Why Smart People Always Doubt Themselves

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Confidence only helps you when it matches your actual ability, and Florence Foster Jenkins is the proof. In 1944 she sold out Carnegie Hall, with a two-month waiting list for tickets. She also could not sing a single note in tune, and she had no idea. In chapter three, Drew and I use her story to get at the real problem with confidence: calibration. Tip too far one way and you get the Dunning-Kruger effect, where the people who know the least are the surest of themselves, including a bank robber who covered his face in lemon juice because he thought it would make him invisible to cameras. Tip the other way and you get imposter syndrome, which turns out to show up most in high performers. We get into the McKinsey study that found future superstars are basically overachievers with crippling insecurities, the spotlight effect and the time I walked the Venice boardwalk in a chicken suit to prove nobody's watching, and why narcissism has almost nothing to do with confidence and everything to do with an inability to take feedback. The goal was never to feel as confident as possible. It's to see yourself clearly.

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This is chapter 3 of our episode on Confidence. New chapters drop every few days. Watch the full episode now on Spotify

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