I want to start with a question.
Have you ever faced a big decision, spent hours researching it, asked friends for advice, watched videos, read articles, compared different opinions—and somehow ended up feeling even less certain than when you started?
A lot of us describe that feeling by saying:
“Maybe I just don’t have strong opinions.”
But lately, I’ve started to wonder if that’s really true.
Maybe the problem isn’t that we lack opinions.
Maybe we’ve simply never learned how to trust our own judgment.
Because from the time we’re children, most of us are rewarded for finding the right answer.
School teaches us that there is a correct answer.
Work teaches us that there is a correct process.
And society often suggests there is a correct timeline for life itself.
Go to the right school.
Get the right job.
Meet the right person.
Buy the right house.
After years of living in systems like that, something subtle happens.
Whenever we’re uncertain, we instinctively look outward before we look inward.
What do my parents think?
What do experts think?
What does my manager think?
What does the internet think?
And somewhere along the way, we forget to ask a much simpler question:
What do I think?
Interestingly, there’s a psychological reason for this.
Our brains are constantly looking for shortcuts.
Thinking for yourself sounds simple, but it actually takes work.
It requires attention, effort, and sometimes the willingness to sit with uncertainty.
It’s often much easier to borrow someone else’s conclusion than build your own from scratch.
Psychologists have studied this tendency for decades.
We naturally look to authority figures and social consensus when we’re unsure.
And honestly, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Most of the time, learning from other people’s experience is efficient.
It’s practical.
It helps us avoid unnecessary mistakes.
The problem begins when outsourcing our judgment becomes a habit.
Because once that happens, something strange starts to occur.
We gain access to more information than ever before.
Yet making decisions somehow becomes harder.
Not easier.
And I think that’s because information and judgment are not the same thing.
Having more information doesn’t automatically tell you what matters.
It just gives you more things to pay attention to.
That reminds me of a concept from communication research called agenda-setting.
The idea is surprisingly simple.
The media may not tell you what to think.
But it can strongly influence what you think about.
Think about how often a new career path, industry, or lifestyle suddenly seems to be everywhere.
One month nobody is talking about it.
The next month it’s on every podcast, every social platform, every news feed.
Everyone seems interested.
Everyone seems excited.
And before long, you start wondering whether you should be paying attention too.
Eventually, it starts to feel important simply because everyone else is talking about it.
So people follow the conversation.
Then they follow the trend.
And sometimes, without realizing it, they follow the decision itself.
A few years later, they look back and ask themselves:
Did I actually want this?
Or did I just absorb the priorities of everyone around me?
The more I think about it, the more I believe that many moments we describe as “having no opinion” aren’t really about a lack of intelligence or critical thinking.
They’re about being surrounded by so many voices that it’s difficult to hear our own.
There’s a real-world example that comes to mind.
The investor Charlie Munger often spoke about a habit he used when making important decisions.
Instead of looking for evidence that confirmed his beliefs, he deliberately searched for ways he might be wrong.
He would force himself to examine the opposite side of the argument.
Not because he enjoyed changing his mind.
But because he knew how easy it is to become trapped inside your own assumptions.
Many investors and business leaders later adopted similar practices.
Some even started keeping detailed records of their decisions.
Because they noticed something fascinating.
People are remarkably good at rewriting history.
When a decision works out, we tend to believe we knew it all along.
When it doesn’t, we quietly adjust our memory of what we originally thought.
That’s one reason researchers often talk about something called a decision journal.
The idea is simple.
Whenever you’re making an important decision, write down your reasoning.
Not the outcome you’re hoping for.
Not what eventually happens.
Just your thinking at that moment.
Why do you believe this is the right choice?
What assumptions are you making?
What could prove you wrong?
Then revisit those notes months later.
You may discover that some of your best decisions came from clear reasoning.
And some of your worst decisions came from emotion, social pressure, fear of missing out, or simply following the crowd.
What I like about this practice is that it doesn’t make you smarter overnight.
It makes you more aware.
It allows you to see patterns in your own thinking.
And once you can see those patterns, you can start improving them.
The older I get, the more I think that having a mind of your own isn’t a personality trait.
It’s a skill.
A skill that gets developed through practice.
And perhaps the most surprising part is that real judgment doesn’t look like stubbornness.
In fact, it often looks like the opposite.
People with strong judgment are usually willing to change their minds.
They’re open to new information.
They listen to opposing viewpoints.
They accept that they might be wrong.
But they also understand something important:
Being open-minded doesn’t mean handing your decisions over to someone else.
That’s the difference.
Stubborn people refuse to change.
People with judgment are willing to change—but they still take responsibility for deciding.
So before we wrap up, I’d like to leave you with a question.
Think about the last major decision that changed the direction of your life.
Do you remember why you made it?
Not what happened afterward.
Not whether it worked out.
But why you chose it in the first place.
Was that decision based on your own judgment?
Or was it based on someone else’s expectations?
