Meryl Streep has been nominated for an Academy Award 21 times.
Twenty-one.
She has won three of them. She recently starred in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which earned more than half a billion dollars in its first three weeks.
And in a 2002 interview, she said this:
“You think, ‘Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?’”
Read that again.
The woman with more Oscar nominations than anyone who has ever lived said, out loud, that she doesn’t know how to act.
She’s not the only one.
Albert Einstein wrote that the esteem his work received made him feel like “an involuntary swindler.” Maya Angelou, after writing eleven books and receiving over fifty honorary degrees, said she kept waiting to be “found out.” Tom Hanks, who won back-to-back Oscars for Best Actor, asked: “When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud?”
So here’s what I keep coming back to.
These are not people who lacked evidence that they were good at what they did. The evidence was undeniable. And yet.
Why didn’t it help?
The accomplishments don’t touch it
Most of us carry a quiet assumption underneath: if I just achieve enough, get recognized enough, the doubt will eventually stop.
Meryl Streep has 21 Oscar nominations.
The doubt didn’t stop.
We worked with a woman named Frumi Barr who spent years too scared to stand in front of an audience of 30 people. She had ideas worth sharing. A book she wanted to promote. A career that needed her voice.
“I was terrified of speaking in public,” she told us. “I couldn’t think straight. My mind just froze.”
But Frumi wasn’t doubting herself because she had nothing to offer. She doubted herself because of what she believed about whether what she had to offer was worth anything.
That’s a very different problem.
Where the doubt is actually coming from
When I look underneath the doubt (whether I’m working with a client or reading about Meryl Streep) I find the same thing almost every time.
A belief.
Something like: I’m not good enough. Or: What I have to say isn’t important.
These beliefs weren’t formed in adulthood. They were formed long before, from how your parents treated you when you were small.
A parent who was never quite satisfied. Who compared you to a sibling. Who was busy or absent or critical in ways they probably weren’t even aware of. The child doesn’t think: I am forming a belief right now. They absorb what happened and land on a conclusion.
I’m not good enough.
And that conclusion follows them everywhere. All the way to their 21st Oscar nomination.
Because achievement is external. The belief is internal. It sits underneath everything and filters every new success through the same lens: Yes, but they don’t really know. They’ll figure it out eventually.
No amount of winning touches it. The belief isn’t responding to the evidence. It’s older than the evidence.
Why the usual advice doesn’t work
I understand why people try affirmations. If the belief says you’re not good enough, it makes intuitive sense to say the opposite and wait for something to shift.
But you can’t argue your way out of a belief.
The belief feels true. Often more true than any evidence to the contrary. You can tell yourself you belong all morning and still feel, underneath everything, like a fraud. The affirmation sits on top. The belief stays where it was.
“Fake it until you make it” has the same problem. So does “just act more confident.” These approaches try to build something positive on top of something negative. Which creates a shaky foundation.
What I want for the people I work with is ground that is genuinely solid. Not covered over. Solid.
What changes when the belief is eliminated
When we found the beliefs underneath Frumi’s fear and eliminated them, she gave a three-hour class at Cal State Long Beach without a trace of fear. She later published two books. Her second, A CEO’s Secret Weapon, has a foreword written by Simon Sinek.
Here’s how she described it:
“Originally I had felt somewhat skeptical until I got in front of a room filled with people and realized that I was no longer in a state of panic. I really appreciate The Lefkoe Method because the fear is gone.”
Finding the beliefs that were in the way and removing them was what made the difference. The beliefs that had been generating the doubt were gone. She wasn’t managing the fear anymore. She simply no longer had it.
That’s what becomes possible when the belief is eliminated.
You can eliminate it too
Beliefs like I’m not good enough, I don’t belong, and what I have to offer isn’t worth anything can be eliminated. Not managed. Not suppressed. Eliminated.
The Natural Confidence program is a good place to start. It walks you through eliminating the 19 beliefs responsible for the most common confidence problems, including the ones that make accomplished people still feel like frauds. You can learn more at www.NaturalConfidenceProgram.com.
And if you’d like to explore what’s happening in your own life more specifically, I offer free strategy sessions where we look at what’s getting in the way and whether working together makes sense. You’re welcome to apply at mortylefkoe.com/application.
The doubt you’ve been carrying isn’t a fixed feature of who you are. It came from somewhere, from conclusions you drew about yourself long before you had the full picture. And conclusions that were formed can be undone.
It’s a belief.
And beliefs can be eliminated.
Source note: Meryl Streep quote from a December 1, 2002 interview with Ken Burns, published in USA Weekend.
