Taste as a Function of Confidence

Having a deep and innate sense of what you like and don’t like, subconscious decision making compass, and intuitive judgement is a gift.

It is also called taste.

We develop taste from experiencing the world, and collecting and processing a diversity of inputs that our subconscious accumulates and assesses over time. The more experiences we engage in and the more diversity we are exposed to, the broader our repository of content is to be able to evaluate things relative to one another. Taste is the ability to discern where things are on a variety of quality spectrums, and is unique and subjective to oneself.

Taste often comes up in style and aesthetic conversations, but can be applied to all other qualities: good and bad, moral and immoral, interesting and boring, promising or to be dismissed, etc. Taste is the internal ranking algorithm that orders things on those quality spectrums.

Taste becomes the filter through which we perceive life, evaluate life, and appreciate life. Taste is what subconsciously drives our curiosity, compels our attention, and informs our decisions. Developing and having taste shortcuts our mental processing - it gives us the ability to outsource judgement to intuition, and without requiring any external validation to confirm it’s right.

Taste is in some ways an expression of intuition, paired with a strong conviction in it.

Taste is an advantage because it makes us more efficient, clarifies our thinking, and makes it easier to live in full alignment with ourselves. Taste gives us the ability to choose, and to choose well.

Our taste also differentiates us. It is unique and dynamic, and cannot be commoditised. Every person has their own taste, their own intuitive opinions about what “good” looks and feels like. There is no objectively “good” taste, but some taste is more collectively shared with others. Leading with individual taste is leading with one’s intuition, outside of any external and objective measure.

The sensitivity to the world’s taste is another, separate skill. The choice and degree to which your subconscious is programmed to develop taste based on responsiveness to the collective vs a more individual frame of reference varies from person to person. One that has taste that aligns more with the collective is perhaps more empathetic. One can have individual taste, and yet still understand and be sensitive to the taste of others, but without it affecting their own. Understanding where and how you inherit your taste from is important, as it can make you more or less prone to succeed and differentiate in different fields.

for example, a consumer brand creator might benefit from an inheritance of taste from the popular and collective (for greater appeal). On the other hand, an inventor and artist might be better positioned to derive its sense of taste from an external and removed perspective (to think differently).

The conversation around taste tends to focus on what it takes to develop it, but not what it takes to use it and unlock its potential, which is confidence.

Having and developing taste is one thing, but remaining connected to our taste is another. In order to take advantage of our taste, we have to be able to access its insights and guidance, which requires developing the confidence to trust it.

Humans have a tendency to seek out external validation, first as we learn to survive and navigate the world, and after as an inherited mechanism to calibrate our value system in alignment with others. We grow up used to seeking taste signals from our environment, and have not been taught the playbook to look within.

Everyone has taste, but not everyone has the confidence to trust it.

The reason why authentic taste is rare is because becoming attuned internally is not an easy thing. In a world in which external validation is more accessible than ever - through social media, AI chat companions, or other tools - it becomes increasingly counter-intuitive to ignore and bypass others' opinions and sentiment and pursue opinionated, unique, and authentic thoughts.

The only way to tune in is to learn to override external signals with our own by practicing self-reliance. Practicing self-reliance entails giving credence to our own truth and judgement to inform our decisions and actions, independent of what anyone (or any other tool) thinks. It is a practice of going inside first by default, and reinforcing that heuristic. The practice of self-reliance creates the evidence required to develop self-confidence. This confidence is what enables us to trust our taste, but also what enables us to lead and influence others with it.

We are drawn to taste because we seek guidance for our decisions and opinions, but also because we seek confidence. We admire people’s taste not necessarily because we adhere to their aesthetic choices, but because we are inspired by the confidence they have in them.

What exudes confidence is also what we have a tendency to trust and follow. Taste is rare, possibly also because confidence is rare. Confidence is as aspirational as the style one leads with, and is perhaps the deeper reason why we admire taste so much.

While learning to cultivate individual taste is a great thing, our taste alone is not enough.

Realistically, we can’t develop taste for everything. We physically cannot capture and process all of the data available to cultivate our intuition in all domains. Taste is not universal. We outsource taste to tastemakers we trust by borrowing from their intuition. Hopefully have enough self-awareness to know where we are best positioned to develop taste, and where it matters most. The trick is to find the people who complement us, and who we can rely on to inform and guide our taste where we lack it.

The world needs an abundance of tastemakers to operate well. An abundance of tastemakers is a abundance of leaders who can lead with unique ideas, opinions, and intuitions.

My hope is that we can nurture and support the confidence in each other to express each and everyone’s unique taste.

Our taste informs our future. The ones that have the confidence to lead with it will define it.

Unlike the preceding data-driven era in which value is derived from what can be quantified, what can’t be quantified will be more valuable. The more unpredictable, divergent, unique - the more you can differentiate.

In a future in which models and algorithms continue to generalise the world we live in, our differences will matter.

Having the confidence to let your taste express itself will differentiate you - and be a gift. For yourself, and for the world.