It's hard to imagine Tim McGraw, one of country music's most successful artists of the past decade -- and a big-screen star to boot -- as a quiet, anxious kid who struggled at school. But that's just what the singer himself recalls of his challenging childhood.

"I was a nervous, scared, poor boy who shook all the time and got beat up," Tim reveals in the November issue of Men's Journal. "It doesn't leave you feeling confident."

Tim admits there are times he still struggles with certain aspects of his life and career. "I find so much fault in myself that it's hard for me to condemn others for their faults," he explains. "If I have to fire someone, I first think, 'I'm a [screw-up]; I don't deserve what I have. How can I fire someone?' It's resulted in me getting run over a lot in business."

Tim also says he often questions the very thing that many artists actually crave -- up to a certain point in their career anyway. "At times you think, 'I'm a 42-year-old man jumping around, with 16-year-old girls screaming at me. There are times when you think that you look like a clown."

Tim's geariing up for the Nashville (Nov. 12) and New York (Nov. 17) red-carpet premieres of his film, 'The Blind Side,' starring Sandra Bullock.