Catch Me If You Can: The Unfair Advantage of Overconfidence

thank you to Mubi for sponsoring this video click the link in the description below when it comes to the well-known expression fake it till you make it I think that there are a few people that have faked it more down Lee and more convincingly than Frank Abagnale jr. as we know in a five-year span this runaway teen he successfully impersonated a schoolteacher an airline pilot doctor and even a lawyer and over the same span of time he also forged and cashed in millions of dollars in fake checks now as it often is in the magical world of cinema the story of Frank Abagnale it is not only a story of crime it is also a story of inspiration from which we can learn because in many ways we relate to Frank we even look up to him and one of the reasons for this is his Redemption arc hi I'm Frank Abagnale supposed to start work here today ultimately Frank gets caught and he spends multiple years in French Swiss and American prisons but after this he is recruited by the FBI and he has been working with them to this day catching other forgers and developing systems and strategies to protect people from fraud I owe my country 800 times more than I can ever repay it over these past four decades that is why I'm at the FBI today 32 years after the federal court order expired requiring me to do so secondly there is the fact that Frank was just a kid when he ran away from his parents divorce it was finding a way to survive that let him on this wild adventure the difficulty of the divorce on a young kid makes his actions more forgivable divorce is a very devastating thing for a child to deal with and then have to deal with the rest of their natural life but beside that audiences are always attracted to the romantic outlaw role as Spielberg himself says we all sometimes fantasize about could I do that the con artists in a way appears to occupy a space between the romantic antihero and unconscionable criminal and although he went down a path of crime for a while Frank is also clearly incredibly gifted and one of his gifts was developing the skill set of fortune checks that are indistinguishable from real ones but even more than that he is also gifted in his charisma and knowing how to present himself in understanding human psychology he knows how to influence and convince people with an unshakable confidence that of course in reality is based on nothing hey Murph yeah call the LAPD again I don't want people walking through my crime scene and it is this aspect of Frank's story that I want to focus on you know what I think if he's always win Frank is a Mickey Mantle now because the other teams can't stop staring at those damn pinstripes appearance is everything that is one of the first lessons that Frank learns when he is 15 and his father asks him to present himself as a chauffeur in order to impress the bank and present himself as a successful businessman after Frank needs to go to public school because his father's business fails he avoids being bullied through impersonating a substitute teacher an impersonation he successfully upholds 4-week just because he's dressed somewhat like a teacher and he has the confidence and pravara to impersonate one he changes a position of possible victimhood into a position of authority I always sell Farah Vera excuse me why aren't you reading look the part act apart and you can watch your life become reality and it is this truth that becomes an essential part during his years of crime hello I assure this is the soup right pod it's the exact suited Warner movie okay I'll take three certainly mr. Fleming now the first thing he does when he runs away is change his age on his driver's license this immediately improves the impression he makes as a real Frank notes it got him higher wages for the same sort of work because 26 year olds simply are expected to have a higher salary than a 16 year old I was actually born in April of 1948 but I dropped the four converted it to a three and that made me 26 years old I walked around applying for the same type of work people gave me a little more money a few more hours but even then it was very difficult to make ends meet but ultimately the real breakthrough came when he saw a pilot leaving a hotel surrounded by stewardesses the status and the adoration that the uniform brought convinced Frank that that was what he needed to be taken seriously and therefore to be able to cash in his false checks and he was right clothes doing away make the man in any environment people scan and filter automatically and subconsciously for what is value generally this is status power wealth and physical attraction those who possess or even just seem to possess these traits often get a different kind of intention and treatment for better or worse and this is what Frank realized to use and to misuse Frank is not only convincing because he looks the part he also has the confidence and charisma to act the part my name is Allen secret service your boy just tried to jump out the window my partner hasn't been custody I don't know what you're talking about you think the FBI are the only ones on this guy I mean come on whenever people assume he is able to do something or he is something he goes with it and he convinces everyone that he is what he pretends to be what are you my dad head to Miami yes yes yeah I'm the Devon now at this moment the question becomes how is this a good thing I mean ultimately Frank is a criminal who lies and steals and no matter how convincing he is he ultimately suffers an incredible downfall however there are ways we can learn from the qualities he possesses without becoming criminals ourselves a core quality that Frank has won which many of us struggle with is confidence the word conman is actually derived from the word confidence man which was first used by dr. James Houston reporter for the New York Herald to describe samuel thompson the OG con man as it were who would talk to upper-class gentlemen and once he gained some trust he would ask them if they had the confidence to loan him some money or if it could borrow their watch and of course after they did he wouldn't return so key to any con including Frank's this is confidence and the best way to gain confidence is to be exuding it yourself most of us we struggle with confidence because well we are also aware of our own shortcomings and something many of us deal with is impostor syndrome where even if you have developed a certain skill set or a certain profession and your peers tell you that you are doing a good job you still you kind of feel like you are an impostor now what Frank has seems to be the exact opposite of imposter sinner he has no skills to back it up but nevertheless he has the confidence to act like he does and it is kind of incredible how far this gets him and how many doors opened for him are you my dad head now this just shows how important it is to project confidence in my forrest gump video I talked about the power of having no ego and being humble in developing your skillset but maybe the opposite can also be true those who confidently call their shots who are maybe even overconfident often get further before I went to medical school I passed the bar in California practice law for one year then I decided why not try my hand at pediatrics in personal development culture we often talk about having no ego and about the importance of being egoless and it is true that ego can be incredibly destructive but if you use it carefully and if you don't identify with it too much ego can also be a good thing ego is good dumb ass it's the reason that guy wants you to be a surgeon it's a reason that she is borderline attracted to you and it's the reason that she so desperately wants to marry you pays me well you're headed home if we doubt ourselves constantly others will doubt us too when we are extremely confident in ourselves and our abilities others will be as well and doors will start flying open most people undersell their own abilities both to themselves and to others and it is kind of a defense mechanism if we don't present ourselves as incredibly confident and skillful we can also not disappoint ourselves and others when we fill so we either fear failure or the responsibility that success brings we play not to lose instead of playing to win now of course you can Bluff your way out of everything without any skillset to back it up and in that case there will be a big downfall but many of us are overly doubtful and careful in our own abilities that we actually have developed in fear of this potential downfall so are you a good surgeon I'm capable capable I'm not sure what I want the surgery Gardi a word and to be clear confidence is one thing effectively assessing your own abilities it's great that I'm saying it can even be good to be overconfident to sometimes put yourself in situations where you say you can do something while you're actually not entirely sure you can bottom line in medicine half of pulling it off is believing you're the biggest smartest badass at the doctor to ever walk these halls you want to see how you end up if you don't believe that the reason for this is that it gives you the opportunity to rise to the occasion that it puts you in an uncomfortable situation where you are forced to grow because no matter how well we prepare we will still feel this doubt this fear of letting others down when we step outside of our comfort zone but when we accept an opportunity even if we aren't sure we are ready and able it will force us to rise up to our own potential and even if we feel realized it was often still a better outcome than to not have taken the opportunity at all of course don't do anything criminal of course but present yourselves the best way you can and sometimes when you can be humble or you can be overconfident maybe it can actually pay off to say hell yeah no problem I can definitely do that and then you do it Frank how did you cheat on the bar exam admission I didn't gene I studied for two weeks and I pass thank you all for watching guys and thank you to mu B for sponsoring this video and now for those of you that don't know mu B is an online curated cinema that at any point in time they only have 30 movies available and there's actually really special because it's occurred at cinema so these are like the hidden gems of cinema that you otherwise wouldn't watch so if you are movie lover then you can pick something special out every day and every day they add a new movie and every day they remove a movie so at any point in time the website only as 30 movies available and you know when you go on Netflix you are often just scrolling and scrolling along looking for something to watch and then you end up just rewatching some TV show you've already seen and with Mubi you 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Channel: Storytellers

Views: 2,134,008

Keywords: catch me if you can, overconfidence, advantage, money, making money, frank abagnale, leonardo dicaprio, catch me if you can video essay, catch me if you can analysis, catch me if you can explained, confidence, personal development, ego, catch me if you can lessons, catch me if you can real story, storytellers, getting rich catch me if you can, catch me if you can how much money, video essays, catch me if you can frank abagnale, frank abagnale leonardo dicaprio

Id: mEHngx2GDpM

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020