Belief comes second

Imagine you’re 42.

You’re good at your job.

You’ve stopped expecting it to turn into anything else, and most days that’s fine.

That was Tony in 1999.

He ran the kitchen at a French brasserie in Manhattan, a job that comes with a white jacket and no expectation that anyone outside the building will ever learn your name.

He’d written two crime novels a few years earlier.

Almost nobody bought them.

Then he wrote an essay about what really goes on in restaurant kitchens.

How it got to The New Yorker is the kind of thing you’d cut from a movie for being too convenient.

As the story is usually told, his mother, Gladys, worked at The New York Times with a woman named Esther Fein, and Esther was married to the New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick.

By Tony’s own account, Remnick called while he was filleting a salmon (which is a hard position from which to sound casual).

The essay ran that April as “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.”

The next year it became a book called Kitchen Confidential.

And the cook named Tony became the Anthony Bourdain we know and love.

Yes, the mother-at-the-Times part was luck.

Most of us don’t have a mom who can slide our work across a magazine editor’s desk.

But luck needs something to slide.

Two flops in, he could’ve said screw it.

He wrote the thing anyway.

So when did Tony become a writer?

When the phone rang, or when he sat down to write after two books that didn’t sell?

Most of us have the order backward.

We think we have to believe first, and then we can start.

Once I feel like a writer, I’ll write.

Once I feel competent, I’ll start my side hustle.

The rest of this series is about how to start.

This one’s about the order.

Because the order runs the opposite way than what you’d think.

You act, the action leaves evidence, and the evidence slowly talks you into believing.

Belief comes second.

It works in reverse, too.

Years of not doing something count as evidence, which is how the old labels stick:

I’m not a business person.

I’m bad at selling myself.

I’m not the creative one.

Repeat one long enough and you stop checking it.

You skip the class or close the job listing because that’s not who you are, and the skipping becomes more proof.

Act Your Way In

Then where does belief come from, if you can’t wait for it?

In 1967, a psychologist named Daryl Bem laid out an idea that sounds strange the first time you hear it (and only slightly less strange the second).

We learn what we believe about ourselves partly the way we learn about other people: by watching what we do.

If you see a stranger running at six every morning, you assume she’s a runner.

You don’t ask how she feels about running.

Bem argued that we read ourselves the same way, especially when our inner signals are weak or mixed.

Which is a polite description of an overthinker’s entire life.

Your feelings can’t settle the question, so your brain watches what you do and takes notes.

And it’s a problem if the evidence is mostly you thinking about it, instead of doing it.

Herminia Ibarra spent years studying people who changed careers in midlife, people who were good at a job they’d stopped wanting.

She was a professor at INSEAD, the business school outside Paris, and her book Working Identity follows them as they tried to get out.

The ones who made it usually didn’t start with a clear answer.

They started with small tries, and she saw the same three moves over and over.

They crafted experiments.**

They tried the new work on the side, in a project or a short assignment, small enough that they didn’t have to quit anything first.

For you, that might be one freelance job, or a weekend course that ends in a real assignment.

They shifted their connections.

They spent time with people already doing the work, who showed them it was possible and gave them a new yardstick to measure themselves against.

For you, it might start with one coffee (virtual or IRL) with someone in a field you’re curious about.

They made sense of it afterward.

Only after the tries did they figure out who they were becoming, and tell themselves a new story that connected who they’d been to who they were turning into.

Ibarra later named the view you get from doing outsight (the opposite of insight).

For you, that means you don’t need the ending to the story before you start.

You’ll write it on the way.

Trying on a new identity works a lot like trying on a costume.

It’s stiff at first and maybe a little big in the shoulders.

But even if it doesn’t fit perfectly, the more you wear it, the more it settles on your frame and you learn to love it.

Aka you grow into it.

How to Try On a New Identity

I have a genetic blood condition, so I grew up as the careful kid.

When I moved to Bali in 2019, where almost everyone gets around on a scooter, I’d spent years telling myself I wasn’t a motorbike guy, afraid that if I crashed I’d bleed out due to my low platelets.

(My older brother, on the other hand, loved them since we were boys. I rode on the back of his BMW, once, which felt like the right amount of motorcycle for me.)

One night I realized I’d never actually tried.

So I woke up the next morning and told myself, “I’m a guy who rides motorcycles,” and then immediately went to the shop, rented a 150cc scooter, and learned in about an hour.

A couple of months later, a friend and I spent a week riding the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Vietnam.

And the physical act of riding wasn’t that hard (which was the annoying part).

The most frustrating piece was how long it took to realize all I needed to change was my mental narrative about myself.

You have a lifetime, or at least many years, of a well-worn narrative about yourself, and if you’re going to change it, that takes time.

The old stories you tell yourself about yourself don’t disappear overnight.

The new one needs feeding, too, because identity has a half-life.

Even once you’ve started the actions, it can take time for your new sense of identity to catch up.

Stop adding proof, and the new you slowly fades back into the old story you used to tell.

So here’s a practical way to start moving toward the new version of yourself:

First, write the sentence.

Pick the identity you want to try on and say it the way you’d state a fact:

I’m the kind of person who ________.

Think of it as a guess about yourself, one you can check by Sunday.

Second, give it one piece of proof this week.

Pick a proof small enough that you’ll finish it this week, even badly (the first one usually is).

This week’s proof: ________.

A few examples:

• I’m the kind of person who writes. This week’s proof: one paragraph (or page) shown to someone you love, or posted where at least one person can read it.
• I’m someone who freelances. This week’s proof: one small gig outside the day job, even a free one.
• I’m the kind of person who speaks up. This week’s proof: one question out loud in Thursday’s meeting.
• I’m a runner. This week’s proof: one run. Any distance, any speed.
• I’m someone who’s going to live abroad. This week’s proof: open a savings account and name it after the city.

The template has no line for how confident you feel.

Confidence shows up later, as a side effect of the proof.

But every proof is a receipt, and your brain has a hard time arguing with receipts.

Build the proof that you’re who you say you are, and one day you’ll believe it.

Overthinkers run this loop backward.

We wait to feel like the person, plan to act (but don’t), and the feeling never comes, because nothing’s happened yet to cause it.

Why We Start Here

This is why we start with belief.

Every tool that follows (the spotlight, the price, the bet, the score) is a faster, cheaper way to collect proof.

None of them asks you to feel brave first.

So skip the part where you wait to feel like that person.

Give them one piece of proof this week, and let the belief catch up.

Action leads to clarity, not the other way around.

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The Short Version

• Belief comes second. You act, the action leaves evidence, and the evidence talks you into believing.
• We learn who we are partly by watching what we do, especially when our feelings can’t settle the question (Daryl Bem).
• People who change careers in midlife act their way in with three moves: small experiments, new connections, and a new story told afterward (Herminia Ibarra).
• Try on an identity like a costume: “I’m the kind of person who ___. This week’s proof: ___.”
• Make the proof small enough to finish this week, even badly. Confidence shows up later, as a side effect.

This week’s Small Brave Step: Write your identity sentence.

Do one small piece of proof before Sunday.

This week’s question: What identity have you been wanting to step into but waiting to feel ready for first?