Confessions of a Former Know-It-All: The Liberating Loss of Confidence

All the swagger in the world couldn’t help me answer life’s most challenging questions

An Open Mind | Image created on Canva

At just 24 years old, my confidence was at an all-time high.

Graduate school had forced me to think critically and wade through deep discussions. Entering a university career kept my mind sharp. I felt alive with new ideas and bold assertions. With the belief that I had earned my wisdom badge, I was eager to share my knowledge with my students and coworkers.

I was young and bold — buoyed up with a conviction that if I didn’t have all the answers, I knew how to find them.

Now at 40, I’m not so sure about anything.

Compared to that mid-twenty-year-old who strolled into every classroom with a self-assured swagger, I find myself treading lightly.

Not because I don’t believe in my abilities to understand complex ideas, but because the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.

Experience has proven plenty of my “book smarts” wrong. Things that I once knew for sure turned out to be fantasy. And the knowledge I used to prize as the trophy of my schooling was merely a drop in an ever-flowing river. Life has shown me a complex…