The Bank Robber Who Thought Lemon Juice Made Him Invisible
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Hello Friend!
McArthur Wheeler thought he’d pulled off the perfect bank robberies. (Yep, that’s him in the photo above.)
No mask. No disguise. He looked straight into the camera. Completely confident, he was invisible.
Why? He’d rubbed lemon juice on his face. If it makes ink disappear on paper, he figured, it would work on skin too. He even tested it with a Polaroid. The picture came out blurry.
Good enough for McArthur.
When the police showed him the surveillance footage, he was genuinely stunned. “But I wore the juice,” he said.
You can’t make this up.
Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger later studied this case, which became known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect: the less we know about something, the less equipped we are to see what we’re missing.
The most confident person in the room isn’t always the most competent.
And this doesn’t just apply to bank robbers.
We’ve all worked with someone who was completely certain they were right. And they were completely wrong. You shouldn’t have to work around someone’s outdated thinking just to move an idea forward. You shouldn’t have to decode a colleague’s resistance to change or wait for them to let go of what stopped working three years ago.
But it happens constantly. And sometimes... that someone is us.
I see it in business all the time. Professionals who keep doing what worked five years ago. Confident it still works. Never questioning the blank stares. Never noticing that people have stopped pushing back.
In my new book, Unignorable, I call this the difference between learning and unlearning. Learning adds new capacity. Unlearning strips away the outdated stuff that’s quietly holding you back. And here’s the unignorable truth: we’re actually pretty terrible at the second one.
Think about the last time your company rolled out new software. Training happened. Excitement was there. Usage looked decent for a few weeks. Then what? People quietly reverted to spreadsheets and email threads. Not because they were stubborn. But because nobody helped them unlearn the old way.
We’re not just bad at change. We’re bad at stopping.
And the real danger? When you show up with outdated thinking, people notice. It’s like walking around with a haircut from the 1980s. Nobody says anything. They just smile, nod, and secretly wonder if you peaked in a previous decade.
Same with your ideas. And they won’t tell you why.
So what do you do when no one’s giving you the feedback you need?
You create your own mirrors. You put yourself in situations where you can see what you can’t see.
Here’s the framework I use with my coaching clients. I call it the Unlearning Playbook: Catch it. Challenge it. Change it.
Catch it. Pay attention to the moments when you default to “this has worked for me before.” When you hear yourself defending a position because it’s familiar, not because it’s right. That’s your signal.
Challenge it. Ask yourself: Where did this belief come from? Is it still true? Is it helping or hurting? Demand evidence with recency. Just because something worked in 2019 doesn’t mean it works in 2026.
Change it. This is where most people stall. Awareness isn’t enough. You have to replace the old belief with something concrete. New language. New behavior. New tools.
McArthur Wheeler’s problem wasn’t stupidity. It was certainty. He was so sure his theory worked that he never sought a better mirror. He tested it once, got a blurry photo, and called it proof.
The gap between what you know and what you think you know is where trust quietly erodes.
For Corporate Insiders
If you’re inside an organization, unlearning looks like auditing your defaults. The phrases you repeat, the instincts you defend, the processes you protect because they’re comfortable. Start with one belief you’ve inherited from a former boss or a past company and ask yourself honestly: Is this mine? Does it still work? The most successful people I’ve coached don’t just learn new playbooks. They retire old ones. They’re wildly good at unlearning.
For Entrepreneurs
If you’ve gone out on your own, unlearning hits differently. You probably left corporate with a toolkit that made you successful there. But building your own thing requires a different set of instincts. The strategies that earned you a seat at the executive table can actually slow you down when you need speed, clarity, and a willingness to be wrong in public. Catch the moments where you’re playing corporate ball in an entrepreneurial game. The faster you unlearn the old rules, the faster you build something that’s truly yours.
What’s one belief you’ve been holding onto that might need a better mirror? Hit reply. I read every response.
Your coach,
Chris
P.S. Unlearning is one of the five behaviors I teach inside the Becoming Unignorable cohort. This is a 6-week live program for people who don’t want to be loud, play politics, or self-promote to be taken seriously. The next cohort launches soon. Join the waitlist now, and you’ll be first to know when doors open (plus early registrants get a signed first edition of Unignorable). Save your spot here.
