Why Knowing Less Makes You More Sure

00:00:00Her name was Florence Foster Jenkins,and she might have been the mostdelusionally overconfident person whoever lived. I love this story, Drew. Idon't totally know why I love it. It isso absurd and just ridiculous, but I dothink it proves a really important pointthat is important for this episode. So,Florence, she was born in 1868 inPennsylvania. Her father was extremelywealthy and rich, and it turned out thatshe was actually a child prodigy atpiano. So she competed in a bunch ofcompetitions, was, you know, lauded andcelebrated, but at age 15, she elopedwith a 30-year-old guy and got marriedto him. Shocker, that guy gave hersyphilis, and so she left him.[laughter]But in the process, her father disownedher. And so she ended up moving to NewYork City where she was this brokesingle sypholyticwoman who gave piano lessons to survive.And this went on for decades. Now onceshe got to her 40s, her father passedaway and he left her a lot of money. Andonce she inherited all of her father'smoney, she decided that she was going topursue a lifelong dream of becoming

00:01:15aprofessional singer. So she went out,she hired a singing coach, she hired anagent, she hired a manager, she hired anaccompanist, and she started practicing.And it quickly became apparent that shecould not carry a tune to save her life.She was completely tonedeaf. She had norhythm. She was always offbeat, but shehad so much money and she was payingpeople so much to support her singingcareer that nobody really wanted to tellher. Everybody just kept encouragingher, told her to keep going. So thiswent on for a while. She wasn't reallygetting any better. And it soon becameapparent that she couldn't get a gigbecause she couldn't sing. And so shedecided instead of singing for somebodyelse's venue, why don't I just create aclub myself? And so she founded theVerdie Club. It had over 400 members. Ithad a lot of members of New York's elitesociety as part of it. And she startedhosting annual charity events,fundraisers, all sorts of things whereof course she would sing and she wouldperform. And again, she ended up insituations where everybody in theaudience is there because of her money.Everybody is there because they want tomaintain a relationship with her

00:02:30becauseshe has all these connections in highsociety in New York. And so the factthat she can't carry a tune to save herlife, everybody just kind of overlookedit. and was polite and applauded.Anyway, this continued to escalate andafter a number of years, Florencedecided, you know what? I really want totake my singing career to the top. I'mgoing to sing in Carnegie Hall, the mostprestigious venue in the Americas. Andso, she booked herself at Carnegie Halland invited all of her friends. It'samazing because this was the 1940s. Andat this point, she became a kind of memebefore there were even memes. Like wordgot around that this woman thought shewas a professional singer, but sheactually couldn't sing. And peoplethought this was funny, so they justkind of bought tickets because it wasfunny. So she sold out Carnegie Hall in2 hours. There was a waiting list 2months long to get a ticket. And whenshe showed up, she showed up with uhlittle tinsel angel wings, uh a littlecheap plastic tiara, and threw out rosesto the audience. And on top of that, sheselected the most difficult operas inexistence. I have a list here of thepieces she tried to sing. She tried tosing Queen of the Night from Mozart'sMagic Flute. She tried to sing

00:03:45Braum.She tried to sing Strauss. These werecatastrophically beyond hercapabilities. And anytime the audiencestarted bursting into laughter, theyjust covered it up with more applause.So the end result is a ridiculoussituation which is that Carnegie Hall isbeing sold outnight after night has a waiting list toget in for a woman who can't sing. Itshows the absurdity of what happens whenconfidence goes too far. This is the endresult, right? Like if you do justbelieve in yourself, if you apply thepeel fallacy and just blindly believe inyourself with no attribution to realityand just assume that anything you wantis going to happen and you are enabledby the world around you, this is the endresultis just absolute absurdity.Ridiculousness. So in last chapter wetalked about how confidence is builtthrough accumulating evidence and thatevidence that's accumulated it must betethered or mapping to reality. But thecomplication is that often ourunderstanding of reality is relativebased on what the people

00:05:00around us seeas reality. Florence Foster Jenkinsthought she could sing largely becausethe people around her continued to lether think she could sing. And so shedeveloped a delusional level ofconfidence around this one area of lifethat she was actually [ __ ] terribleat. And this is where we get intotrouble. When we are completelymiscalibrated towards our actualcompetence in a specific domain. When wethink we are excellent at something, butwe're actually terrible at it. Or whenwe think we're terrible at something,but we're actually excellent. Both ofthese traps crop up time and time again.We all succumb to them. We all gettricked by them and we all tend to makethe same mistake over and over again. Ifwe drastically overestimate ourabilities, we will become delusional andnarcissistic and completely untetheredto reality. And not only will this causeus to fail, but it will cause us to failin some of the most embarrassing andcatastrophic ways. And then if wedrastically underestimate our ownabilities, then we prevent ourselvesfrom taking action. we hold ourselvesback and prevent ourselves from beingable to succeed as much as wepotentially could. And so it turns outthat there's actually a number ofmechanisms in

00:06:16our minds that can get outof whack or lose an accurate reading onwhere our own abilities and our owncompetence lies. We easily succumb toeither overestimating or underestimatingourselves in certain domains. And whenwe overestimate or underestimateourselves, our confidence works againstus rather than for us. Okay. So, themost common of these is the DunningKrueger effect. And a lot of people haveprobably heard of this one, right? Andit's what Florence fell victim to here.This is when uh somebody who's reallyincompetent thinks they're actuallycompetent or like a stupid person thinksthey're really smart or an incapableperson thinks they're capable withsomething, right? A lot of times too,it's when capable people don't realizehow capable they are. They think they'reincapable or stupid or whatever it is,right? Okay. So, there were tworesearchers who figured this out back inthe 90s, Dunning and Krueger. That's whyit's called the Dunning Krueger effect,right? And what they did is they hadthis study where they brought studentsin and they gave them all sorts ofdifferent tests on like logic andgrammar and humor. Before they gave themtheir scores, they had them ratethemselves. What they found was prettyinteresting is that people who scoredlow on these different tests, like thebottom 25%, they thought they actuallyscored in like the top 30%, 30 or 40%.Right? They overestimated their abilityby that on all these different tests.Some of the people who scored higher toothought they scored lower

00:07:31and all that.The the main finding is that incompetentpeople think they're way more competentthan they are. Dumb people think they'resmarter than they actually are. Theconclusion they came to out of this wasthat the skills you need to do a taskare the exact same skills that you needto assess that task to evaluate how goodit is. Right? So if you don't actuallyhave those skills in the first place,you can't evaluate yourself accurately,which is exactly what we've been talkingabout. It's like you need accurateevidence, right? In order to have realconfidence,>> you know so little that you don't knowwhat you don't know.>> Exactly. Kind of like the beginner'sfallacy. A lot of times you start outand you figure out something and youthink you know everything about it. I dothis all the time. Like I get into onelittle thing. I'm like, "Oh, I knoweverything about this." The thing isthough is that once you get trained inthis a little bit or like once you areshown that you can correct that evidenceback to what it was, right? I didn'trealize this too, but the story thatthat kicked this whole thing off forthem. It happened in Pittsburgh. AnotherPennsylvania uh reference here. It wasthis guy MacArthur Wheeler. He robbed acouple of banks in Pittsburgh in the mid90s. It was on camera. He got caught andthe police show him the He's likedenying it. The police show him thefootage with him on it and he said, "ButI wore the juice." And they're like,"What the hell are you talking about?"

00:08:46The guy rubbed lemon juice on his facethinking that would hide him from thecameras.>> Okay.>> Okay. So it's like his incompetence androbbery was only matched by hisincompetence and not noticing what hedidn't know basically like not knowingwhat he didn't know.>> He was so scientifically illiterate itmade him confident.>> Yes. He [laughter] he knew so littleabout this that he was so sure about it.Okay. That's the Dunning Krueger effect.>> One of my favorite quotes ever. It comesfrom Burton Russell and he said thewhole problem with the world is thatidiots are so sure of themselves andsmart people are so full of doubt. And Ialways think about that when I comeacross the Dunning Krueger.>> There there's interesting too. There's athere's a medical condition which is ifsomeone has a brain injury thatparalyzes them on one side, sometimesthey will not even realize that they'reparalyzed. You can ask them. They'relike, "Hey, can you grab that with yourleft hand?" When their left hand isparalyzed and they're like, "Man, I justdon't really feel like it right now."You know,>> that's so weird.>> They will convince themselves to thatdegree. They have an actual medicalcondition. Well, there's people withoutmedical conditions who can convincethemselves of just as many absurdities,right? Again though, what they did findtoo in one of the studies that they did,they took all those those people whoscored really low, like in the bottom25% and they retrained them on somelogic tasks and then gave them anotherlogic assessment.

00:10:02After that, they weremuch more accurate in assessingthemselves. It's a really simple fix. Tobring this back to the attribution piecethat we talked about, to effectivelybuild confidence in your life, you needto be able to accurately attribute theresults of your actions to yourself. Andif you're just an idiot and don'tunderstand anything, then you're notgoing to have an accurate attribution.You don't know what actually producedthe result. You don't know how much ofit you were responsible for, how muchwas just luck. And because you don'tknow any of these things, you probablyjust assume you're awesome. and withwithout any basis in reality whatsoever.But then as you build up that knowledgeand that understanding of what you'redoing, you start realizing all thedifferent variables and factors and allthe different ways that you couldpotentially mess something up or thatyou could be better and that actually ina sense lowers your sense of confidence,but it makes it more realistic.>> Yeah. But it's all in that attributionlike you misattribute your own abilityand then you misattribute uh the actualassessment of your ability in that. Soyeah, that's there's the mismatch there.You're right. Yeah, it's just kind offunny, too. Just one little littletidbit in that original uh DunningKrueger study, they ended it with alittle joke that said, "This article maycontain faulty logic,

00:11:18methodologicalerrors, or poor communication. Let usassure our readers that to the extentthis article is imperfect, it is not asin we have committed knowingly."[laughter]>> So they just came out and said, "Wemaybe we did the same thing.">> Very ironic. Yeah.>> Yeah. Yeah. Which I thought was kind offunny. So yeah, stay right there. Moresolved coming up after this. Thisepisode is brought to you by Factor.Confidence is hard to fake, especiallywhen you feel like garbage. You skiplunch, you run on coffee, you get badsleep, and everything starts feelingheavier than it actually is. How you eatquietly shapes how you feel. And let'sbe honest, healthy options are hard.Factor takes all of those decisions offthe table. Meals are designed bydietitians. They're made by chefs. Andthey are delivered directly to yourdoor, ready [music] in two minutes. Now,I've been living off the mustard dillsalmon quinoa bowl cuz I'm just thattype of guy. It tastes like something Iwould actually order at a restaurant,not just diet food. And it fits how I'meating at the moment. It's all fresh,never frozen, over 100 meals rotatedweekly, including globally inspiredflavors like Mediterranean and Asian.So, there is always something new thatyou can try and look forward to. AndFactor also has meals built around yourgoals, whether it's weight loss, overallnutrition, more protein, GLP-1 support,and

00:12:33a muscle pro line for strength andworkout recovery if you want to getjacked. Now, I use Factor, and I thinkyou should, too. So, head over tofactormeals.com/solved202650off and use the code solve 202650 off.That's all one word. To get 50% off andfree daily greens per box with a newsubscription only while supplies lastuntil 9:27 20226. See website for moredetails. All right, we're back. Let'sjump back into it. So, the secondmisattribution error that I want to talkabout is another very common one, whichis imposter syndrome. And interestingly,there's not a whole lot of research andliterature around imposter syndrome,which I find very fascinating,especially given like in our industrylike it is becoming a pretty hot topic.I mean, there's so many prominentexamples of imposttor syndrome. You yousee this all the time of just likeinsanely successful,prestigious, award-winning people whoare like, I got lucky. Like, I don'tunderstand why how this is happening.One of them that I've written aboutbefore is my Angelou. You know, shepublished 11 books. She won thePresidential Medal of Freedom. She hasthree Grammys, a poem read at BillClinton's inauguration. She wrote afeature film screenplay, directedanother. She collaborated

00:13:48with MartinLuther King Jr. on the civil rightsmovement. She was nominated for multiplePulitzer prizes. By any neutral measure,she's one of the most accomplishedAmerican writers of the 20th century.But it's interesting because apparentlybefore publishing each book, she tellspeople, she says, each time I send abook to the publisher, I think tomyself, uhoh, they're finally going tofind out. They're going to find me outevery book.>> Yeah.>> This was all luck. I had nothing to dowith it. So imposter syndrome I think isreally interesting because in a lot ofways it's kind of the inverse of theDunning Krueger effect. With the DunningKrueger, you're so ignorant about thedomain that you're in that you kind ofjust naively adopt some beliefs thatoverestimate yourself in that domain.You don't understand what goes into it.So it seems simple to you. So you justassume you're going to be good at it.Whereas the imposttor syndrome is kindof the reverse where you are sothoroughly educated in your domain andyou are so unbelievably aware of all ofthe variables and factors and differentluck and chance that goes into a thingthat you can't help but look at it andsay how did this happen? Like why me?Right? You know, we talked aboutbuilding confidence through accumulatingevidence and that evidence isaccumulated by breaking

00:15:03things down intosmall task and then slowly building up.The process that you go through when youdo that is this process of like startingout like, okay, I only know a little, soI'm going to get a little bit better andthen I'm going to get a little bitbetter. It's kind of like compoundinterest, right? like you just slowlyover the course of years you accumulateall this knowledge and understanding andcompetence and our brains are calibratedin such a way that that learning curvekind of happens at like a steady rateover a period of time. I think whathappens with imposttor syndrome is whenthe results start to vastly outstrip theeffort. Like I went through this whensubtle art not giving a [ __ ] took off. Iwent through a period of pretty intenseimposture syndrome because it's like Iwas just I mean you were there. I wasjust a [ __ ] dude with a blog and[laughter]like posting a bunch of [ __ ] on Facebookand next thing I know I'm like numberone in 12 different countries. I'm beinginvited to speak in front of thousandsof people. I'm being invited to likeFortune 500 companies to speak toexecutive teams and I'm like, "What am Idoing here? This is an accident."[laughter]>> You're like 32, 33.>> Yeah, I was 32 years old. Yeah. And itagain it's another miscalibration rightof like I assumed my my improvement and

00:16:18my progress in terms of competence waslike pretty steady over a number ofyears and the real world results that Ireceived reflected that steadyinconsistent improvement and then all ofa sudden you get this like 10x or 100xjump and it's like well I didn't get 100times better but my results just got 100times better so something's wrong eitherI got lucky or somebody made a mistakearound here. And I think in essence thatis what imposture syndrome is. It's likeit's this feeling of like okay I'm goodbut I'm not that good. I'm I'm suremyAngelou like was like why am I gettinginvited to the president's inauguration?Why am I being like handed all theseawards? It's a mismatch I think inproportion. Yeah. Yeah. The resultsoutstrip your perceived competencethere. That that makes sense to me. Youknow what I mean? Because like Yeah.your results like they like you saidyour results 100x but your abilitieswere like you were still the same guy.Right.>> Right. Yeah. What happened in my caseand I think this is kind of maybe how Igot over imposter syndrome is Ieventually just recognized that theindustry or the area that I'm in thatthat curve is extremely exponential.When you're kind of far down on thecurve a

00:17:335% improvement results in a 5%increased result. But like once you getup towards the top of the curve, onceyou go from like 98th percentile to 99thpercentile, that's not a 1% jump. That'slike a 500% jump. And then when you gofrom 99th percentile to 99.5 percentile,that's another 500% jump. Right? Soironically, I think it is just having anaccurate understanding of the domainthat I'm in reoriented me appropriatelyto be like, "Oh, okay. No, this actuallymakes sense. I'm not this crazy imposterwho like randomly>> it's the nature of the industry point.Yeah. You don't necessarily have toexperience these huge results toexperience imposter syndrome either. Alot of times people even see it as asign of progress because you probablyare pushing yourself just a little biteven too and you're in a new situationwhere you're like oo I don't know if Ibelong here. That's maybe a good sign.Some people see it as a good sign. Iwould see it as a good sign too. If youif you think you're an imposttor in asituation it's probably a good sign thatyou're at least paying attention, right?you're paying attention to what's goingon around you. You're like, I'm pushingmyself maybe into a new territory orsomething like that. And maybe it'sprobably good to have a little bit ofthat. It's definitely better thanDunning Krueger.>> Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I've been inrooms with like a lot of extremelysuccessful people

00:18:48and my experiencegenerally is that most of them feel thisway. It is interesting that at the topof the pyramid, most of the people arelike, "How did I get up here? I'm just aguy with a blog or I I just went wherethey told me to. Whereas when you go tothe bottom of the pyramid, you run intoDunning Krueger. You run into people wholike think they're the next big thing.John Steinbeck had this amazing quote uhabout Americans. He said, "The problemwith America is that everyone who's poorthinks that they were just an unluckymillionaire." Anecdotally, like I'veseen this quite a bit. When I lived inNew York City, I had a neighbor who wasone of the top researchers at McKenzie.McKenzie, I mean, you know, they workwith all of the biggest companies andcorporations in the world. And Iremember I had dinner with him once andhe told like the most fascinating thing.He said that he was actually when he wasthere, he was in charge of like one ofthe larger research projects um acrossall their client companies of reallytrying to identify top performers veryearly on. How can you correctly identifymaybe a future CEO or a future seuiteexecutive um or a future like brilliantresearcherstraight out of college? And so they ranlike

00:20:04tons of studies and experiments andtracked people for I think like a decadeacross lots of different companies. Andhe said that the conclusion that cameback is that there are two ingredientsthat generally have to go together. allof the superstars had both of theseingredients at the same time. And hesaid the first one was they wereobsessive overachievers andperfectionist. The second trait was theychronically underestimated themselves.He described it to me as he said like uhoverachievers with cripplinginsecurities.>> Yeah. Yeah. Just a neurotic ball ofmess. Basically,>> it's basically people who are likeexcellent at what they they likeobsessively pursue excellence and theyalways think everything they do sucks.He's like, "They're miserable people,but like they will make a great CEO oneday." [laughter] Corporate America, thelittle research they have done onimposttor syndrome, they do find that umit's not that these imposters actuallyunderperform, they just expect tounderperform. And generally speaking,>> they're no different than anybody elseon any measure that they give, allright, or that they've they've beentested on. The real attribute is is thatthe bad outcomes, they attribute thoseto their ability. And then the goodoutcomes they usually attribute to luckor circumstance. There's

00:21:19a couple ofgood things too. They cheat less.>> Imposters cheat less. Yeah. People whofeel like their imposters cheat lessbecause they're like they're trying toprove themselves all the time, right?There's two different types of impostersyndrome. You have the true imposterswho really just they really do thinkthat. It's probably these people atMcKenzie. They really think they areimposters. They really do have anegative self-evaluation. And then theyhave what they call these strategicimposters, which I kind of like this.>> Oh, they like downplay the>> They downplay it because it's more of asocial save and face type of thing. LikeThey actually are accurate in theirassessments, but they just downplay askind of a socially acceptable humility.Yeah.>> Showing how the showing how humble I am.Right.>> You you mentioned something a fewminutes ago that I I want to doubleclick on because I do think it'simportant. I don't want to let it justpass because it is actually reallyimportant. You pointed out you said likeanytime you are put in a situation thatmaybe stretches you beyond your currentlevel of competence, it is natural andexpected that you should feel a littlebit imposterish. Right? And you you seethis a lot, you know, people who getmaybe a big raise or a big promotion orstarting a new career or a new companyor whatever. I've seen this with friendswith like when they become parents forthe first time, they're like, I don'tknow what the [ __ ] I'm doing. Like whywhy is anybody trusting me to like takecare of this thing? It's a very naturalresponse. There's that old quadrantthing, right, where you

00:22:34start atunconscious incompetence, then you go toconscious incompetence, then consciousconscious competence, then unconsciouscompetence. you are um being thrust backinto the quadrant of consciousincompetence. You you are suddenly veryaware of all the things you don'tunderstand and you all the skills youhave not yet adopted.>> But that discomfort and that feeling iswhat forces you to>> adopt those skills.>> That's a healthy place to be. That'swhere growth happens.>> Yeah. The closest thing we have to likea mechanism for it, it's called thespotlight effect, right? We overestimatehow much we think people are payingattention to us, right? And they've donevarious different studies on this.Basically, that's kind of the underlyingme mechanism is that we overestimate,oh, everybody's looking at me. I I gotthis new job, you know, I got thispromotion, now everybody's looking at mewhen it's like everybody's kind of like,"Oh, yeah, he's there. Cool. Moving on."People tend to overestimate this one.There's this kind of like cool studythey did where uh it was back in the2000s where they had people put on aBarry Manalo uh shirt, which for collegekids back then, it was like that wasembarrassing, right?>> Let's go Barry Manalo.>> That was embarrassing for them. And theypredicted about half of the people umwho put this on thought, "Oh yeah,everybody's looking at me and making funof me." It was only about a quarter ofthe people, not not half. So it's just asimple example of how we overestimate.You probably remember this. I did avideo a few years ago about the

00:23:49spotlight effect. I went down the Veniceboardwalk in a chicken suit. I deliveredthe entire video in the chicken suit.Nobody stopped me. Nobody said anything.Nobody cared. The whole video is abouthow like nobody [ __ ] cares. Nobody'snobody's paying attention. Everybody'sgoing to forget the spotlight effectthing is important because again a lotof our understanding of what is reality,right? What is evidence is sociallybased, you know? So if we assumeeverybody's looking at us and expectingcertain things from us falsely, then wecan draw the wrong conclusions about ourown competence. I've seen a handful ofpeople in our industry who have likevery publicly said that impostersyndrome is like not a thing and youshould never feel it. And I just thinkthat's like the most [ __ ] up>> unrealistic.>> That's a really good point.>> Unrealistic. Because if you are the typeof person who never feels impostersyndrome, never feels like you need tolearn more and grow to earn the spotthat you're in. There's another name forthat, and that is our nextmiscalibration, which is narcissism.This is the internet's favorite petsubject at the moment. I think the firstthing to understand about narcissism isthat it's a little bit more nuanced thanthe lay person probably assumes. I thinkthese days narcissism is often justinterchanged with the word selfishness,right? You

00:25:04know, people are like, "Thatperson is selfish. They must be anarcissist." Narcissistic traits areactually there's a lot more subtletygoing on than just being a dick andoverestimating yourself. The usefulexample here, arguably one of thegreatest chess players to ever live, wasuh a prodigy from America named BobbyFischer. What I hear said a lot is thatKasparov had the best career. BobbyFischer at the highest peak. In 1972, hebecame the world champion. He defeatedthe uh Soviet Union's champion, BorisSpaskey. He was very big because it washeight of the Cold War and everything.But Bobby Fischer was like a veryenigmatic person. As soon as he won theworld championship, he completelydisappeared. Like just went off grid.And then he refused to play again. Andthen when people and then when the chesschess federation like really pushed himto defend his title, he kept nitpickingproblems with the game formats with uhthe way the tournament was going to behosted, the scoring systems. There wasalways some technical technicality thathe could point to for why it was unfairthat he would have to play under thoseconditions. And so he ended up neverplaying again. He ended up vacating hisworld championship and he actuallyretired from chess completely. Andwhat's interesting is that once he lostthat kind of domain expertise

00:26:20of chess,the rest of his life unraveled. Like hehad been a child prodigy. He was one ofthose kids like I mean he was playingchess professionally since he was like[ __ ] 12 years old. So he was not abalanced person. And once chess wasremoved from his life, he didn't reallyhave anything else to fall back on interms of self-efficacy or a well-roundedidentity. Uh and so he he spiraled. Hehe became a little bit of a crackpotconspiracy theorist. He would go onradio stations in random countries anduh say crazy things. He got arrested inJapan. He had his passport revoked.Basically, Iceland eventually likeallowed him to live there because that'swhere he won his world championship. Andhe died there at 64 completely alone. nofriends, no family, kind of forgotten bythe world. You and I discussed thisbefore the episode. We settled on him asan example here because there's plentyof selfish [ __ ] that we could havepicked here, right? But I think BobbyFischer is an interesting example inthatnarcissism, it's not about theselfishness and it's not necessarilyeven about overestimating yourselfbecause Bobby Fischer was legitimatelythe best

00:27:35in the world at what he did.But he was narcissistic because he couldnot tolerate ego threats. He could nottolerate criticism. He could nottolerate negative feedback or negativejudgment. And so if the Dunning Kruegeris just somebody who's very ignorant andassumes they're much better than theyactually are, an imposttor syndrome issomebody who is so aware of all thefactors that went into their successthat they they underestimate themselvesor maybe feel a little bit lessconfident than their competence uhreflects. Narcissism is just a personwho is constitutionally incapable ofaccepting the negative feedback intothat calibration system. And so the onlyevidence they receive is the positive.And so it just it pumps them upendlessly in kind of a delusionalself-confidence that is actuallyincredibly fragile. It can be derailedin a single moment. It must be defendedat all times and it's actually makes fora very miserable person in a in a personwho's very miserable to be around. Ithink it's very important to to stay onnarcissism for a bit here. Not justbecause of the miscalibration thing andthat's what this chapter is about, but

00:28:50more practically just because so manypeople mistake confidence for narcissismand vice versa. I've done a many seriesof videos on Instagram about thedifference between confidence andnarcissism. And it's interesting becauseI know when you look at dating researcharound narcissism, you see a prettyconsistent effect where narcissisticpeople are genuinely mistaken for beingconfident and they are judged as beingmuch more attractive in the immediateterm, but then after the person gets toknow them after a couple dates, theybecome perceived as extremelyunattractive because the fragility showsup. Right? So the narcissist has a lotof self-efficacy. They like have a lotof belief in themselves, but that beliefis very tenuous. It's very reliant onexternal validation and people buyinginto that frame of reality. And so ifanything happens in the narcissist'senvironment that does not support theirdelusional self-belief, the narcissistlashes out, attacks the person,undermines the person, refuses to hearcertain things, refuses to acceptfeedback, and ultimately finds ways tokind of sabotage the situation. This isalso why I tell people that the fastestway to distinguish between a

00:30:06narcissistic person and a confidentperson is to simply give them criticalfeedback. Just tell them no. just say,"No, I actually think that's a badidea." A narcissist will lash out.They'll get very defensive. They'll getvery angry. They'll attack you. They'lltell you that you're an idiot, that youridea is stupid. A confident person willactually, you know, even if they're alittle bit hurt,they'll want to hear more. They'll say,"Oh, interesting. Tell me more aboutthat. Why why do you think that?" Evenif they don't agree with you, they willrespect your opinion. But a narcissist,because their self-efficacy is sotenuous, they can't stand for you tohave a different opinion. Your opinionmust be like either rejected or changed.It's because they've staked all of thaton on that external validation, right?Like their whole self-regard is stakedon that. So any threat to that is verythat's very threatening. It's verydangerous for them because if theyaccept that then what do they have left?there is nothing left. It's kind of theopposite of the selfmastery that thatBanduro talked about, right? It's it'snot based in any real world experience.It's just based on that external drip ofexternal validation that they have. Ithink what is also distinct aboutnarcissism versus

00:31:21a Dunning Krueger orimposter syndrome is it is extremelysocially validated, right? like like aDunning Krueger person, they mightoverestimate their own abilities, butit's not because they think they they'rea special superior person. They're justclueless, right? They're just they thinkthey're good at a thing that they're notgood at. Whereas a narcissist, they needto believe that they are extremely goodat a thing because there's also thisnarrative piece of I'm better than theseother people. I'm special. I deservespecial treatment. And so they need tofeel superior to others. And that isalso part of the miscalibration, right?Because it's like if every socialinteraction you go into, you have tofeel superior or better than others,thenby default, you're never going to getaccurate feedback from the world aboutwhere you actually stand. And so you'renever going to build real confidence.Like an actual confident person would beable to walk into a room be like, "Well,I hope I'm better than these otherpeople. I hope I'm good at this thing. Ithink I'm good at this thing, but if Ilose, that's fine. I'm just going tolearn from it. I'm going to improve. Anarcissist is going to look at it andthey're just they're not going to beable to tolerate the thought

00:32:36of beinginferior.>> But that's just one type of narcissism,right?>> Yes.>> And that's the most common one we thinkof when we when when people use the termnarcissist in just the general sense,that's what they usually mean.>> So, there's two types of narcissism.There's the grandiose narcissist, whichis the classical narcissist. thenarcissist who believes I'm better thaneverybody else, so give me specialtreatment. But then there's also thevulnerable narcissist who also has adelusional belief that they are somehowworse off than everybody else, that theyare uniquely victimized, that there'ssomething especially unlucky about theirexistence and therefore they deservespecial treatment and attention.>> Right. Right. So the commonality is Ideserve something special. I deservesomething. I'm entitled to something.>> Exactly. It's the entitlement. Both arebased on a completely inaccurateuh measurement of self versus others.>> All of it is externally based. All ofit's the validation comes from the theoutside.>> Yes. And so the grandiose narcissist haskind of this endless craving for otherpeople to validate how great they are.Whereas a vulnerable narcissist has thisinexhaustible craving for other peopleto validate how [ __ ] they are, howunlucky and unfortunate they are, howvictimized they are. So you get thisreally [ __ ] up situation withvulnerable

00:33:51narcissists where they willlike actually put themselves inpositions to be taken advantage of andto be victimized because that feedstheir own narrative of how special andhow much attention they deserve.>> Just goes, you know, it's so wild. Wejust we have to have a consistent storyno matter how [ __ ] it is, right?>> Yes.>> That's [laughter]I Yeah. I don't know.>> We would rather be miserable thanuncertain.>> Yeah. Do you find yourself around aspending a lot of time aroundnarcissists these days? I know you'vetalked before that, you know, you'vethere definitely were a lot ofnarcissists in your lives and I'll admitI've had some narcissism at different.We're all a little bit narcissist.>> I I I went through a phase where I thinkI was a bit narcissistic. Today I'vedeveloped like a pretty strong allergyto narcissistic people. like I I feellike I spot them pretty quickly and I Ihave zero hesitation of like by but youknow coming back tokind of my story my situation you know Imentioned earlier that I never felt likeI developed that domain confidence whenI was young you know the video gamething obviously didn't really pan outthe music thing it gave me a little bitof confidence for a little while butthen like as soon as I

00:35:07tried to to takeit professionally and went to musicschool like I actually felt incrediblyinadequate and then I ended up quittingwhich also didn't feel very good. Iactually think one of the reasons I gotinto self-help so much and I think thisis probably true about a lot of peopleis I did feel so just broadly insecureacross all of my life. I felt insecurein school. I felt insecure socially. Ifelt insecure romantically. I mentionedearlier I went through this phase whereI did try all this self-help stuff. So,I did try all the affirmations and I didtry like the body, you know, the bodylanguage [ __ ] and and all that. And Igot into the dating coaching stuff. AndI look back at that period and I waslike pretty narcissistic. Like I wasvery self-absorbed. It was all positivethinking all the time. I was very kindof like had this grandiosity,thought irrationally highly of myself,and it just made me an [ __ ] to a lotof people. And I think two thingshappened concurrently in my 20s. One isis that I discovered that I actually didhave quite a bit of talent and skill forcommunicating with people, relating topeople and then also for writing. And Idid develop a lot of domain confidencein those two areas. And thensimultaneously

00:36:22I realized that you knowI ended up hurting a lot of people thatI cared about just from like being sucha selfish prick. And it it's one ofthose classic cases of like, okay, youknow, eventually all all of your failedrelationships, the only thing they havein common is you, right? So, it's like,>> you built some evidence.>> Yes. Yes, I definitely built someevidence. [laughter][gasps] I'm like, okay, I've like reallypissed off half a dozen people I careabout in the exact same way. I think I'mthe problem. Kind of the the confluenceof those two things. One was likeactually building some genuineconfidence and and competence in someareas of my life. And then secondly,realizing that I was kind ofovercompensating through somenarcissistic tendencies and I needed tolike chill out a little bit on myself.By the time I got to my late 20s, my30s, I was a little bit well adjustedand had kind of a genuine goodself-esteem and self-efficacy, but it itwas a messy process to get there. It's avery messy process.>> I don't know. the older I get and themorethe more I see narcissists around or Isee narcissistic behavior that I I justfeel sorry for them now. And that'llruffle some feathers cuz I get it. Likethey do hurt a lot of people. Like I getthat and I've went through periods toowhere I like probably been a

00:37:37little morenarcissistic than I needed to be. But Iwhen it's taken too far, I get it. Ithurts people. But it's like there issome sort of they weren't taught how howto build that evidence.>> It's a coping mechanism. They're hurtpeople hurting people. Right. There'sthat old saying, hurt people hurtpeople. Right. Right. I'm not saying todismiss their behavior. I'm not sayingit excuses it. It explains it to somedegree.>> And so, I don't know. The older I get,the more I'm just like, man, I feelsorry for these people, you know? It'skind of sad.>> It's a dead end. Yeah, it is. It is adead end. I don't know. Maybe it isbecause I used to kind of be like that,but I I just try to stay away as much aspossible.>> Yeah. And I still think that's the rightthe right move, but you can still feelsorry for somebody for it.>> Why do you think it narcissism is havingsuch a big moment right now? I mean,it's like I I will say this from ourcontent. There's like an insatiabledemand at the moment for narcissismcontent, and I find it interestingbecause this has not been true up untilmaybe like 3 or 4 years ago.>> I think this is one reason. I don't knowif that's the reason or a big reason.I do think a lot of it is people don'twant to take some responsibility fortheir own behavior, too. And it's alittle bit of a maybe not projection,but it's just a way for them to deflectsome responsibility around things. Iagain, I get it. And I know these peoplecan be hurtful and do a lot of harm.That's that's true. But I I

00:38:52also thinkit's just a way for people to excusetheir own they didn't takeresponsibility in that relationshipnecessarily. People just have differentwants and needs sometimes and and somepeople interpret that as selfishness andthen that gets taken to like you saidthat gets taken to narcissism. Soinstead of saying this person wantedsomething different than I wanted andthey held a boundary. Sometimes that'sthe thing too. It's like when peoplehold boundaries,other people see that as selfishness andthey can't handle that. Oh, this personis a narcissist because they told mewhat they wanted and they didn't wantthe same thing I wanted. I think there'ssome of that. I don't know if that's thefull story. I think there's a lot ofthat going on. It's just easier to callsomebody a narcissist rather than sayingthis. I was hurt by this and it'snobody's fault>> then to have to deal with like the ickymessyfeelings of you know dealing with otherpeople>> it's a complication and dealing withother people who have different wantsthan I do. I don't know what how doesthat land for you?>> I have a very cynical theory around thisextremely cynical theory. I don't knowif I believe this but it is somethingthat has occurred to me especially givenlike how popular this content isspecifically aroundsocial media like short form content. Sowhen you look at research around socialmedia, social media power users tend tobe pretty high in narcissistic traits.So

00:40:07narcissists by and large are onsocial media the most. They tend toengage the most on social media. Theytend to post the most on social media.And narcissistsdon't think they're narcissists.>> Yeah.>> They think everybody else is anarcissist.>> Oh, okay. And so what I think is thatyou have these social platforms wheretheir power users are pretty high innarcissistic traits. And because they'rehigh in narcissistic traits, theyprobably struggle in a lot of theirrelationships and their lives. Andbecause they they're high innarcissistic traits, they don't takeresponsibility for those struggles andthey blame everybody else. And so whenthey see content about narcissism,they're like, "That's why. That's whyI'm surrounded by narcissists." And sothey like and they share and then I justmake another video. M>> that is pretty cynical, [laughter]>> but it but it makes a lot of sense.>> And we make money, Drew.>> That's true. Yeah, [laughter] I use thatterm very carefully anymore. I don't goaround people narcissist.>> It's so overused. It's so overused rightnow.>> Especially like if you're talking aboutnarcissistic personality disorder,that's a whole different ball game.Whole different ball game. If you'rejust calling somebody a run-of-the-millnarcissist, even though too, I don'teven use that. I'll call people an[ __ ] you know, a lot. I like I likethat word way more than being anarcissist because sometimes people arejust an [ __ ] you know,>> and it comes back

00:41:22to that subtlety,right? Like selfishness is notnecessarily narcissism. Like plenty ofnon-narcissists behave selfishly attimes, having a big ego, beingoverconfident, right? Like lots ofpeople who are not narcissists areoverconfident at times or have a big egoat times. Narcissism very specifically,it is that combination of theentitlement plus inability to acceptfeedback. It's like those two thingswrapped together.>> If you're not good at establishing yourown boundaries, then other people whoestablish boundaries are threatening toyou and that can look like narcissism tosome people. So again, it's just like, Iwanted this person to do something, theysaid no. They're they're a selfishnarcissistic [ __ ] I think that comesup more than people realize. So just toto summarize, you know, leading intothis chapter, we talked about howconfidence is built by accumulatingevidence. That evidence is dependent onit being realistic. It's based inreality. This chapter we talked abouthow if you can't calibrate what isrealistic or what is reality, right?Like if you have some sort of delusionalperception around yourself or the worldor if you're surrounded by people whoenable a delusional perception likeFlorence Jenkins,

00:42:37then you will not getan accurate level of confidence to yourcompetence. I do think it is worthstating plainly that the goal in life ingeneral is not necessarily to beconfident all the time, right? Like youshouldn't be confident about thingsyou're bad at. That would harm you. Thatwould be bad. [laughter]Whereas you should be confident aboutthings you're very good at. So the thegoal with confidence isn't to accumulateas much confidence as possible. The goalwith confidence is to have an accurateperception of your own competence inyour own abilities in each situation.And so if you want to feel confident inmore situations, then you should aim tobe more competent in more situations. Soin this chapter, we covered a fewdifferent ways that we getmiscalibrated. There's Dunning Krueger,which is we're just so clueless that weassume we know way more than we do,which ironically then prevents us fromlearning because we feel like we don'tneed to learn anything. We talked aboutimposture syndrome, which is somebodywho is put into a new situation. Maybethe the results of their efforts haveoutstripped their perception of theirown confidence and so they they feellike they don't deserve it or they'renot ready for it. But I think you and Iboth agree that this is generally it'seither a a high quality problem or bit's just you know part of the paymentof growth.

00:43:52You know it just it's anatural side effect of putting yourselfin new situations and expanding youryour own abilities. And then of coursewe talked about narcissism which is lessabout the confidence in general. It'smore about the inability to acceptfeedback and the social narrative aroundentitlement special treatment. You havegrandiose narcissists who have justdelusional levels of self-belief,self-efficacy coming out of their ears.They probably believe they're amazing atthings that they're actually terribleat, much like Florence Jenkins. Whereas,you have vulnerable narcissists whochronically underestimate themselvesbecause that gets them special treatmentand that gets them validation fromothers and so they refuse to acceptfeedback from the world to maintain thatself-perception. It's funny because atthe at the top of the episode, you kindof joked. You're like, "I've neverreally worried about confidence. I justdo things [laughter]and sure enough, here we are like threehours in and it turns out, yeah, youprobably shouldn't be worrying so muchabout how much confidence you havebecause confidence is downstream ofcompetence." So, the goal of confidenceisn't to accumulate massive amounts ofit. The goal of confidence is toaccurately reflect the competence youfeel in the world. And when thatconfidence

00:45:07does not accurately reflectyour competence, you suffer. You eitheroverestimate yourself and set yourselfup for massive failures andembarrassment or you chronicallyunderestimate yourself and put yourselfin a situation where you never realizeyour potential. You never achieve thethings that you could achieve. uh andyou never live up to maybe some of thegoals and dreams you have. This raises areally interesting question because ifconfidence is domain specific, if it'sreally just about building evidenceabout one skill or one situation, how isit that some people seem confident nomatter what situation they walk into?Some people just seem to be pretty okaytrying a new thing and understandingthat like, hey, I I guess I'll just getgood at this. whereas some people likereally freak out and become veryneurotic and and anxious around any sortof newness or uncertainty. And so upuntil this point we've talked about howgeneralized confidence is the way likeNorman Vincent Peele espoused isn'treally a thing that the route to generalconfidence is selecting specific domainsand accumulating evidence of competencein that domain. It turns out you canbuild generalized confidence, but thatapproach to building generalizedconfidence is a bit counterintuitive.

00:46:23And as we'll see in the next chapter,experts for a long time thought theyknew how to build generalizedconfidence. They kind of bought into thePEL fallacy for a while. And if you wereborn in the last 50 years,it probably [ __ ] you up a little bitas a kid.Hey everybody, thank you for watching.This chapter is part of a much largerepisode. You can get that entire episoderight now on Spotify. Check it outthere. And if you want to consume itchapter by chapter here on YouTube, werelease them every few days. And if youwant to get a full PDF guide with all ofour citations, resources, and fullsummary of the entire episode, you cango to solvepodcast.com/confidence

00:47:06and get it there. Check it out. I'll seeyou again soon.