In the Absence of Certainty

For most of my life, I used intelligence to prove my value. 

I learned early that being smart came with rewards. Getting good grades came with praise from my parents and my teachers. By the third grade, I had already decided I was going to become a doctor. I remember telling my teacher about it and she was surprised by my determination. The 9-year-old version of me believed it was the obvious path to become rich and successful.

Intelligence was more than a trait I valued, it became part of my identity. If I wasn't the smartest person in the room, I had to find a way to become that person.

College was the first time that was challenged. I found myself surrounded by students who were just as intelligent as I thought I was, and many who were far more disciplined. What stood out wasn't how smart they were, it was how hard they worked. Intelligence had always felt like a differentiator, but now it felt common. My dream of becoming a doctor faded away. 

After college, I moved through healthcare, real estate, medical sales, and advertising. The careers looked disconnected, but they shared a pattern. Each role allowed me to build on knowledge or experience I already had. My education gave me credibility in healthcare. A client recruited me into real estate. My business school education and experience helping a medical startup grow led to a strategy role at a technology and design firm.

Without realizing it, I had built a career around environments where my intelligence continued to be rewarded. I tended to step into roles where I had evidence that I could succeed. It was a way of mitigating risk. 

Years later, I came across research from Carol Dweck that helped me better understand part of this dynamic. Her work found that children who are praised for being intelligent often become more hesitant to take risks because failure threatens an identity they have spent years protecting. Reading her research felt familiar, not because it explained my entire experience, but because it illuminated one piece of it.

For a long time, I believed confidence came from knowing the right answer, making the right decision, and seeing the clearest path forward. Through experience, I realized I was not only relying on intelligence, I was searching for certainty.

That certainty showed up in school, career choices, and the belief systems that shaped my early life. The promise was usually the same: learn enough, work hard enough, believe the right things, and the path will reveal itself.

Starting my own business was the first major decision that broke this pattern.

Unlike every career move that came before it, nobody recruited me into it. There was no degree that qualified me and no guarantee that I would be successful.

For the first time in my life, I was focused on the process of building a business, not the destination. What surprised me was how freeing that felt.

Betting on myself became a way to create proof through action. The evidence came later in the decisions I made, the problems I solved, and the opportunities I created. My relationship to confidence changed. It now feels like trusting myself to respond to whatever happens rather than needing to know the outcome.

My view of intelligence has changed from needing to have all of the answers to knowing how to find them. I surround myself with people who have deep knowledge and experience, but I rely on them to work through problems with me instead of simply providing solutions.

The projects I am most proud of today began with more questions than answers. The opportunities that changed my life arrived because I was willing to take the leap before I understood how everything would work.