How I Tricked Myself Into Believing I Could
You've probably heard the advice to "just believe in yourself" so many times it's lost meaning. But what if there's actually something to it? Something a bit strange, a bit unearned, maybe even a little delusional? Nine years ago, an artist made a bet on herself without having any of the answers. No formal training, no business knowledge, just a willingness to adopt a belief that hadn't come true yet. She calls it positive delusion, and she explains it better than I can summarize here. There's a forest metaphor involved. And a compass. And somehow it all makes sense of why some people leap and others stay exactly where they are.
Carlo's take
There's a moment near the beginning where Brooke reads an old journal entry from when she was just starting out, and she gets quietly emotional thanking her younger self for actually taking the leap. She later introduces the idea that chasing your dreams requires a kind of productive delusion. Not just passion or wanting it badly enough, but the willingness to believe something about yourself before it's true. To adopt the belief first, then grow into it. She describes it like clearing a new path through a forest. The more you walk it, the easier it becomes to travel, until eventually the old path, the one carved by doubt, gets swallowed back up by the woods. I keep thinking about the word she uses, "delusional." How we usually mean it as an insult, but she frames it as a tool. A compass you pull out when you catch yourself heading the wrong direction. I wonder how many things I've talked myself out of by insisting on being rational first.
