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I spend a lot of time listening to people I admire.
If you ever get in the car with me, rarely will music start with the engine. It’s almost always an audiobook or a podcast. I have books stacked on my nightstand. I highlight pages like I’ve just uncovered the mystery of Amelia Earhart. I send podcasts to friends and colleagues with the enthusiasm of someone who just discovered the meaning of life.
I just love a good idea and everything within me has to share it.
And if I’m being really honest, there’s been a quiet insecurity sitting underneath all of that for longer than I’d like to admit:
What if I don’t actually have ideas of my own?
I got to this belief because someone I used to work closely with told me that. That I didn't really have original ideas, I just borrowed other people's. And because I respected them, I believed it…for a long time.
Looking back, I think I quietly outsourced my confidence because of it. If someone smarter than me said something, I trusted it more. If someone more experienced disagreed, I assumed I missed something. If my own idea got challenged, I’d start backing away from it before I even fully understood why I believed it in the first place.
Then something happened this week that made me question all of that.
I brought forward a piece of work I had spent real time thinking through, and someone senior pushed on it. Hard. Not in a rude or yelly kind of way, just direct and sharp. The kind of feedback that normally would’ve sent me into quiet spin of over-analysis.
Interestingly, none of that happened.
I walked away from that conversation feeling more alive than I had in years. I wasn’t shrinking because someone challenged me. Instead I explained my rationale and I listened to theirs. I was actually curious about where their tension was coming from, instead of bracing for the verdict. And when I walked away, I had this realization:
I think I enjoyed that conversation because I trusted my own thinking.
That may sound small, but it was big to me.
I used to believe confidence came from repetition, and there's truth in that. Repetition builds familiarity, quiets your mind, helps you see patterns faster. But repetition alone falls apart the second someone sharp challenges you if you don't actually believe in your own thinking. I've seen it and I've lived it.
Which brings me to this:
Confidence comes from conviction and conviction comes from your judgement surviving contact with reality.
This doesn't mean you're always right. Conviction isn't certainty and it definitely isn't stubbornness. Some of the sharpest people I know are genuinely open, willing and enjoy when people challenge them enough to change their minds. But they don't abandon their thinking too early. They stay in the room long enough to pressure-test it. Sometimes the idea gets stronger or sometimes it gets replaced by a better one.
The difference is they do all of that without questioning why they spoke in the first place.
And if I’m honest, I used to do that—question why I spoke in the first place. And I did that while convincing myself it was self-awareness. Like I missed something or they know better and almost always while assuming I was wrong.
Sometimes that kind of reflection is wisdom, and sometimes it's just a more sophisticated way of talking yourself out of your own thinking. What I was calling self-awareness was actually me abandoning my own judgement before I had fully pressure-tested it. There’s a difference between staying open and surrendering too early.
The goal was never to stop learning from people I admire. I still will. I’ll still underline books and replay podcasts in the car. My besties will still get podcast clips like I’ve found gold.
The goal was to work ideas hard enough that they become mine. Confidence isn’t only the reps, it’s trusting that your thinking can survive contact with reality.
And maybe that’s all conviction really is—not certainty. It’s curiously staying in the room long enough to find out if your judgement holds.
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