What Do I Need To Stop Believing About Myself?

My story is showing up not because the fear went away but because I stopped letting it make my decisions. That's what managing a false belief looks like.

I attend 15 to 25 conferences a year. I have conversations with thousands of leaders, some casual and some amazingly deep. I’ve been doing this long enough that it should feel routine. And yet I am still terrified walking into every single one.

A while back I started doing short one-question street interviews. The format is simple: I walk up to a stranger and say something like, “I’m doing a series of one-question interviews. Can I interview you?”

That’s it.

Easy ask.

Low stakes.

Except it isn’t. Not for me.

Every time. Every day. That first approach is almost paralyzing. In truth, there have been days I didn’t do it at all because fear won. I stood there with every intention of walking up to someone and just ... didn’t.

Here is the crazy, embarrassing part: 95% of the time, people say yes. They enjoy it. The conversations are good. Over four days at two conferences recently, I did nearly 50 of them. And that 5% of the time when they refuse, it has never once been unpleasant.

NOT ONCE

And yet when I walk into the next conference, it will feel exactly the same as the first one.

The belief running underneath all of it goes something like this:

I’m not good enough.

I don’t look right.

I probably sound dumb.

This is not very professional.

I have no real right to be walking up to strangers with a video camera and a microphone.

Knowing that a belief is false doesn’t make it quieter. Fifty successful interviews don’t make it quieter. Years of evidence directly contradicting it haven’t made it quieter.

The Question

What do I need to stop believing about myself?

It seems simple enough on paper.

Just stop believing those things.

Identify them, challenge them, release them. If only it were that easy.

Here is the problem I have — and research suggests I am not alone — I have simply been unable to banish these beliefs. They are too embedded. Too old. They have been living too long in my head. They arrived when I was very young, and they never left.

So here is what I think is more realistic for most of us.

First, accept that it will always be there. Second, stop letting it make your decisions. Because those are two very different things — and only one of them is actually within reach.

Next time you see me doing another video, having another conversation, no matter how comfortable I look — please know that the fear is still fully present. The belief that I have no business being there is still running. And I walk up anyway because I’ve made a prior decision that the belief doesn’t get a vote on what I do next.

That’s not confidence. Not in the way people usually mean it. It’s something more like stubbornness, or commitment, or just enough self-awareness to know that the voice isn’t always telling the truth — even when it sounds completely certain.

I Am Jealous

I’ll be honest about one more thing.

I’m am jealous of people who seem to have actually stopped believing this stuff. Who walk into rooms without the internal negotiation I go through every single time. Maybe they’ve done the work and genuinely rewired something. Maybe they’ve just learned to perform so well enough that they’ve stopped noticing the difference.

I don’t know. Either way, that isn’t my story, and I’ve stopped pretending it will be.

My story is 50 interviews and a paralyzing first approach at every conference. My story is knowing the belief is false and feeling it anyway. My story is showing up not because the fear went away, but because I stopped letting it make my decisions.

That’s what managing a false belief actually looks like — not eliminating it, living past it.

But here’s what’s been nagging at me since I started writing this. We’ve spent this whole article on the beliefs that make us feel too small. What if that’s not actually the most dangerous problem in leadership? What if, for most leaders, maybe even you, the false belief runs in exactly the opposite direction?

That’s part two.