Trust Yourself

Trust Your Gut, it’s Not Usually Wrong

“Scott, I have a job offer, and I want your advice.” After a few minutes of listening to this individual tell me the details, I cut them off. “Why are we having this conversation?” I asked. “It’s hard for me to imagine you not taking the job based on everything we’ve ever talked about and what I know about your current situation.” “You’re right, I’m going to take it. Thank you.” These conversations rarely take more than a few minutes. Why? Because at this point in my career, I have the experience to identify what makes sense and what doesn’t. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink,” he discusses a theory called thin-slicing, in which our unconscious mind takes in a small amount of information and makes surprisingly accurate judgments in just seconds. It’s pattern recognition built from experience, and we all do it in our daily lives. What I’ve found over time is that most people don’t lack clarity — they lack trust in their own clarity. They feel the pull toward a decision almost immediately, but instead of leaning into it, they start building a case against themselves. They call three friends, start researching online, overthink and overprocess, and suddenly, what felt obvious starts to feel complicated. It happens because they’ve invited too many voices into a moment that required conviction, not consensus. Your gut isn’t random. It’s not some reckless voice trying to sabotage your career. It’s built from every meeting you’ve sat in, every bad boss you’ve worked for, every win that gave you energy, and every loss that drained it. It’s a running database of lived experience, and when it speaks quickly, it’s usually because it recognizes something familiar before your conscious mind can catch up. The problem is we’ve been trained to distrust that voice. We’ve been told to be logical, to be thorough, to not make emotional decisions — as if instinct and intelligence are somehow in conflict. But in your career, some of the best decisions you’ll ever make will feel more like a reach than a calculated decision. They’ll feel slightly uncomfortable, a little risky, and completely right at the same time. And when they feel a little uncomfortable, it’s usually a sign that it’s going to be awesome. Now that doesn’t mean every instinct is perfect. There are moments where fear disguises itself as intuition, where hesitation feels like wisdom but is really just protection. The work is learning the difference. Real instinct tends to feel calm and certain, even if the decision is bold. Fear is loud, frantic, and full of what-ifs that keep you stuck exactly where you are. So when you feel that immediate answer rise to the surface, pay attention to it. Don’t rush past it. Sit with it before you start outsourcing the decision to everyone else. Because more often than not, the first answer you had is the one that’s been quietly preparing you all along — waiting for you to trust it.

There is Quiet Damage to Second-Guessing Your Own Thinking

I’d like to think that my recipe for life is not being afraid of myself, afraid of what I think, or afraid of my opinions — and that sounds simple until you actually try to live it. Because most people are afraid of themselves. Not in an obvious way. Not in a way that shows up loudly or announces itself. It’s the quiet kind of fear — the kind that makes you soften your opinion before you share it, or walk back a position the moment someone pushes back, or spend three days second-guessing a decision you made in three seconds and then second-guess it again after you’ve already committed. Second-guessing is presented to us as wisdom. As thoroughness. As the sign of a thoughtful, careful person who doesn’t rush. But there is a version of it that is none of those things. There is a version that is simply a lack of trust in your own judgment, dressed up as caution. The quiet damage of second-guessing is that it compounds. Every time you override your first instinct and defer to someone else’s comfort, you reinforce the belief that your own thinking isn’t reliable. Over time, you stop trusting yourself at the moment of decision — and that has real consequences. You slow down. You become indecisive. You seek more validation than the situation requires. You make smaller moves because bigger ones feel too risky without external confirmation. And here’s what makes it hard to see: the people who second-guess themselves the most are often the ones who have the most to offer. They’re thoughtful enough to see complexity. Smart enough to identify risk. But they’ve confused awareness with doubt, and they pay for it every time they don’t say the thing, make the call, or commit to the direction. The fix isn’t to stop thinking critically. It’s to start distinguishing between the kind of second-guessing that leads to better decisions and the kind that just keeps you stuck. One improves your thinking. The other erodes it. Your first read on a situation is usually more accurate than you give it credit for. Trust it more.

How to Stop Letting Other People’s Opinions Steer Your Career