Part 4 of 19 in Trust Yourself: A Guide for Indian Parents← Part 3Part 5 →
Last week, as I sat in my clinic after a long day, I found myself reflecting on a sentence that has quietly but persistently shaped my approach to both medicine and investing: “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” This simple yet profound statement has served as a guiding principle in a world that often feels increasingly complex and overwhelming. It’s a sentence that I’ve seen to be true in the delivery room, the boardroom, and the classroom.
In the clinic, I encounter many couples who are overwhelmed by the myriad of advice available online regarding fertility treatments. Each suggestion, each blog post, and each forum thread offers a different “uniform” for their child’s conception—a concept mirroring the various parenting methods the world throws at new parents. Whether it’s the latest diet that promises a miracle or a new technique that claims to be the definitive answer to infertility, couples often feel pressured to conform to these external prescriptions. But I remind them, as I remind myself, that the expertise they possess about their own bodies and their own lives is invaluable. They are not mere consumers of medical advice; they are active participants in their healthcare journey.
This same principle applies in the realm of angel investing. I’ve met numerous founders who are bombarded with advice on how to structure their decks, pitch their ideas, and scale their businesses. Much like parenting, entrepreneurship has become professionalized to the point where the founder’s original vision can be drowned by a sea of expert opinions. But the truth is, the intuition that led them to start their venture in the first place is a vital asset. While it’s important to listen to experienced voices, it’s equally important to trust one’s own judgment.
The real challenge lies in balancing external advice with internal conviction. There is certainly value in learning from those who have tread the path before us. A seasoned paediatrician, for example, can spot patterns in child development that a first-time parent might miss. Similarly, veteran investors can often foresee pitfalls that a novice entrepreneur might overlook. But expertise should never overshadow the unique insight that comes from living with and observing one’s own situation day in and day out.
I recall a conversation I had with a founder I backed, who was struggling to navigate the conflicting advice he was receiving from various investors. He was being told to pivot his business model, to hire aggressively, and to focus on rapid scaling—all conflicting strategies. In the end, it was his decision to trust his initial vision and pace that saved his company from burning out. It was a risk, certainly, but a calculated one rooted in his intimate understanding of his product and market. He didn’t discard expert advice, but he didn’t surrender to it either. He took the pattern, but refused the surrender.
This journey of trusting oneself is mirrored in education reform, a field close to my heart. The Indian education system has long been mired in a rigid structure that often overlooks the individual needs and talents of students. Parents are inundated with a barrage of educational fads—Vedic maths, abacus, Montessori, and so on. Each method promises to be the key to unlocking their child’s potential, yet none of these methods were tailored specifically for their child. As I have argued in Why I Still Trust a Chalkboard Over AI Tools in My Kids’ Education, it is the personalized attention and understanding of a child’s unique needs that truly fosters learning.
When my own children ask “Why?”—a question that AI tools often fail to adequately address—I see it as an opportunity to engage with their curiosity directly. This is the same principle I apply in my investments; I prefer a face-to-face conversation over a startup pitch deck because it allows me to engage with the founder’s vision in a way that a slide cannot capture. Understanding the “why” behind a founder’s passion or a student’s curiosity is where the real insights lie.
In all these domains—medicine, investing, and education—the common thread is the courage to trust one’s own insights, even against the backdrop of an industry or society that insists it knows better. It’s about recognizing the value of lived experience and personal conviction. It’s about understanding that while experts provide valuable guidance, they do not live with the day-to-day realities of our individual journeys.
In the end, the sentence that still matters is not just a piece of advice but a reminder of responsibility. It is a call to action for parents, founders, and individuals to engage actively with their own realities, to observe, to learn, and to make informed decisions based on the unique contexts they understand best. This is not arrogance; it is an honest acknowledgment of the work that experts cannot do for us. It’s the reason I believe that trusting your instincts is crucial, whether in the clinic or the boardroom, as I detailed in Why Trusting Your Instincts Matters in Both the Clinic and the Boardroom.
The world will continue to present us with methods, systems, and advice—each with its own merits. But in our pursuit of success and fulfillment, let us not forget to trust the quiet, persistent voice that says, “You know more than you think you do.” It is this voice that has the power to navigate us through the complexities of life, unshackled by the pressure to conform to an external narrative. It is the voice that encourages us to write our own stories, in our own words, on our own terms.