Taking the Leap: William J Carl of Leconte Publishing On How To Learn To Believe In Yourself
An Interview With Savio P. Clemente
Some people think they can do anything without learning from others’ mistakes or getting the proper training to take on a new endeavor. This gives them a false self-confidence that will surely lead to failure. Be honest with yourself about what you can and cannot do, and be smart. Also, be humble. No one wants to read your new book Humility and How I Attained It.
Starting something new is scary. Learning to believe in yourself can be a critical precursor to starting a new initiative. Why is it so important to learn to believe in yourself? How can someone work on gaining these skills? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders, authors, writers, coaches, medical professionals, teachers, to share empowering insights about “How To Learn To Believe In Yourself.” As a part of this series we had the pleasure of interviewing William J. Carl, PhD.
William J. Carl, PhD, a Greek scholar, screenwriter and playwright, is a former professor, seminary president, and pastor, who has spoken at Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Cornell, Boston University, and Carnegie Mellon, as well as many other schools in the US, and internationally in Russia, South Africa, India, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Rwanda, and Canada. He is the author of eight nonfiction books and one novel titled Assassin’s Manuscript. He also lectures on the Brain at medical schools and medical conferences, and loves playing tennis and hiking in the mountains. He lives outside Maryville, Tennessee with stunning views of the Smoky Mountains from his back porch.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I grew up as a preacher’s kid in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which at the time was the headquarters of Phillips Petroleum Company. My dad started a new church development there. Until the church building was completed, which took several years, we met at Highland Park Elementary School, my home away from home Monday through Friday; so basically, I could never get away from the place! My mind is a newsreel of happy times, a black cocker spaniel, little sisters and a brother since I was the oldest of four, running every day in the neighborhood, playing baseball, and being generally oblivious to the traumas of the world beyond my little cocoon. Later I had a paper route, which taught me a lot about being on time, good customer service, hitting porches perfectly from my bike with every shot, and generally being responsible. I could even walk a newspaper up the front steps of a house when I threw it correctly. It’s all in the wrist!
What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.
I’d like to say it was my father, which it was in many ways, although I’d vowed early on that I’d never enter the “family business,” and become a minister. Be careful what you vow that you’re never going to do when you’re young. If you want to make God laugh, just tell God your plans! The truth is, it was a number of people at the University of Tulsa who made me feel comfortable with the idea of being a pastor. One particular professor named John Gammie got me excited about learning Ancient Greek, and I was off to the races after that, later becoming a Greek professor, a Greek scholar, and the author of a novel about an ancient Greek manuscript in an international espionage story titled Assassin’s Manuscript. After teaching for a few years in a prominent theological school (Union Presbyterian Seminary in Virginia), I was called as Senior Pastor of a large church in Dallas, Texas (First Presbyterian Church) and eventually President of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, then later as Senior Pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama before retiring. John Gammie and other professors at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary and the University of Pittsburgh, where I did my PhD in Rhetoric and Communication, inspired me to write books, and I have now published nine of them, two of which have been translated into Korean.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I think the funniest mistake I ever made was thinking I could be a basketball referee and a baseball umpire without proper training. There were many times I was calling runners out before the ball ever reached the first baseman’s mitt! I was just in too much of a rush. But what finally ended my career as a sports official was when a 6-year-old boy whose basketball game I was refereeing tugged at my trousers and said, “Mister, how long have you been doing this?” I not only gave up refereeing that day but decided from then on that I would always get proper training before entering any other new venture in my life.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
Because of the lecturing I’ve been doing on the Brain since 2000 at medical schools and medical conferences, I am constantly helping physicians and other healthcare providers think about patients as whole persons and not just uninteresting appendages to very interesting diseases. Think about patients more holistically actually helps the healing process. I’m starting to work on a book related to Neuroscience and Being the Best You Can Be that will expand on lectures I’ve done both here and around the world titled “Brains, Bodies, Beliefs, and Behavior,” “Brains, Cancer, and Hope,” and “Faith, the Brain, and Pain.”
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. This will be intuitive to you but it will be helpful to spell this out directly. Can you help explain a few reasons why it is so important to believe in yourself? Can you share a story or give some examples?
I’d like to start with this idea: If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? For some reason, I’ve always wanted to try new things. I’ve been curious about the world and what makes it tick. I’ve also been blessed with pretty good intelligence, a quick mind, an agile body, an extroverted personality that makes me enjoy meeting new people, and the ability to take risks knowing that every time I did, I was exposing myself to possible critique. But life is short. Why not try new things and see what happens? Two examples of reaching out to others are (1) I often walk into restaurants and go around to tables and booths asking people if they like what they are eating. They stare at me incredulously and say, “I guess it’s good.” My family always backs away as if to say “Sorry, we shouldn’t take him out in public!” But I call this exercise “outcomes assessment.” I don’t want to just look at a menu; I want to hear what those who are eating at that restaurant think is good. (2) Another example of believing in myself by being open to others is related to the real live former hit men I interviewed when I was working on my espionage novel, Assassin’s Manuscript. Podcast interviewers want to know how I met them and how I got them to open up and talk to me. I guess I have a trusting face, and seem like a person they’d like to talk to. With this approach, I met two Americans who had been assassins for our country, and the son of another one who said his dad confessed on his deathbed what he had been doing all his life. He said “You never would have guessed he had killed people since his father was a regular Little League Dad in the neighborhood. Another one was an Israeli who had worked in the Kidon Unit of Mossad (which is assassins) and had Arafat in his sites twice but the order never came to take the shot. The fifth one was a former Russian Mafia chief who is now a pastor in the Ural Mountains. He had killed a lot of people then became a minister just like the main character in my novel named Adam Hunter. Doing research with real former hit men helped me write what a real assassin is like. If I had not believed in myself to get these interviews, I would never have been able to write such a true character in my novel. One podcast interviewer in the UK titled his interview with me “How To Write Like A Killer!”
The final example of believing in myself came when I pitched an idea to an inventor for a belt that would sense if you are in a fall and trigger an airbag that would open a thirtieth of a second before you hit the ground. He took the challenge and now we have one that has FDA approval as a Class One Medical Device. We have 5 US patents and international patents on the way. In addition, we have a working prototype made by Goddard Technologies in Boston, and have tested it on soccer fields and in retirement communities. We are right on the edge of producing, marketing and selling this belt or being open a larger company buying us out. If I hadn’t believed in myself I would never have suggested that this world-class Australian inventor created the belt.
What exactly does it mean to believe in yourself? Can I believe that I can be a great artist even though I’m not very talented? Can I believe I can be a gold medal Olympic even if I’m not athletic? Can you please explain what you mean?
It’s hard to be great at everything. There are very few Renaissance men or women in our world these days. Each of us has certain innate gifts and skills. Figuring out what those are early on is helpful when you decide what career path to take. But this also relates to avocations as well like hobbies or sports. For example, I love tennis and am pretty good at it, but will never win Wimbledon or the US Open. And yet, that doesn’t stop me from trying to improve my groundstrokes, volleys and serves, and enjoying competing at whatever level is best for me at my age. I remember the first time I won a Club Championship at a club in Dallas, Texas, something I never imagined I would ever do. But that didn’t stop me from signing up. I had to believe in myself as I made my way from one match to the next through that tournament until I was the last man standing holding up the trophy for the photograph at the end. I went on to win four more club championships, which was a great surprise since I never played varsity high school or college tennis. I still compete in my 70s, and to be honest, competing at a high level is full of its ups and downs. For example, a couple of years ago I played in a Men’s 70s National USTA tournament and got a lesson on how hard it is to play at that level since I lost my first two matches 6–1, 6–0 and 6–0, 6–3. I soon realized how much of Senior Tennis is drop shots and placement, not speed and power. So, learning from that experience, and still believing in myself, I came home determined to work on improving my game so I can play better the next time!
Another example is I never imagined that I would do Ethics consulting for corporations, but a former head of Communications at the White House asked me to, and I gave it a try and enjoyed it. I also enjoyed serving once as the Guest Chaplain for the United States Senate. It’s important not to pass up great opportunities when they arise because you never know when they will.
Was there a time when you did not believe in yourself? How did this impact your choices?
I think all of us who are really honest know of times when we’ve questioned our own abilities. There were many times in my life when I certainly did. One of the reasons was that I kept comparing myself to others who were bigger, smarter, faster, and better at everything I was trying. But when I stopped measuring myself against others and learned to focus on being the best I could be, it really made a difference. From then on, the sky was the limit! Also, I think I really began to believe in myself the day I stopped trying to “Be Somebody” or trying to be perfect, and began being the best version of myself I could be, flaws and all.
At what point did you realize that in order to get to the next level, it would be necessary to build up your belief in yourself? Can you share the story with us?
Finishing a PhD is no small task. Think how many people have given up early and only received their ABD (“All but the Dissertation”). When I graduated from Pitt with that Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1977, I was convinced that I could do anything. Later, I learned how true that was, having spoken now in 40 states in the US, and a dozen foreign countries. In my Brain lectures I remind people that they can do almost anything they want because of the billions of neurons bouncing in their brains every moment making trillions of synaptic connections. Also, taking 3 years of Tae Kwon Do karate during graduate school gave me the confidence to handle myself in difficult situations. In addition, it helped me describe the action scenes in my espionage novel with greater clarity. One experience that happened to me after learning karate I actually put in my novel. When someone pulled a knife on me once, I looked at him and said, “You do not want me to do what I’m about to do to you” which caused him to back off. In the novel, an assailant has a gun in the face of my main character, and he says the same thing, but in that case, has to act defending himself. Basically, my life has been blessed with one opportunity after another to learn how to believe in myself. And that’s a great gift.
What are your top 5 strategies that will help someone learn to believe in themselves? Please share a story or example for each.
1 . If at all possible, you should surround yourself with mentors and coaches who believe in you and stick with you even when you stumble and fall. That was my experience from childhood on. I had a piano teacher who said “I never want to hear the word can’t out of your mouth. You can play this piece and any piece you tackle if you practice hard enough, so get to it!” When in college I was asked to play the part of Antonio the Drunken Gardener in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, I thought “Why not?” So, remembering my piano teacher’s advice, I believed in myself and went for it. It was great fun! Similarly, while working in Houston one summer years ago, a composer said, “Let’s write and produce a musical!” So, we did to packed houses. I developed the story, wrote the lyrics, and played the lead, and it was a riot. If I had said to myself, “Oh, I can’t possibly do that,” it never would have happened.
2 . Be open to opportunities that come your way and don’t pass them up when they do. I barely knew anything about baseball when I was kid. I practically didn’t know which end of the bat to hold. But I still tried out for Little Leage Baseball, and to my shock and surprise was chosen to play on one of the major league teams (which was the top level) in my town because one of the managers thought I had “potential.” He knew I wasn’t that good but believed in me. I figured, if he believed in me I’d better believe in myself and give it my all, which I did. I never played baseball in high school or college, certainly not in the Major Leagues, but I’d learned a life lesson, and once I did, it affected my decisions for the rest of my life.
3 . I was a little intimidated speaking in front of people when I was younger. But people believed in me and stuck me up in front of crowds to talk. Eventually, I had so much fun with it that I began to believe in myself and did things I never imagined I would do when I was younger. For example, I’ve now spoken at places like Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and many other prominent schools here and abroad. Also, in Dallas, I was on TV live on the major ABC network to half a million people regularly for 22 years. Take every opportunity to speak publicly when you can. That’s the only way you will learn to do it effectively and with confidence.
4 . I’ve been “taking the leap, believing in myself” my whole life because others have believed in me and given me permission to do the seemingly impossible. One day, Alex Haley, the author of Roots, sat in my office and told me I should write a novel. He had read part of a nonfiction book I’d written, which was a set of lectures I’d given at Princeton. When I asked him what made him think I could write a novel, he said “Two things: you know how to write which you do very well, and you know how to tell a story.” So, on his recommendation and encouragement, I took the leap and did it. I believed in myself because Alex did. Assassin’s Manuscript is the result, a “Dan Brown meets Daniel Silva” thriller. It took over 30 years and 12 revisions, which means “taking the leap, believing in yourself” sometimes involves never, ever giving up. Now it’s on sale in 42 countries, and bookstores all over the US including the Harvard Bookstore!
During the writing and revising of that novel, I learned how to write screenplays as a way to streamline the novel, and actually won the Telluride Indiefest Screenwriting Contest with a romantic comedy titled “Maggie’s Perfect Match,” something I never imagined I would ever do. Through that process I learned that great stories — novels, plays, screenplays, and musicals — are not written, they’re rewritten. A director of a regional theater where I was living at the time heard about the screenplay, and asked me to turn it into a play which I did after taking the time to learn playwriting. That theater produced Maggie’s Perfect Match and had it performed to packed houses, even raising $30,000 Opening Night for the Bruno Cancer Fund because my major character was a matchmaker who found out she had cancer and tried matching her husband to someone before she was gone.
5 . Another example of “taking the leap believing in myself” came when a physician asked me to lecture on the Brain at a large, medical conference in Aspen. I told him I didn’t know anything about the novel, to which my wife replied, “That’s never stopped you before!” So, I took the challenge and read 50 books on Cognitive Neuroscience, then headed a year later to Aspen with my PowerPoint presentation. The head of Continuing Education for the American Medical Association was at that conference, and he was the one who did the readout on the CEU evaluations. He told me that I scored way above the medical school professors who had lectured at the same conference. That’s how I started getting invited to give my Brain lectures all over the country and at places like the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing. The point is if someone gives you the opportunity to do something new, you should believe in yourself and give it a try!
Conversely, how can one stop the negative stream of self-criticism that often accompanies us as we try to grow? Negative thought just shuts everything down.
Alex Haley’s mantra was always, “Find the good and praise it.” And he did exactly that his whole life, especially with me that day in Dallas. And I’ve done it ever since with everyone I meet. When you flood your mind with positive thoughts about yourself and others there’s no room for negativity to drag you down. I carry this into evaluations at work or in corporate consulting, especially consulting on ethics. I start with having the other person say what he/she likes about what they have done, then get others to do the same. Then I ask them what they think they could have done better, then ask others, “How can we help — — be an even better leader than he/she already is?” One of my former students called that “a stroke and a poke!” In some way it is, but notice that even the critique part is offered in a positive light. This isn’t Pollyanna talk, but speaking the truth in love — something our whole world needs these days.
Are there any misconceptions about self-confidence and believing in oneself that you would like to dispel?
Some people think they can do anything without learning from others’ mistakes or getting the proper training to take on a new endeavor. This gives them a false self-confidence that will surely lead to failure. Be honest with yourself about what you can and cannot do, and be smart. Also, be humble. No one wants to read your new book Humility and How I Attained It.
What advice would you give to someone who is struggling with imposter syndrome?
Everyone has stage fright. In fact, you should have some stage fright before you do anything or your performance will be flat. But remember, there’s unhealthy and healthy stage fright. In fact, there are two kinds: nervousness and excitement. You’re nervous when you aren’t prepared, and you have a right to be nervous because you are not prepared. When you are prepared, you’re excited, and you just get those butterflies to fly in formation! There’s no reason to be overwhelmed by an imposter syndrome if you are doing the best you can do, if you have prepared as diligently as you can, and go for it. That’s what it means to believe in yourself.
Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
One of the biggest problems in our world today has to do with the part of the Brain called the Amygdala, which is the fear, fight, flight part of our brains. Our ancestors had to deal with saber tooth tigers or huge snakes, and they had to react quickly. The amygdala is there to help us with those immediate dangers. But today, instead of tigers and snakes, we have different colors of skin, different political parties, theologies and ideologies that cause us to react quickly, usually negatively, and without thinking. I’d like to get a movement started in our country and our world that would help us tame or mute our overactive amygdalas since they are the part of our brains that cause divorces, fights at work, road rage, and wars. If I could ever solve the problem of our overactive amygdalas, I would win the Nobel Peace Prize! In the meantime, I want everyone at least to be aware of what a problem it is and see if we can work to overcome it by “believing in ourselves” as fellow human beings trying our best to make it together on this fragile planet.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)
I know it’s a long shot, but I’d love to tell Oprah Winfrey the whole story of how Alex Haley insisted that I write a novel. Lots of people will say, “You ought to write a book,” and you think nothing of it. But when Alex Haley tells you to write a book, you just have to do it. So, I did! It’s an amazing story because he was an amazing man. In the end, long after he’s gone, I dedicated Assassin’s Manuscript to Alex. I would never have published it if Alex hadn’t had said to me one day, “Bill you need to write a novel.” Alex also changed my life by opening the mind of this privileged white male to be to see how much our world needs to change the way it thinks about Race. Thanks, Alex.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Check out my website which is www.lecontepublishing.com or email me at 311billc@gmail.com
I love meeting new people!
Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.
You’re welcome! It was fun.
About The Interviewer: Savio P. Clemente, TEDx speaker and Stage 3 cancer survivor, infuses transformative insights into every article. His journey battling cancer fuels a mission to empower survivors and industry leaders towards living a truly healthy, wealthy, and wise lifestyle. As a Board-Certified Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC, ACC), Savio guides readers to embrace self-discovery and rewrite narratives by loving their inner stranger, as outlined in his acclaimed TEDx talk: “7 Minutes to Wellness: How to Love Your Inner Stranger.” From his best-selling book to his impactful work as a media journalist covering resilience and wellness trends with notable celebrities and TV personalities, Savio’s words touch countless lives. His philosophy, “to know thyself is to heal thyself,” resonates in every piece.
