively get ready and prepare and maybe even avoid whatever the next obstacle is?” So the seeker absolutely helps you work on things that are going to better yourself, but also help you avoid maybe some rocks that are in your path that you can trip over Yeah. you talk about something I think is super interesting about the line between confidence and arrogance or just how it’s misperceived. What is the distinction there? a lot of my work centers around confidence and kind of working from the back, backwards forwards. Confidence is actually the product of taking action. So often people think, “I’ll do the thing when I feel confident,” right? “I’ll do the thing when I don’t feel scared,” you know, after confidence appears. And I say that’s incorrect. But before we go down into that, the difference between arrogance and confidence is because confidence gets a bad rap a lot of times. I know I used to hear like, “Oh, that person’s really confident.” I’d be like, “Oh, I bet they’re a jerk,” right? That was my natural default. When really I was misdefining confidence as arrogance. Arrogance is, fragile. Arrogance is about being better than someone. Arrogance is about position and status and letting people know that. That’s arrogance. Whereas confidence, truly it’s just a belief in your abilities, which there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a beautiful thing to have belief in your abilities. So that’s why I like to define the difference between arrogance and confidence. But so often we think confidence is a prerequisite for action, when really confidence is the product of taking action and taking action when you’re scared. yeah, confidence so attractive, just pure confidence. Mm-hmm I think I had similar drive to achieve more and, always getting the next accolade. it’s interesting how you can just fall into this trap, ‘cause confidence seemed elusive. but the link I was missing was that it’s, when it’s tied to better than in a way, confidence isn’t competitive. Ja it’s not about the other person. It’s simply about you, where you are, and it’s not about overcoming, lack. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. ground. Yeah. Confidence is about belief, not better than Hmm. Self-belief. Yeah. Yeah, self-belief. No, better than, yeah And bringing this back to imposter syndromes, if you recognize that, “Hey, this person is kind of going through that same thing I went through,” Угу what’s the course you recommend? Yeah, one of the biggest things that would be a tremendous upgrade for a lot of people would be whenever they do something they’re proud of or complete a task or, have an accomplishment, if they would just pause for a moment and allow that to sink in, that’d be a tremendous upgrade for people. Because something I see time and time again, especially the higher performing people, they just blow right past whenever they’ve, finished the project or had that difficult conversation or made that request that has been on their mind for so long. They put in all this work to do it, and then when it happens, they’re like, “Okay, next.” And I’m always like, “Yo, time out.” Like, let’s pause and at least acknowledge like, “Hey, that was really tough. I was scared to death to do that, but I did it.” Like, so just pausing would be a tremendous upgrade for a lot of people, myself included. I s- I still do that. I still blow past things. So that would be one thing. The second thing that I always recommend to people is to begin to trust your cheerleaders, and this is something I really wrestled with for a number of years, you know, and that letter of commendation story is a great example of it, is trusting your cheerleaders are the people that are trusted advisors, people that you trust. When they tell you, “Congratulations,” or, “Hey, good job on that,” believe them when your supervisor or, your pastor comes to you and asks you to lead something, believe that this person that you trust sees something in yourself that maybe you don’t, and maybe you need to borrow their faith in yourself until you can take action while you’re scared to gain the confidence. Don’t wait for the confidence to show up. So that’d be number two, it’s how to accept a compliment, because for years I was awful at accepting compliments, right? I would deflect. I would maybe say some self-deprecating thing like, “Oh, thanks for the compliment about my shoes. Yeah, my wife found them on Amazon for like $18.” Like, completely, like, discredit it or deflect it and be like, “Oh, it wasn’t a big deal,” or, “Oh, the team did all of the work.” And I always teach people a three-step process for how to accept a compliment. Would it be okay if I shared it with your audience, Greg? that sounds great All right. So how to accept a compliment, my patented three-step process. When someone says something nice to you, smile at them, right? Just give them a nice smile. Don’t hold it for too long, like don’t make it weird. Just give them a nice smile, right? And then step two, when someone gives you a compliment, is you just say, “Thank you.” That’s it. It’s not, “Thank you. My wife found these for me. Thank you. Everybody else did all the work.” It’s just, “Thank you.” And then step three is just give them a nice smile again. And that right there felt so weird for me to start doing, right? ‘Cause I was like, “Oh, I wanna say something. I wanna deflect this compliment. This feels kinda weird. The spotlight’s on me.” But the reason why that’s probably one of the biggest things people can do, especially if they wrestle with imposter syndrome or self-worth, is to, to begin to accept compliments without qualifying them or discrediting them, is because our brain’s obviously always paying attention. So if someone says something nice to you and you immediately discredit it, what your brain’s gonna take that as is, “See, look, got more information that I’m, I’m just not good enough.” But beyond the ramifications that it has on us- I’m sure we’ve all found ourselves in a position where we’ve given someone a compliment and they completely reject it. Mm-hmm. That doesn’t feel good, right, as the person giving the compliment. So I always encourage people, like, learn to accept the compliment for yourself, but also because it’s the kind thing to do is to accept the compliment, ‘cause if you don’t, it’s like rejecting a gift. So smile, say thank you, and then just smile again I have nothing to add to that. That was perfect. Thank you my wife had to teach me that. Mm. Ja. One other thing occurred to me talking to you about this is that it’s hard to tame that critic. people who have a very active critic are used to it, how do you go easier on yourself? that question, okay, Mr. Critic, let’s separate the data from the drama. Mm-hmm. Because like I said, the critic is, a very good litigator Mm-hmm but it’s going to twist the facts And, some of the critic’s favorite words are, always, never, everyone, no one, those absolute terms. So whenever we hear those terms start coming up, like, “I always screw this up.” I never follow through. It’s like, “Okay, wait a minute “Let’s talk about a time where you did follow through. Come up with a time.” “I can’t remember it.” And if we have trouble remembering, the good we’ve done, don’t be discouraged. That just means that we haven’t exercised that muscle enough. So it’s a matter of, again, pausing and recognizing when we do something that we should be proud of, and that can be defined however you want it to be, something you’re proud of. My definition of that looks different than I’m sure yours. I know it looks different than my wife’s So if we haven’t exercised that muscle of like looking for the good that we’ve done, yeah, it’s not gonna be able to be retrieved right away. But that’s an opportunity to then again pause, take credit for the wins, whatever that is, and then keep tracking them. And I always encourage people to keep tracking them in what I call an archive of awesome, right? ‘Cause I love assonance. So an archive of awesome is like, it can be a notebook, it can be a note on your phone. It’s whenever you’ve done something that you’re proud of, write it down Because again, number one, it’s gonna force you to pause and take credit for the win, which again will be a tremendous upgrade, just hitting the brakes for a moment for a lot of us. But also number two, on those days where we don’t feel like we’re going to be able to do whatever we need to do and we don’t wanna put on our big boy pants or our big girl pants, you can open up that archive of awesome and scroll through it, flip through the pages and be like, “Right, this is empirical evidence of things I’ve done.” So when the critic gets real chatty, you can point to that Yeah. Oh, this is a trove of awesome here, techniques Thank you. who struggle with imposter syndrome. Thank you Yeah. John, if people wanna learn more about you, your work, should they go? Yeah, I, I kept it real simple, johnmallora.com. J-O-H-N-M-O-L-L-U-R-A.com. And on there, you know, I— the Navigators is a free master course where I dig a little deeper into it, and there’s also a tab on there for my book that’s coming out in the fall of 2026, which will probably be out hopefully by the time this episode drops. Yeah it’s called “Let It Fly: Stop Overthinking, Take Action, and Live with Confidence,” where I really do a deep dive into a lot of things that we talked about today Awesome. Check it out. Thanks so much for being on the show and sharing these ideas with us, John Thank you so much, Greg. I appreciate it I loved this conversation with John. That moment at the Jet Propulsion Lab when a coworker explained imposter syndrome to him, and John stopped in his tracks and said, “Wait, that’s a thing?” So vivid, so relatable, and just shows how impactful it is to be seen in this way. So let’s take a moment to recap. Number one, more achievement won’t fill that hole. If you’re waiting for the next promotion to finally make you feel worthy, it’s not gonna happen. Try this instead. Next time you get a win, really pause, let it sink in. Then write it down on what John calls the archive of awesome, so we have real evidence the next time the inner critic acts up. Number two, notice which voice is steering the ship. When you catch yourself blaming others, ask yourself, “What’s my 1% in this? What’s my role?” And when that critic starts building its case, separate the data from the drama. what would a camera reveal about this situation? Number three, confidence comes after the action, not before. If you’re not there yet, borrow that belief in yourself from people who believe in you until that trust becomes your own. And this last suggestion is just so practical. The next time someone compliments you, smile, say thank you, and smile again. My wife taught me that one, and I’m forever grateful. Another thing, if you’re feeling stuck at work right now, let me know what’s going on. Leave me a note at gweinger.com/stuck. That’s G-W-E-I-N-G-E-R.com/stuck. I promise I’ll write back personally, no AI involved. if this show resonated with you, please subscribe to The Introverted Leader wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps other people find this content, and you won’t miss another conversation. I’m Greg Weinger. Keep leading with quiet confidence, and I’ll see you next time