I will never forget the day I learned to have an opinion.
I was 27 years old.
I had enough experience in my career to know a few things, but not enough to have developed much of a voice. I was still learning how to sit at the table, how to listen, how to read a room—and, if I’m being candid, how to feel like I belonged in one.
At that age, I was given a phenomenal and fairly rare opportunity: my job put me around senior leaders at a Fortune 500 company on a regular basis.
One particular day, I found myself sitting in the executive boardroom.
I had dressed for the occasion the best I could while trying to pay for all the things—rent, car, a pet, fun Dallas outings, and travel. I was wearing a Michael Kors dress with a Banana Republic blazer and the nicest jewelry I owned, doing my best to look like I belonged among the Judith Ripka jewelry and Neiman Marcus suits around me.
I felt a little out of the circle.
So I did what I knew to do. I listened. I took notes. I watched. I tried to absorb as much as I could.
It was going fine until the leader of the leaders opened the floor for questions and comments.
I kept taking notes.
I kept listening.
And then, completely caught off guard, I heard my name.
In what must have been one second, I lived what felt like a year in my head.
Excuse me, come again. They’re asking me?
What should I say?
What do I think?
What am I supposed to think?
How should I say it?
What will they think of me after I answer?
I don’t remember exactly what I said.
I remember that it wasn’t brilliant.
It wasn’t particularly poignant. It wasn’t the best response I could have given. It certainly wasn’t the kind of strategic observation that would have made everyone in the room stop and think.
I fumbled through it.
But I have never forgotten that moment.
Because something happened that day that had nothing to do with the answer I gave.
They wanted to know what I thought.
Me.
In a room full of people who were far more experienced, far more senior and, in my 27-year-old mind, far more important than me, someone had decided that my perspective was worth hearing.
It was a small moment.
But it changed something in me.
That was the day I realized my voice matters.
And from that day forward, I have never been without an opinion.
I don’t always share them. You probably don’t want me to.
But if you ask me what I think, you can pretty much count on me having an answer.
In fact, I probably spend too much time in my head formulating them.
I think about situations from six different angles. I turn things over. I consider the options. I notice what works and what doesn’t. I develop theories. I change my mind. I form a new one.
Some people might call that discernment.
Other people might say I overthink.
They may both be right.
But somewhere along the way, I’ve come to realize that having an opinion isn’t really about being opinionated.
It’s about knowing yourself well enough to have a point of view.
And I think that’s an underrated part of living a good life.
We live in a world that is very good at telling us what to like.
What to wear.
What our homes should look like.
What we should buy.
Where we should go.
What we should cook.
What is in style.
What everyone else is doing.
There is an endless supply of people willing to give us an answer before we’ve had a chance to figure out what we think.
And sometimes that’s useful.
I love a good recommendation.
I love Pinterest.
I love seeing a beautiful outfit or a well dressed home and thinking, Oh, that’s good.
But inspiration is different from instruction.
At some point, you have to decide for yourself.
Do I actually like this?
Does this work for my life?
Is this worth my money?
Is this me?
What do I think?
That last question has become one of my favorites.
Because having an opinion gives you something incredibly valuable:
agency.
You don’t have to buy the thing because everyone else is buying it.
You don’t have to decorate your house the way everyone else is decorating theirs.
You don’t have to wear the trend.
You don’t have to agree.
You don’t even have to have a particularly sophisticated reason.
You can simply say, I don’t like it.
Or, perhaps more importantly:
I do.
That confidence doesn’t appear overnight.
It comes from paying attention.
Trying things.
Getting things wrong.
Changing your mind.
Figuring out what makes you feel good and what doesn’t.
Learning the difference between something being objectively beautiful and something being beautiful to you.
And then deciding what you think.
And once you know what you think, you don’t need everyone else to agree.
Because your voice matters.
It mattered when I was 27 and sitting quietly in a Fortune 500 boardroom, wondering why anyone would want to hear what I had to say.
And it matters now.
Yours does, too.
Have an opinion.
You don’t always have to share it.
But know what you think.
