Cliff Sims

And I found this to be a simultaneously terrifying and liberating realization because Steve Jobs was right when he said that all of these things in life that you call life were made up by people that are no smarter than you.

And so it's terrifying because you're like, holy crap, I thought there were rooms where people knew what they were doing, knew how to tackle these big challenges.

But it's also liberating because it's like, well, if they can figure it out, then maybe I can figure it out too.

And so that's how you can combat this imposter syndrome.

So the first day I walked into the West Wing, it was like, who am I to be sitting in this office?

Who am I to be standing in the Oval Office and tell the President of the United States anything about anything?

And I think that's something we all struggle with in different ways.

That ended imposter syndrome for me.

Not because I'm smart, not because I'm any better than anybody else, but because I've seen the people that I thought had it all figured out and realized that they didn't, that just like me, they wake up every day and are trying to figure it out too.

What was...

No, but I would say there's a delineation between excellence and competence and

and just not knowing the answer in that moment and needing to work through some things and incompetence.

I found myself around a lot of excellence and competence, people that have risen, have a proven track record over their careers of doing remarkable things, thrust into situations where they're trying to figure a problem set out that they've never had to face before.

Let's use Jared Kushner as an example.

Jared Kushner had never negotiated Middle East peace on behalf of the President of the United States before.

He negotiated real estate deals.

Some of them went well, some of them didn't go as well.

Negotiated all kinds of different things business-wise.

Some of them went well, some of them didn't go well.

He had a baseline skillset that he had applied to business and been successful in that.