Ibrahim Abdel Rahim TEDx
Ibrahim Abdel Rahim, Managing Partner of Moonbase Capital, took the stage at TEDxCairoUniversity, held under the theme “Revive” on October 14, 2023 at the Naguib Mahfouz Theatre inside Cairo’s Al-Ahram Newspaper building.
In a deeply personal talk delivered in Arabic, Ibrahim spoke about the “complexes” (‘oqad) we all carry, the limiting beliefs formed in early childhood that quietly shape how we see ourselves and how we act. He shared his own: growing up surrounded by high achievers, he decided at around five years old that he was a failure, and lived through that filter for decades, even as he built a career that included INSEAD, McKinsey, running the family business alongside his brother and growing it from around 40 to 500-600 people, and an MBA at Stanford.
He explained that he only recognized the pattern recently, when he caught himself voicing a fear that one of his own children might one day feel like a failure. Drawing on ideas like the fight, flight or freeze response and Carl Jung’s “inner child”, he then walked the audience through a four-step approach to identifying and loosening a complex of their own.
Key takeaways
- Everyone has complexes. Limiting beliefs formed in childhood are universal, and having them doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.
- The body reacts faster than the mind. Fight, flight or freeze responses are triggered by internal fears, not just real threats, which is why we often act in ways we later regret.
- A four-step method to find yours: (1) observe the moments when you react strongly, (2) connect the dots between them, often by writing or talking to someone who knows you well, (3) find the “I am ___” sentence underneath, such as “I am a failure” or “I am treated unfairly”, and (4) put on a different pair of glasses and test that belief against reality.
- You didn’t choose your childhood, but you can choose what you do with it. Working on these beliefs is hard and takes time, but it has a good ending.
- Complexes can also be a gift. Ibrahim noted that he wouldn’t remove his own even if he could, because they shaped the personality that helped him succeed.