Self Belief and Self Delusion

What it really means to believe in yourself.

During the Great Resignation, while my colleagues left Oracle for higher paying roles I stayed loyal. My philosophy is that all roads in B2B tech sales led to the same place if you work hard. So I stayed.

Less than a year later, Oracle restructured the Marketing Cloud division, cutting 70% of the workforce — myself included. I landed another role internally, but was hit by a second layoff during a return to office mandate. Getting laid off twice in a year was demoralizing, so I decided to accept the severance to reset.

During my sabbatical, I traveled with my fiancée to Egypt to get to know her family in Cairo. It was a lot of fun, but during that sabbatical, uncomfortable questions started to bubble up into my subconscious — about belief in myself and my ability to make good decisions.

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Good Decisions ≠ Good Outcomes

I used to believe the world operated entirely on logic: when you make good choices, good outcomes follow. I’ve learned that’s not how life works.

A 2021 survey found that 80% of Americans who changed jobs during the Great Resignation regretted it. Nearly a third said they missed their former coworkers.

I didn’t get the “right” outcome by being loyal — in fact, I got laid off twice. But I don’t regret it because it gave me time with my fiancée (who’s now my wife), and allowed me to stay close to family in Columbus. Even though I probably got paid less than my colleagues, proximity to family and taking a memorable trip can’t be quantified in dollars and cents.

At the time it felt like I made a bad decision. But in hindsight, it was the best decision I could’ve possibly made.

Which raised a deeper question: How do you trust your decisions when the outcome aren’t predictable?

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Self Belief Without Self Delusion

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, once wrote:

Confidence needs to be counterbalanced with self-awareness. Without pursuing truth — even when it’s uncomfortable — you risk tipping the scale self-belief to self-delusion.

In Disney’s Snow White, the Evil Queen summons a magic mirror who constantly tells her that she’s the fairest of them all. Despite being wicked, she was fed a lie.

Avoiding self-delusion is about finding the opposite of the Magic Mirror on the wall. It’s about genuine truth seeking, via internal reflection, or with the external help from a mentor. Even if what you learn doesn’t align with what you want to hear.

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What Josef Pieper Taught Me About Prudence

Josef Pieper, a German Catholic philosopher — and Aristotle fanboy, like me — described “prudence” as the “mother of all virtues”. It’s the basis of truth seeking. In his book The Four Cardinal Virtues, he breaks prudence into three core components:

• True Memory (Memoria): The ability to see the past clearly, unclouded by emotion.

• Open-Mindedness (Docilitas): A willingness to learn from others, especially when your own instincts fall short.

• Clear-Sightedness (Solertia): The skill of perceiving the present clearly — and responding swiftly — even when the right path forward isn’t obvious.

Prudence is the active habit of interpreting reality truthfully — and acting accordingly to make the best decision with your information.

How often have you confused a bad outcome for a bad decision? Probably more times than you can count. Thomas Piper would’ve called that a failure of memoria, or true memory.

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How Self-Belief Is Actually Built

Self-belief builds slowly but surely, decision by decision. Good choices create a virtuous cycle that boosts your confidence.

• Make a good choice.

• Reflect on it honestly.

• Rinse and repeat.

With enough repitions, the sea of data points will become clear: you’re a person capable of making the right decisions.

At the time, staying at Oracle didn’t feel like the right move. But now, years later, I look at my marriage, family, and the memories those layoffs gave me — and I realize: It was the right decision after all.

Thanks for reading!

— Grant Varner