Learning to doubt myself.
When I knew the least, I was the most certain. My opinions felt like facts. I would argue them hard, sure that I saw clearly.
There is a name for that. The Dunning-Kruger effect. The less you know about something, the more you tend to overrate how much you know. Confidence runs ahead of competence, until real understanding humbles it.
The turn came when I started reading about how the mind actually works. Thinking, Fast and Slow showed me my snap judgements are often just biases wearing the costume of intuition. Algorithms to Live By reframed even good decisions as bets made under uncertainty. The more I understood my own thinking, the less I trusted my first reaction, and the more I listened.
So I read widely, and on purpose. Books on how we think, to catch my own blind spots. Books on living well, to sit with the harder questions. Books and podcasts on the world and the people shaping it, to borrow perspectives I would never reach on my own.
Growth, for me, is not a pile of answers. It is getting a little better at questioning my own certainty.
The more I learn, the less I know. And that is exactly the point.
So let me leave you with this. Where might your confidence be running a little ahead of your understanding?