How to build conviction
Your magic umbrella
Hey newsletter community,
I’m so grateful for the feedback I’ve gotten from some of you on my writing and my ideas. It’s a privilege to get to collaborate with all of you. The conversations we have, regardless of whether they are in person or on the phone across time zones, I find, give me the energy to push myself forward in charting territory that is unfamiliar, new and ambiguous. This week, I spent a lot of time thinking about what this chapter of my life — lacking in concrete and traditional structure that I’m so used to — is teaching me about doing and achieving hard things.
After engaging with some of you and many different sources on this topic throughout the week, I want to try to condense my ideas into one concept: conviction.
Let’s go!
What is conviction?
Have you ever listened to someone speak and felt naturally inclined to believed them? Have you ever had someone tell you, “you can do this,” and suddenly felt like you actually could? Chances are, that person was speaking with conviction.
Conviction is the quality of being firmly convinced of what you believe and say. When you’re faced with a difficult challenge—whether in sports, academics, or climbing the corporate ladder—it’s not enough to just be skilled, smart, or well-prepared. What sets people apart isn’t just talent or effort; it’s the unwavering belief in their own ability to succeed.
Conviction is built over time and experience, and it's what allows you to take the resources you have at hand —your intelligence, money, athleticism—and translate them into results: choosing the right career, making the right investment, winning a competition.
The most powerful part of conviction is that it is contagious. When you’re free from doubt, you communicate it—through your actions, your tone of voice, your body language, and the energy you bring to the situation. People can feel and sense your security. They recognize when someone is authentically excited about what they do. These moments—when conviction passes from one person to another—become inflection points where perspectives can shift, action can spark, and the direction of entire groups can change.
Here’s some examples of conviction in action:
Leading a Sales Team
A leader with conviction not only shares sales targets, but also communicates a vision that makes those targets feel inevitable. They highlight customer success stories with genuine enthusiasm and speak about future goals with certainty. This conviction doesn't change the product or the market, but it fundamentally changes how the team sees themselves and their capabilities.
Coaching a Struggling Team
A coach who inherits a team with a losing record faces not just a skills deficit but a confidence crisis. The coach with conviction approaches every practice speaking about the team's potential as if it were obvious fact. They meticulously highlight small improvements and celebrate them as proof of what they already know to be true. The same players who once accepted defeat begin to play with new energy and purpose, not because their abilities suddenly changed, but because the conviction of their coach transformed their self-perception.
Teaching Students Who Don't Believe They Are "Smart"
A teacher with conviction presents new material by communicating with absolute certainty in each student's ability to master it. When students struggle, this teacher never suggests they might not be capable; instead, they adjust their approach with complete confidence that understanding is inevitable. This conviction shapes not just their words but their teaching methods, transforming students' relationship with difficult material.
The conviction umbrella
So how can we build conviction?
When we put ourselves in situations that make us grow and evolve into a stronger, better, more capable people, we inevitably go through hard and confusing times: storms. In order to push through those long, ambiguous challenges, we create an umbrella to keep us safe: the conviction umbrella.
It seems there has yet to be a perfectly accurate, free, text-to-visual AI tool (if you know of one, please share it with me!). Here’s what DALL-E generated with the following prompt:
Generate a visual of the “conviction umbrella”. Conviction is an umbrella that allows us to get through tough and confusing times, shields us from self doubt and competition. Underneath the umbrella, there are four key things that keep us protected: Identity, Effort, Systems, and Specific Knowledge.
Identity
How is inner conviction — this magical umbrella of protection from self doubt — created? How might we achieve this state of mind of being free from all doubt?
Some suggest "faking it till you make it." Try to think, act, and behave as if you were already the person that you are striving to be. If you have never run a marathon but want to, don't tell yourself "I'm not a marathon runner." Start acting like one and identify the behaviors that would transform you into that identity.
This week I heard someone say that “we can never surpass the limits of our own identity”. Whatever you believe you are (athletic, smart, unhealthy, a loser) — your behaviors will fall to that standard. "Faking it till you make it" is a way for you to "act" or “role play” an identity you are not right now, but one you become to elevate your standard and to achieve the outcomes you want.
What I like about the "fake it till you make it" strategy is that it has a bias toward action — it allows you to, in the moment, switch on the "persona" you want to become, and exhibit the behaviors that that person would. This personification and embodiment forces you to imagine what that "persona" would do, how they would walk, the way they would speak, and the decisions they would make. It puts you in the mindset of who you want to be.
The mental toughness book The Inner Game of Tennis details this very strategy — role play. Role play an aggressive player. Role play a defensive player. Role play someone with a big forehand, who covers 80% of the court with just that shot. Role play the number one seed of the tournament.
Effort
The “fake it till you make it” strategy is great for in-the-moment action and focus, but when it comes down to consistently doing the difficult work required to change yourself and your abilities in the long term, and getting through the dips in motivation that come along, I’ve found that the effort you perceive the work takes can get in your way.
“My forehand is so bad. It’s going to take me so long for me to develop it into my best shot.” Or, “I have no idea how to code. It will take me months to get to even a beginner proficiency. I might as well give up and try something else.”
I've seen countless times how we tend to believe that the need to put in effort somehow disqualifies us from doing the thing at all. The fascinating thing is that we often believe the following thought, that when spoken aloud sounds completely ridiculous:
If someone is good at something, it’s because they have some innate talent or divine inclination toward that thing. If someone is bad at something to start, it must mean they don’t have the talent or capacity to do it, so they shouldn’t go about trying.
Dr. Carol S. Dweck describes this phenomenon in her book, Mindset. Consider these two mindset examples:
Fixed Mindset
Emma looks at her classmate, Tom, and thinks:
Tom never seems to study, yet he always gets top grades. He must just be naturally smart. I, on the other hand, have to study for hours just to keep up. If I were truly good at this subject, it wouldn’t have to study that much. Maybe I’m just not cut out for it—I should probably focus on something else.
What Emma doesn’t realize is that Tom spends late nights reviewing materials, practicing problems, and seeking help when needed. His success isn’t talent—it’s the result of effort.
Growth Mindset
Liam joins the school basketball team and struggles during his first few games. He sees his teammate, Jake, “effortlessly” making shots and outrunning him on the court. He thinks:
I’m not where I want to be yet, but maybe if I practice for a couple of extra hours a week, I can get better over time and catch up to Jake. My coaches will see the effort I am putting in, and help me improve faster. I can even talk to Jake and get strategies for where I need to improve.
Determined to improve, Liam begins to watch game footage to analyze his mistakes, stay after practice to work on his shooting accuracy, ask the coach for tips on footwork and technique, and learn from his teammates instead of comparing himself to them. After months of effort, Liam is shooting better, moving faster, and feeling more confident on the court. He has built his conviction via his dedication to the power of effort, not by subscribing to the idea of innate ability or natural talent.
It seems like a basic idea, but the truth is that we all talk ourselves out of putting in the reps needed to hone our craft and improve our weaknesses. When we make a transition to the growth mindset, we earn a useful conviction-driven belief, which is that anything is learnable.
When you’re experiencing a storm, don’t let the illusion of effortlessness stop you. There's no such thing as achievement without effort, so give yourself permission to invest it, even if it may seem like it's "easier" for others. The most effortless-looking productions take hours and hours of toil. Just listen to Roger Federer, a tennis player adorned in honor for his "effortless play," who emphasizes that this "effortlessness" is the result of thousands of hours of practice and preparation that the public doesn't see.
Effort can feel like a burden or a badge of honor — you decide.
Goals
An obstacle that holds people back from building conviction is goal setting. Too often, we tether our identities to what we achieve: I got into Stanford. I earned a Computer Science degree. I got promoted to VP of Engineering. These are milestones that may have started as goals— but it comes at a cost. When we define ourselves by our achievements, we create a fragile sense of self.
What happens if you don’t achieve the goal you set and so desire? Does that make you a failure? This kind of rigid, all-or-nothing thinking leads many people to give up entirely, convincing themselves they are “not good enough.” Even worse, it robs them of joy in the process—because until they reach that elusive goal, they feel like just another ordinary person. Instead of seeing growth as the reward, they let the accolade define them.
I’ve found that this mindset is especially pervasive in American society, where from an early age, kids are subtly trained to equate their worth with achievement. I remember being relentlessly asked:
Did you complete the AP or IB program?
What’s your GPA?
What extracurriculars did you do?
Are you the leader of a club?
Do you have an internship lined up?
What university offers do you have?
What did you choose to study?
These questions create a scoreboard mentality, where success is measured by checkboxes rather than effort or process. They overlook the invisible systems—the daily habits, the resilience, the failures—that actually drive progress.
Systems
There's a better way to build conviction: focus on systems, not just goals. Goals are great for pointing you in a general direction, but don’t create a constant chase for achievement, where satisfaction is always delayed until the next milestone. Systems, shift the focus to the process itself, allowing you to feel like a winner every day.
A system is a structured process, habit, or method that you follow consistently to create progress in a specific area. Instead of obsessing over the outcome, you focus on repeatable actions that lead to improvement over time. The more you execute your system, the stronger your conviction grows—because progress is no longer something you hope for in the future, but something you create daily.
Your sense of conviction and belief in yourself comes from you executing the steps of the system you create. You build confidence from systems because they are:
Repeatable: executing something on a daily or weekly basis gives you a consistent hit of confidence in your ability to work toward your desired outcome
Action-oriented: instead of fixating on what you want to achieve, you focus on what you need to do each day to get there.
Independent of motivation: A well-designed system removes friction, making it easy to stay consistent—even on days when you don’t feel like it.
Most importantly, systems ensure you keep improving regardless of whether you hit your goal. This already puts you ahead of most people, who rely on bursts of motivation or wait for inspiration to strike before taking action.
Imagine someone who wants to start their own company. The steps ahead are unclear, messy, and sometimes unknown—and the uncertainty of the storms ahead can be paralyzing. Instead of waiting for the “perfect idea” or obsessing over end results, the entrepreneur creates a system:
Reaching out to three potential customers every day to refine their problem space.
Testing one small experiment per week to validate or invalidate assumptions.
Writing and sharing insights online twice a week to build credibility.
Spending 30 minutes each morning studying a new business concept, whether in sales, marketing, or product.
At first, the results are small. Some customer conversations may go nowhere. Some experiments fail. But over time, patterns emerge. The entrepreneur builds conviction through action and learns that progress isn’t linear. They realize that conviction is built by consistently moving forward, refining their approach, and trusting the system they’ve created.
Specific knowledge
The last element of the conviction umbrella is specific knowledge. Specific knowledge can’t be easily taught or replaced. Naval Ravikant describes it as:
Knowledge that you can’t be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.
Unlike standardized skills, specific knowledge comes from firsthand experience, deep problem-solving, and insights gained in the real world. It isn’t something that can be learned passively or copied from a textbook.
For example, learning to code by following tutorials is one thing, but solving real problems for clients, debugging complex systems, and designing scalable architecture is something entirely different. Those hard-won lessons shape expertise in ways that generic learning never will. Experience like this builds conviction because it’s based on direct, personal understanding—not just memorized concepts.
In my last job, one of the biggest things I learned was the importance of developing my own independent perspective of a given problem. When you’re starting a new job or are early in your career, it’s easy to get into the mindset that you need to listen to, learn from, and imitate the more experienced people around you. In fact, the school system reinforces this paradigm.
However, in order to get to the next level and produce more value, you need to impart your specific knowledge. Learning from others is useful, but repeating secondhand knowledge doesn’t create conviction. One practice that helped me develop this is writing about my ideas. Writing forces clarity and originality. Explaining an idea in your own words, challenging your assumptions, and forming an independent perspective makes knowledge feel earned and specific.
Taking time each week to document lessons and articulate thoughts is one of the most effective ways to strengthen conviction. It’s uncomfortable at first because it requires original thinking rather than passive consumption. But over time, it refines your ability to communicate ideas and strengthens your confidence in what you know.
The storm
To build conviction, you need to understand not just the umbrella that protects it, but also the storm that threatens to break it. The storm is made up of three illusions that cause people to stop before they even start:
Scarcity – Somebody else has already done this.
Comparison – Others are ahead of me.
Self-Doubt – I’m not as good as the people already doing this.
These beliefs create a false sense of limitation. Just because something has been done before doesn’t mean you can’t do it too—differently, and better. Just because someone is ahead of you doesn’t mean you can’t catch up. And crucially, the idea that we’re all driving toward the same destination is an illusion. You might start out in finance and end up directing films. The key is to follow your curiosity, not your competition—because your path will unfold in ways you can’t always predict.
The best way to weather the storm is to shift your focus from competition to long-term thinking and compounding effort. Scarcity disappears when you realize that deep, consistent investment in your craft generates exponential returns over time. Opportunities emerge not from chasing others, but from showing up daily and building something that’s uniquely yours.
Finally, when you feel self doubt, some of the best advice I’ve received is to act before you feel ready:
Teach before you think you’re ready.
Take action even when the path isn’t clear.
Share your work before you feel “good enough” to do so.
A practical exercise you can steal
The idea for this week’s newsletter in part came from an exercise I had to do this week to write about the following:
Envision your ideal future in relation to your current ambitions
Identify your obstacles
Define your why
My favorite was "identify your obstacles." Writing down my perceived limitations made them feel smaller, more tangible, and, most importantly, solvable. When you anticipate your own doubts in advance, you gain the ability to recognize them when they surface, and put systems in place to move through them instead of getting stuck.
Defining your why taps into something deeper: your personal relationship with self-actualization, your values, and your dreams. These are the true conviction-builders. They are visible, palpable, and, in a way, contagious—others can sense when someone is driven by something bigger than just the goal itself.
Try it for yourself.
What hard thing are you working toward this week? How might conviction help you achieve it?