In my opinion, going ahead and trying stuff is better than listening to your insecurity
Part of what I was trying to say was that these are not mutually exclusive. You can listen to your insecurity, note that it’s giving you a warning signal, and then act and see whether the signal was in fact correct or whether it was just oversensitive.
“Listening to your insecurity” means “don’t throw away data that your system 1 is giving you; take seriously the possibility that it’s picking up on something real”. But you can acknowledge the data while also integrating other data sources to your final decision, or test the data to see when it seems to be reliable. If you do that, then you will become better calibrated over time, your insecurity warning you in precisely those situations where you would in fact be making a mistake.
But if you try to just ignore the warning signal and disregard it completely, then there’s a good chance that this will be actively harmful for the goal of going ahead and trying stuff. Worst case, as social failures accumulate, your system 1 will ramp up the intensity of the warning signal to ensure that it must be heard—even if that means making it so overwhelmingly loud that acknowledging it and trying stuff anyway ceases to be an option.
Part of what I was trying to say was that these are not mutually exclusive. You can listen to your insecurity, note that it’s giving you a warning signal, and then act and see whether the signal was in fact correct or whether it was just oversensitive.
“Listening to your insecurity” means “don’t throw away data that your system 1 is giving you; take seriously the possibility that it’s picking up on something real”. But you can acknowledge the data while also integrating other data sources to your final decision, or test the data to see when it seems to be reliable. If you do that, then you will become better calibrated over time, your insecurity warning you in precisely those situations where you would in fact be making a mistake.
But if you try to just ignore the warning signal and disregard it completely, then there’s a good chance that this will be actively harmful for the goal of going ahead and trying stuff. Worst case, as social failures accumulate, your system 1 will ramp up the intensity of the warning signal to ensure that it must be heard—even if that means making it so overwhelmingly loud that acknowledging it and trying stuff anyway ceases to be an option.