Confidence man

Tell yourself a story.

Flugzeug II (Airplane II) by Gerhard Richter (1966, Source: MoMA)

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No. 134: Confidence man

There’s this movie called Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abignale Jr., a real-life con man who successfully bagged millions of dollars through less-than-honest methods — all before his 22nd birthday. 

Even after watching the movie, I found myself asking: how in the fuck?

How does a teenager bamboozle the world to such a degree, and so easily? How do none suspect him? He went as far as posing as an airline pilot, traveling around the country in the cockpit as a “deadhead” — the nickname given to off-duty pilots who want to hitch a ride to wherever. 

You’re telling me a fellow pilot never asked him, even once, about some technical term or procedure he would have had no knowledge of? 

But really, that’s beside the point.

The key, I realized, is what people so casually call these types of criminals.

That is con man, short for confidence man. 

Confidence man.

That’s good.

The antics of Frank Abignale Jr., and those of effective con men everywhere, put on display the almost supernatural powers of confidence in our interactions with the world. On the one hand, that’s a bit scary. To know there could be a 19-year-old bullshitter hanging out in the cockpit of my redeye to San Francisco is less than reassuring. But to know that confidence alone can get people to believe a kid is a licensed commercial pilot? Extremely illuminating. 

Imagine what each of us could if we applied the same kind of dumb confidence to our goals in life?

We’re sure to succeed, I’m confident.

This requires, however, the ability to tell blank-faced lies to oneself.

That might sound terrible to our artistic bunch.

We could never.

Except, we could — and we do.

The same confidence we have toward things we believe we can’t do can be, with effort, flipped into confidence that we can. To know ourselves is to know we are always changing. Fixed emotions and desires are a sign that our heart has probably stopped beating. The thing is believing, to polygraph-passing levels, that we can do whatever it is we want to do — then going and doing it.

My dudes, that’s powerful. 

It’s the same kind of power that super-Christians tap into in their belief that golden gates stand at the entrance to heaven. It’s the same power that athletes like Derek Jeter rely on when they know, at 9-years-old, they’ll play shortstop for the New York Yankees. It’s the power of beliefs like these, and the stories we tell ourselves, that can heavily influence what we do in our life. Becoming an excellent storyteller in this context is a literal superpower. 

I believe in confidence so much, I toy with it. 

Last weekend, some good friends were visiting from the SF Bay Area. We were scheduled to catch the one o’clock train. A longer-than-expected morning workout and some bad planning left me painfully hungry and foodless as the train approached. I complained. Yes, I complained. I am Matt Zamudio. I complained. 

But then, I decided to switch the story I was telling myself.

I was no longer hungry and without food.

I was fasting.

And that was that.  

(The burger I ate immediately after arriving at the train station in Chicago was an excellent fast breaker.)

Not all switches are so simple, though. These things take work. Still, I think as a general observation, the tools of the con man are incredibly impressive in that those same tools can be applied to bend reality to our (hopefully) law-abiding desires. 

For example, I want to write a novel. 

But apparently I don’t want it bad enough, yet, because I’m not doing it.

Novel writing is not central to my story today, but it will be. And when it is, nothing will stop me. I will be Frank Abignail Jr., in full pilot’s uniform, chatting casually with my “colleagues” as they fly a passenger plane and I pretend I belong.

Will I have the experience? The background? The knowledge?

No.

But I’ll believe that I do, and that will be enough.

I’ll maintain who I am, my authenticity, my kindness, and all the other things that I associate with my character, but in addition to that, I will adopt the confidence to believe that I am a great writer, that my novel is worth reading and selling, and that the agent I select will be lucky to work with me, rather than the other way around.

Put simply, I’ll adopt the confidence needed to achieve what I want to achieve — even if, underneath it all, there are no “true” foundations. On the one hand, by the end of it, I will have “true” foundations built through experience. On the other, isn’t that how anyone gets anything done?

At some point, you just have to jump off that cliff you’ve never jumped off before, and the most useful skill for jumping off unknown cliffs, I think, is confidence. 

The con man.

Let us all have that type of confidence when we need it, because nothing ever happened without someone deciding to make it happen.

Just do me a favor and stay away from airplanes. ♦