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Betting on yourself is choosing, despite every bit of evidence in front of you, to just do the thing. To take the unmarked road in the dark — no map, no prior experience, no guarantee you'll arrive anywhere worth going. Just a stubborn, maybe irrational certainty that your wit, your resilience, your particular way of moving through the world will be enough. And so you start walking.
The bet doesn't look the same for everyone. For some people it's starting the thing — the business, the project, the creative pursuit they've been quietly tending like a secret. For others it's deciding to completely decenter the people who have been living rent free at the center of your life — your family, men, whoever. Maybe it's deciding to prioritize parts of yourself you've never done before. It's finally letting yourself want what you actually want sexually, without apology, without shrinking it into something more palatable. It's looking at the version of yourself you're currently living and deciding it's just too heavy. Not broken or wrong, just too heavy, and not fitting of your value or your desires. And setting it down. The bet is whatever the thing is that you've been talking yourself out of. But you, at the end of the day, are the best bet.
Betting on yourself will scare you shitless. At least it did me. Last year, after a second layoff in tech and a slew of rejections, I co-founded my own design and marketing studio with my cofounder, both of us from tech but also having spent significant time in the ad agency world. We were self-funding, which while it doesn't come with the overhead of physical products, still comes with costs. I'm not currently funding my retirement in the way I'd like, or saving the way I'd like. But oddly, I care about that way less than I thought I would. Because somewhere underneath the fear is this quiet certainty that I will be ok. That I am too smart, too skilled, too determined to not be. Cocky? Sure. But when you got it, you got it.
It crystallized, of all places, at AVN — the world's most accredited porn conference. I was running around with a microphone, interviewing performers and sex robots, in a sea of men in bad footwear and questionable life choices. And there we all were under the fluorescent glow of a conference floor in Vegas. I felt more myself than I had in years. Myself in that I didn't feel a need to conceal my past as a sex worker, myself in that I could be creative and ask thought provoking questions and curate a story about the state of AI in the industry. And then an editor I had pitched published a story with coverage of AVN, similar to the one I had pitched, down to some of the buzzwords. It was fairly inferior, if I'm being honest. It stung, sure. But it cemented something. It became clear to me that I understood culturally important and relevant moments, the ones that work, the ones that deserve to be editorialized. That I could bring a narrative that hasn't been fully fleshed out or realized in the way that it deserves. No one can do what I do. Again, cocky. I know.
The contrast came not long after, at a corporate women in marketing event where all I felt was dread. There was this overwhelming feeling that some of the people there really hated what they were doing, chasing a world that would only give them recognition in the form of a once yearly event during women's history month. More concerned with the optics of it than anything else. I don't want to be in just one room. I want to explore everything — the creator space, the marketing world, the editorial world, the tech world, all of it. But that room didn't feel like one of mine.
I've been trying to trace where this hunger actually comes from. Part of it has come from understanding my past. My father and I are not close, but from what I do know, he owns his own supply store for building equipment. His father, my grandfather, owned a Greek diner for years. And his parents, my great-grandparents, owned a tailoring and leather business in Greece before the war. People who built things. People who made something from nothing, long before I ever thought to do the same.
But I also think it came from being around people who are not in the corporate space but have had wildly successful careers entirely on their own terms. From podcasts, from books, from watching people figure it out in real time and realizing, oh, there is still a path. Maybe corporate was never the destination for me. Maybe it was just the training ground. It gave me structure, technical skills, the ability to build systems and processes. But the hustle, the eye, the desire to make something, that it did not give me. That was already there. It has always been there. And still, some days, I have to fight to hear it.
As loud as that voice of not believing in yourself is, you must not listen to it. You have to ignore it. It has no idea what it's talking about. And yes, I do believe sometimes it's there to protect you, especially if you are someone who has experienced trauma. But at a certain point protection can become harm. It can hinder you from doing the thing. Whatever the thing is. Something absurd like starting a business, or putting yourself back on the dating market, or trying new fashion choices, or just chasing your dreams. Whatever it is, I think you should do the thing.
I wish I could tell you there are ten easy steps to getting comfortable with doing the thing — some framework, some checklist, some clean path to confidence. But I think it's messier than that. I think one day it just clicks. You get tired of feeling the way you've been feeling, or you get hungry for something more, and something shifts. And when that moment comes, you have to move. You have to lean into it before the window closes.
You have to develop a faith in yourself that no one else can hand you. It comes with time, and honestly, with failure. Most people are far more resilient than they give themselves credit for — but resilience isn't something you either have or you don't. It's something you build. And the only way I know to build it is to put yourself in rooms where you're probably going to hear no. To pitch the thing, apply for the thing, ask for the thing, and get rejected, and do it again. Not because rejection stops hurting, but because it starts to hurt less. You get desensitized. The no loses its power. And somewhere in that process, without really noticing, you've made yourself harder to stop.
I'd also be remiss not to acknowledge the state of the world right now. It feels too precious, too self-protective, to sit on the sideline of your own life when everything outside of it already feels uncertain enough.
Now, I'm not going to say you shouldn't be strategic about your dreams — you absolutely should. Name the thing, say it out loud, even if only to yourself. Your words are powerful. Your thoughts are powerful. You have to tell yourself you can, and then that you will. Some days that will feel true. Other days you'll have to say it anyway, into the dark, on the unmarked road, before any evidence arrives to back you up. And here's the thing about a bet — it only means something because you could lose. Anyone can back a sure thing. The courage is in placing the chips down anyway, knowing the outcome isn't guaranteed, knowing you might walk away with nothing, and deciding that you are still worth the risk. That's the bet. Your best bet in life is yourself.
