Conviction: The Muscle That Shapes Reality
Reality is Make Believe
There’s a line from the book Outsmarting Reality that stuck with me: “If you could simply cultivate conviction in your desired reality already existing or being inevitable, then your desired reality would simply materialize. With a powerful degree of conviction, techniques wouldn’t even be necessary.”
It sounds absurdly simple, right? Just believe hard enough and reality bends to your will. My first reaction was, “That’s bullshit.” But as I wallowed in the idea, it dawned on me that this is exactly how I have been getting exactly what I want all my life — I was just calling it something else.
Conviction isn’t about closing your eyes and chanting affirmations until you pass out. Conviction is that deep, unshakable knowing — the kind of certainty you don’t have to rehearse because it’s woven into you. Like knowing the sun will rise tomorrow. I’ve felt that knowing, and so have you.
But as adults, we often need to remind ourselves how that works. We might need a little practice. As someone who has lived a high-agency life and figured out how to overcome obstacles time and time again, I’m going to try teach you how to have high conviction in this article.
The Difference Between Conviction and Bravado
Getting what you want out of life is often sold as the product of individual genius or charisma. The cult of personality that has become the current narrative. Apparently if you combine enough bravado, charm, and persistence, you’ll be able to distort reality and achieve unattainable goals.
Steve Jobs’s “reality distortion field” was a term coined by Apple’s Bud Tribble to describe Jobs’s immense charisma, passion, and persuasive abilities that made people, including himself, believe in the impossible and overcome daunting challenges. While this idea of Job’s field is a blend of hyperbole and marketing, it also includes something we all have: conviction.
Not all of us have Jobs’s personality but each of us have experienced conviction. We’ve all felt something with such clarity that it was impossible to ignore. However, most of us have forgotten how it feels or maybe we’re just are amateurs at conviction. Steve Jobs developed that skill over many years and through many challenges.
We want something but immediately tack on a disclaimer: “I’ll try, but it’s hard.” Or: “I want this, but what if it doesn’t work out?” That little word but kills conviction faster than a cold shower.
The truth is that conviction is less like brute force and more like a muscle. You can train it. You can condition it. And once it’s strong enough, it starts doing the heavy lifting of manifestation for you.
The Obstacles to Developing Conviction
While there are obviously many thing that can get in your way, they can be summarized as these three things:
- Doubt. The mental virus that whispers “what if” and pulls you back into hesitation.
- Evidence addiction. We’re conditioned to only believe what we can see, forgetting that what we see usually follows what we believe.
- Identity mismatch. If you still think of yourself as “not the kind of person who…” then conviction short-circuits before it can spark.
Developing conviction is similar to developing courage. When you’re courageous you’re simply doing the thing in spite of the fear or anxiety you might have. Anais Nin said that, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” And so it is with conviction. Life expands when you have it, and shrinks when you don’t.
Why Some People Manifest Their Dream Without Trying
You know those people who seem to glide through life like they’ve got a backstage pass? Why do some people distort reality and others just live in it.? They’re not wizards. They’ve just stopped doubting their own baseline certainty. They assume things will work out, so they do. Kids do this naturally. The rest of us learned doubt. We practiced hesitation until it became a habit.
This lack of doubt isn’t reserved for the chosen few. It’s not intelligence, privilege, or education. Even infants have conviction. What separates those who bend reality from those who don’t isn’t capacity, but conditioning. Conviction is universal. You already have it in certain areas of your life — you just forgot.
Don’t Confuse Conviction With Brute Force
Another frequent conflation is thinking conviction is just hard work. Without doubt hard work helps, but this isn’t clenching your jaw and grinding your teeth until something “sticks.” It’s working with a relaxed certainty. Like leaning back into a chair without checking whether it’s going to collapse. Brute force creates tension. True conviction feels almost casual like you’ve already arrived at your destination and reality is just catching up. Because you’ve assumed the outcome you want, you feel confident and that leads to more conviction. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
Here’s a more practical loop of how this works; first your conviction directs your attention, then your attention shapes your actions, your actions generate evidence and finally, the evidence reinforces your conviction.
It’s not metaphysical hand-waving. It’s how human nervous systems function. Believe something is inevitable, and your brain and body conspire to make it real. More importantly, your conviction signals to others that you know what you want and they get in on the action.
Self-Love + Conviction: The One-Two Punch
As mentioned before, doubt is the obstacle. Doubt is just another way of saying you don’t trust yourself. You don’t trust your ideas. Put another way, you don’t love your ideas, or yourself enough to trust yourself
Self-love isn’t just about indulgence or affirmations. It’s the steady recognition that your worth doesn’t depend on outcomes, approval, or constant striving. It’s saying to yourself: I am enough, as I am, and I can still grow. Without self-love, conviction is brittle. It becomes overcompensation — trying to prove yourself to others, chasing validation, or defending a fragile identity.
Why Self-Love Matters So Much
Conviction is the outward expression of an inward truth. It’s a clear signal to everyone around you. It’s the clarity to say: This is the direction I choose, this is what I stand for.
Real conviction doesn’t come from sheer willpower or stubbornness. It comes from being anchored. That anchor is self-love. When you trust yourself, you don’t need every decision to be perfect or universally approved. Conviction then becomes quieter, steadier, less about forcing and more about holding a line with grace. When you care for yourself, you can risk having convictions. You can tolerate being misunderstood, because you’re not dependent on outside approval for your sense of self.
And, when you act with conviction, you prove to yourself that your inner compass matters. Each aligned decision reinforces your belief that you’re someone worth listening to, which deepens self-love.
Without self-love you may think, “What if I fail again? What if I can’t change?” Conviction is paralyzed because self-criticism is louder than self-trust. With self-love your inner voice can say, “Even if I don’t transform overnight, I am worth the investment of time and care. I can stand in my conviction that giving myself this experience matters.” Here, conviction is simply self-love in motion.
A Simple Equation
If you need a simple way to remember this, or get a fun tattoo, ou could think of it as:
Self-Love is the permission to be. Conviction is the courage to act.
When they work together, you get integrity: your actions are an authentic extension of your inner acceptance.
Conviction rarely shows up without self-love. You can’t trust your desires if you don’t trust yourself. Loving yourself means believing your ideas and feelings are valid. Conviction takes that love and broadcasts it until reality has no choice but to respond.
Expectation Creates Reality
Expectation is conviction’s cousin. Expect the worst, and congratulations, you’ve prepaid for misery. Expect the best, and you’ve already wired gratitude into the system before it arrives. Anticipation isn’t passive — it’s active creation.
Believe you can or believe you can’t, and you’re right. The trick is discernment. Some convictions align with your purpose; others are inherited scripts you’ve been running unconsciously. The body usually knows the difference: aligned conviction feels expansive, misaligned conviction feels tight and contracted.
Training the Muscle To Create Your Reality
Here’s the practical part. Conviction is a muscle that needs to be trained. This training happens when you’re consistent with how you think, speak and act. As we say at my house, “think it, speak it, and do the work.”
Start by keeping your micro-promises. If you say you’ll you’re going to do something, then do it. If you say you’ll call, call. Each kept promise reinforces trust in yourself. You’re training your mid to see the connection between thinking, speaking and doing. Your identity becomes one where commitments to creating new realities is as normal as breathing.
Flip the script. Notice where you’re already practicing conviction in the wrong direction (“I always fail at this”). Reverse it (“I always grow through this”). Reality doesn’t have an opinion about good or bad, it just delivers on whatever you’re most committed to.
If you want to nerd out a bit, run a conviction ledger. Each day, jot down one piece of evidence that reality is responding to you. A coincidence, a small win, a synchronicity. Stack the proof until it becomes undeniable.
Hold certainty sessions. For five minutes, speak aloud what you know is inevitable. No hype, no straining. Just calm statements of inevitability.
Filtering Other People’s Realities
One of the biggest traps is living in realities that aren’t yours. The world trains us to expect the worst because bad news sells. But you don’t have to buy it. You live in the reality you filter for.
Some practical filters that you can start today are things like media fasting. Less doomscrolling, more intentional inputs. As my trainer used to say, “Crap in, crap out.” Be intentional with your thoughts and words. Think about what you’re thinking about.
Frame your reality with clear statements. Start the day with “I live in a reality where…” and finish the sentence. Stating your intentions has a way of creating those same outcomes. Notice how few people actually know what they want and can articulate it clearly.
You’re ultimately a product of your thoughts, words and your actions, but you’re also deeply influenced by others ideas, words and actions so select your people carefully. Spend time with people whose convictions reinforce your own. The old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” has more to do with who you hang with, than if you know influential people.
Living a Convicted Life
Conviction isn’t mystical. It’s a loop: self-love → your belief → expectation → action → evidence → reinforced belief. Each cycle strengthens the muscle.
The more evidence your mind gathers that you are who you say you are, the more reality believes you too. And that’s the secret: you’re not trying to convince the world, you’re convincing yourself. Reality just follows orders.
If you’ve been treating conviction like a lucky mood that sometimes shows up, stop. Make it a conscious practice. Train it. Keep your ledger. Expect success. Because when you believe deeply enough, the universe doesn’t argue — it complies.
This perspective on hacking reality, and many more, are the basis of the work we do at Second harvest. At Second Harvest we’re not another self-help program. Instead we run a series of retreats and gatherings designed for people at midlife who want more from their second act without the grind of their first. We meet in beautiful places, around long tables, and through shared adventures, where people can step back, see their lives with fresh perspective, and make choices with courage and clarity. There are no gurus or gimmicks, just a community of peers willing to do the work of becoming who they need to be next. Consider joining us.
