The Hard Is Only In Your Heart: Tom Hanks On Joe DiMaggio, Paul Newman, And Making It Look Easy

Even Tom Hanks reverts to feeling like a kid when he’s in front of a childhood hero. That’s a reassuring thing to know. I feel reassured knowing this. He brought it up in an interview with Guy Raz - about the time he met Joe DiMaggio.

Hanks was out for dinner when the maître d’ came up and says something like, “Joe DiMaggio would like to meet you.” Hanks, obviously, cannot refuse or resist this, and, in their conversation he asks him about how cool he always was under pressure. DiMaggio goes full Yoda and says, ‘It always looked easy, except in here” and points to his heart on the word “here” because, he’s Joe DiMaggio, baseball superstar and poet.

Mastery makes for a cruel paradox. The better you get at something, the more “I wish I could do that like you” gets uttered in your presence, the more your internal sense of pressure is going to build. The pressure starts building something, somewhere deep inside you. It has to.

And I’m sure there’s still the fun aspect of it all! There’s a different confidence level you start to be able to unlock, but the same force that drives you to mastery doesn’t just get shutoff once you achieve it, either.

After Hanks tells that story he brings up meeting Paul Newman too. Same type of question and setup. Newman tells him that even legends feel self-conscious on day one. They just figure out how to muster up enough external polish to cover up the internal storm.

Mastery takes strength. Mastery begets strength. Strength is required to deal with those internal and external structures. It’s the opposite of weakness, to care so deeply about a craft and seek mastery. And, it’s deeply personal.

Hanks, DiMaggio, and Newman all have it. What have we got? I’m thinking it, maybe you’re reading it and thinking it too. Welcome to my impostors club. At least Hanks occasionally has stepped foot into it, which is probably why I’m so drawn to this clip.

Every time I hit publish on one of these posts, every time I’ve ever stepped on a stage, every time I just press that stupid record button and feel the rush of “heeeeeere we go” - I’m carrying that invisible weight inside of me.

To be clear, I am definitely not calling myself a master. I’m strictly recognizing the weight of committing myself to doing work I am demanding that I do. It’s real.

The world sees what I share. The world doesn’t see what goes into it. If you’re reading this, I know you are relating to this. The doubt, vulnerability, fear - I’ve seen your replies, it’s a good hang in this impostors club that Tom Hanks infrequently drops by, undetected. The impostor club just so happens to be where mastery also lives, in the efforts, over time.

The hard is only in your heart. That’s exactly where it should be. It means you care. it means the work matters, even if only to you.

We all look at somebody else and think they make it look easy. Even Tom Hanks. Don’t forget what DiMaggio told him - it’s easy everywhere but “in here.”