Trust yourself: Experts don't know what they're doing (part 1)

I recently talked to someone who was terrified of his upcoming job interview.

This was a very senior software engineer who built features used by millions of people around the world.

Let’s call him John (not his real name).

He helped his company earn multiple millions of dollars.

At the same time, he was worried about whether he could handle the job interview process because he's been at his current job for several years.

As he said that, I realized that this was the third conversation I had that week about the same topic.

I wondered: do all high performers doubt themselves so much?

Or maybe the question is - do they trust themselves so little?

Trust yourself

A long time ago, I was a semi-professional musician, dreaming of playing stadium-level concerts.

I had plenty of opportunities to experience self-doubt, conveniently disguised as stage fright.

Even Adele, one of the world's best-selling music artists, has crippling stage fright before each concert.

The trick to beat stage fright is to simply start performing. As soon as musicians start playing their instruments, all the anxiety melts away.

That's why you need to trust yourself more.

Don't let your fear stop you from taking action.

Simply start interviewing for jobs (or whatever other project you're working on) and improve as you go along.

Even experts don't know what they're doing

As strange as it may seem, even the experts don't know what they're doing most of the time.

They're simply making more educated guesses than the rest of us.

That's why, in the next couple of weeks, I will share with you the stories that all prove the same thing: you don't need "expertise."

You need to care deeply enough about a problem you're trying to solve.

A motivated person will produce better work than any expert who lost that motivation.

A great example of that is the story of Samuel Pierpont Langley.

The expert who didn't invent the airplane

I first heard about Samuel Pierpont Langley from one of Simon Sinek's TED talks.

In the early 20th century, there was a race to invent the first airplane, and Langely was a top contender.

He was rich, famous, well-connected, well-educated, and highly qualified for the task.

He was a scientist, an inventor, and an astronomer who worked at Harvard. He was also a secretary of the Smithsonian (equivalent of a CEO).

To build the first airplane, he received around $2.5 million (in 2024 dollars) from the U.S. government and other investors.

Talk about a perfect resume, huh?

The amateurs who changed the world

We all know what happened next - the Wright Brothers invented the first airplane.

But the most interesting part of that story is that they had no outside investors.

They didn't even have college degrees.

Yet, they beat the world-class scientists from prestigious universities and thus changed the world forever.

Everything seemed against the Wright Brothers and in favor of Samuel Langley.

But there was one thing that the Wright Brothers had, and Langley did not - and it's the one thing money cannot buy:

Belief.

Wilbur Wright said it himself in his letters to Octave Chanute:

"For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life."

The strong belief that something is possible and the importance of the problem (human flight) helped fuel the Wright Brothers’ obsession.

At the end of the day, it all starts with belief.

You must believe you can do something if you want to have any chance of success - and that simply means trusting yourself.

Trust that you can do it. Maybe not at first, but you can solve problems as they show up, and eventually, you'll reach your destination.

Fun fact: the photographer who captured the first flight was John T. Daniels. It was the first photo he ever took.

Yes, the most iconic moment in aviation history?was captured by?someone who had never even seen a camera until that moment.

Stay tuned for part 2

Next week, we'll talk about Eric Barone, who single-handedly beat some of the world's largest corporations in video game sales.