You are not like Elon Musk
aka, it's safe for you to trust your opinions
In case you hadn’t noticed, Twitter is kind of a dumpster fire right now.
Really, it’s kind of amazing to see how one man’s arrogance is enough to bring down something so beloved and huge. Even more astonishing that we currently have multiple examples - Trump, Elon and Kanye all unravelling before us in real and terrible time.
It makes me wonder if there’s a name for this affliction - for the warped sense of certainty that comes from power and wealth. Is this precise constellation of disorders covered in the DSM? I wonder if all the worst men in history didn’t share in a similar missed diagnosis. Even on his deathbed Hitler apparently insisted that his biggest mistake was that he had just been “too kind”.
Clearly, self-awareness is a gift not afforded to everyone.
There are so, so many reasons to be concerned by the impending Twitter-storm. Much has already been written on the worst of it - the threats to democracy, the surging hate speech, the job cuts and death of essential communities.
But there’s another, quieter risk I see that’s quite specific to you and me, and to all of the thoughtful, big-hearted creative types that I tend to hang out with online.
I think there’s a very real danger of us over-extrapolating the lesson here.
Because if anything, most people I speak to have the exact opposite problem in life.
The example I tend to use with coaching clients is this: You are not the singer who doesn’t know that they’re awful on The X Factor (or America’s Got Talent). You are not delusional.
It is safe for you to trust your discernment, your gut instinct, your own opinion of your own living self. In fact, it’s really essential; outsourcing this to others - even for the very best of reasons - can only ever lead to people-pleasing paralysis in the end.
Outsourcing Confidence
The problem with examples like Elon and X-Factor singers is that we internalise them as warnings. What if we’re like that? Is everyone secretly laughing at us? What if we’re deluded?
Often the roots of this fear spiral all the way back to our youth. If you ever were teased for ‘not getting it’, for being different, for doing things wrong. Maybe you’re neurodivergent and didn’t get the same precise social rulebook others seem to have automatically implanted at birth. Maybe you just never quite fit in, or were just raised a little differently from everyone else.
It all adds to the quiet compelling narrative that says you can’t trust yourself. That other people - those looking in from the outside - see you more clearly than you ever could.
So the brain has a plan: defer to what everyone outside of us thinks for proof. We’ll collect empirical evidence of whether we’re right or not based on other people’s reactions, and only trust our own judgement when other people agree.
It’s not a bad plan, per se. The only problem with this is that other people are often idiots. They are also grumpy, misguided, distracted, jealous, uninformed, inexperienced, and wholly unaware of the job we’ve recruited them for.
So they say the wrong things - or don’t say the right things, at least - or sometimes they don’t say anything at all, and our confidence swings wildly and sickeningly in the wind.
Receive some praise and we’re soaring - we can do this, it’s going to be ok! Then one negative comment or email lands and we’re back on the ground - heavier and less ready to leap the next time a warm draught of confidence comes along.
In the words of a random quote I once found and then lost again on Pinterest: If you live for people’s approval you’ll die by their rejection.
All the wrong people have self-esteem
So when I watch Elon Musk blithely, cluelessly flail at Twitter HQ with all the confidence of an X Factor caterwaul, I worry that we’ll see it as proof. That he reinforces a pattern already lodged deeply into our hearts and our minds - that this is what happens when you trust yourself too much.
But in hundreds of hours of coaching and classes and DMs and coffee-shop conversations and catch-ups with friends, I have yet to meet a single person for who this is actually true. It’s a bit like psychopathy; if you’re worried you have it, then you definitely don’t.
In fact, pretty much every single person I talk to would be so greatly helped by a little bit of deluded confidence. They need more self-belief, so much more self-trust. They need to see for themselves that their discernment is sound.
Believe me when I say: there is zero risk of you going from one extreme to the other - at least, not until you inherit a fortune from an Apartheid emerald mine, become the world’s richest billionaire and spend a couple of decades surrounded by soul-sucking sycophants and terminally online 4chan goons.
So if you must look for outside confirmation to validate your instincts, then please, for the love of your wonderful soul, only defer to the opinions of people who are qualified to judge. People who know you, warts and all - who love you, believe in you and really want you to succeed.
And ideally, who also understand the intricate landscape of the question at hand. Your Grandma might not be best placed to offer you tips for your Only Fans. Turn to others in the arena alongside you whenever you’re seeking advice.
These are the people who can offer an informed opinion, at least. Or better yet, who can demonstrate the faith they have in yours.
People will be wrong about you sometimes. That’s ok. You’re still safe. You don’t have to take their opinions on board; your life is not run by a committee, and you don’t ever have to change anyone’s mind.
Because it’s not the failing that makes Elon Musk as popular as a rabid dog running roughshod through a children’s picnic. It’s the refusal to learn from it, to reflect on the missteps and to grow
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Love this so much Sara. Thank you for posting. x
This was profoundly timely, Sara. Thank you. Something that dawned on me as I was reading this is that it is actually unfair of me to place so much power to sway my life on other people. Even those who are well-meaning should not shoulder the burden of having that much power over my life. I certainly wouldn’t want that much power myself. I wonder if not trusting myself, rather than being an act of humility, is in fact harming me AND the people around me. Epiphany moments. All that to say, thank you for sending this exactly on time (for me).