Trust Your Instincts

The Moment

There is a point in training when Gunner knows what he has been taught.

He has practiced the command. He understands the expectation. He has succeeded before.

And yet there are moments when he looks back at me as if to ask, “Are you sure?”

Sometimes he needs direction. But sometimes the next step is his to take.

If I keep supplying reassurance for something he already knows how to do, I am not building confidence. I am teaching dependence.

That lesson has stayed with me because leaders do the same thing to themselves.

The Leadership Lesson

Experience is only useful if we eventually trust ourselves enough to use it.

Strong leaders gather facts, listen to perspective, test assumptions, and consider consequences. But good judgment cannot become an endless search for one more opinion.

There comes a point when additional reassurance does not improve the decision. It only delays ownership of it.

We ask another person. Run the numbers one more time. Revisit a decision we have already made. Wait for someone with a bigger title to validate what our experience is already telling us.

That is not always diligence. Sometimes it is hesitation disguised as analysis.

Self-trust is not arrogance. It does not mean believing we cannot be wrong. It means accepting that leadership sometimes requires making the best decision available without the comfort of certainty.

The goal is not to eliminate doubt. The goal is to keep doubt from becoming the person making the decision.

On the Trail

Look at a decision you have been carrying longer than necessary.

Do you genuinely need more information — or are you looking for more reassurance?

What do you already know?

What has your experience taught you?

What is the cost of continuing to wait?

Then make the call you are equipped to make and own the outcome.

Gunner reminds me that confidence is not built by being told what to do forever. At some point, you have to trust the training and move.

Trail Question

Where are you continuing to seek permission for a decision you are already equipped to make?