I teach leaders to lead themselves first.
This year, I wasn’t sure I believed in myself.
Every year on my birthday, I do something most people avoid: I evaluate myself. Not my job performance. Not my business. Me.
This year, that evaluation was harder than usual. Because this year, I had to sit across the table from a version of myself I don’t talk about much. The one who stood in front of rooms full of leaders, spoke with conviction about boldness and identity, and then drove home wondering if any of it was real.
This year, I battled imposter syndrome. Hard.
And I’m not talking about a fleeting moment of self-doubt before a keynote. I mean the persistent, low-grade whisper that follows you through the accomplishments, through the wins, through the moments people tell you you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
“You got lucky. They don’t really know you. Someone’s going to figure it out.”
I know those whispers. I’ve heard them louder this year than ever before.
Here’s what makes it complicated: I teach leaders to lead themselves first. That’s not a tagline. It’s the foundation of everything I do at True Bold. And yet, somewhere between building a national speaking brand, advancing in my graduate studies in Organizational Leadership, carrying the weight of over a decade in law enforcement, and stepping into rooms where people looked to me to model boldness, I started shrinking internally while expanding externally.
That’s what imposter syndrome does. It doesn’t attack your résumé. It attacks your identity.
And I kept showing up anyway.
What This Year Actually Was
I made big moves. Real ones.
I built programs. I spoke nationally. I poured myself into True Bold and into the mission of helping professionals lead with clarity, emotional intelligence, and trust. I pushed through grad school while working full-time in law enforcement. I showed up to every role with steady hands and went home and questioned whether I was qualified to lead anything at all.
Performing at a high level while doubting yourself privately is more common than we admit. Most people just don’t say it out loud.
I’m saying it out loud.
Research shows that up to 82% of people experience imposter feelings at some point. That’s not a fringe experience. That’s most of the room. If that many of us experience it, the issue isn’t competence. It’s a conversation.
And yet we keep pretending it only happens to people who haven’t earned their seat yet.
Because I think a lot of you know exactly what I’m describing. You’ve had the whispers, too. You’ve performed at a level your inner critic refuses to credit. You’ve built something real while quietly wondering if you’re the right person to be building it.
What the Data Told Me When I Finally Listened
I’m a data guy. So when the imposter voice got loud, I went to the numbers. Not to brag, but to reality-check myself.
Across my top 10 LinkedIn posts this year: 182,339+ impressions. 132,000+ people reached. 1,373 reactions. 437 comments. 141 reposts.
Who are the people engaging? Chiefs of Police. Lieutenants. Founders. Senior leaders. Directors. People with real responsibility and real stakes. Saving posts, sharing them, leaving comments that go deep.
One post on July 29th drove 483 reactions, 113 comments, and 74 reposts. In one post.
Here’s what the data was telling me that I kept refusing to hear: the content that performed best was never the polished stuff. It was the honest stuff. Every time I posted something real, something that required me to be vulnerable about the internal work of leadership, the numbers climbed.
People don’t engage with perfection. They engage with truth.
That is not an accident. That is not luck. That is alignment between message and mission. And it only happened because I kept showing up through the doubt.
Turning the BELIEVE Framework on Myself
I use the BELIEVE framework to help leaders and teams grow. This year, I had to turn it inward.
One question I ask leaders I coach stopped me cold when I turned it on myself: how can you authentically believe in others if you constantly doubt your own capabilities? I’ve asked that question in rooms full of executives and law enforcement leaders. I never expected it to be the one that kept me up at night.
The hardest part wasn’t the work. It was believing in my own narrative when the imposter voice was loudest. Believing that the impact was real. Believing that I belonged in the rooms I was standing in.
Think of this birthday review as the one-on-one I schedule with myself every year. The same questions I’d ask a leader I’m coaching: What’s your why? Where did you show up? Where did you hold back? What are you carrying forward? I just had the courage to answer them honestly this time.
So here’s my honest assessment. The kind I’d give any leader I coach:
What I got right: Consistency. Staying on mission even when I felt unqualified to carry it. Choosing to show up over and over, even when every instinct said to stay quiet.
Where I fell short: I let the imposter voice take up rent it didn’t earn. I spent too much energy waiting for permission to own what I’d already built.
What I’m carrying into this next year: The understanding that imposter syndrome isn’t a sign that you don’t belong. It’s a sign that you’re growing into something bigger than the version of yourself you’re used to being. The work is to close that gap. Not by eliminating the doubt, but by building enough belief to move through it anyway.
The Only Gift I’m Giving Myself This Year
The mission of True Bold isn’t to perform boldness. It’s to unearth it. To dig down through the doubt and the noise and find what’s already there.
This is what leading yourself first actually looks like.
This birthday, I’m done arguing with the evidence.
The work was real. The impact was real. And the boldness was always there.
It just needed a little unearthing.
About the Author
Matt Davis is a leadership consultant specializing in transforming organizational trust into high-performance outcomes. Drawing from his 15 years of experience in law enforcement leadership and ongoing research in transformational leadership theory, Matt helps organizations build cultures where people thrive. He is currently completing his Master of Science in Organizational Leadership at the University of Denver.