The Courage to Be a Little Delusional
TBP-©2025 BTMT
Why every dreamer needs a healthy dose of unreasonable belief.
When They Call You “Delusional”
People love to call dreamers delusional. They say it with a smirk, as if warning a child not to touch a flame. Be realistic. Stay in your lane. Do not get your hopes up.
Those words may sound protective, yet they often guard you from your own potential. Every person who has built something extraordinary was, in some way, a little delusional.
The Wright brothers believed humans could fly. Oprah believed she belonged on national television while she was still a local reporter. J. K. Rowling believed she could write a story that millions would care about while living on government assistance.
None of that made sense on paper. Yet here we are—flying through the sky, reading stories that change us, and using inventions born from someone’s impossible dream.
“Delusion, it seems, is where possibility begins to take root.”
The Psychology of Audacious Belief
Psychologists call it positive illusion—the quiet tendency to overestimate your abilities or odds of success. On the surface, it may seem naive, yet research on self-efficacy by Albert Bandura shows the opposite.
Those who believe a little more in themselves than logic allows are more likely to persist. Persistence, more than talent or luck, often determines who arrives at the finish line.
Life rarely rewards accuracy. It rewards endurance. The person who continues to believe, even in uncertainty, eventually turns faith into evidence.
“Logic talks you out of trying. Faith whispers, ‘Why not me?’”
My Experiments in Healthy Delusion
There were seasons when the only thing propelling me forward was a fragile belief that I could. I had no portfolio, no credentials, and no certainty—just a quiet conviction that something worthwhile would emerge if I stayed the course.
I called myself a writer long before I had anything published. I took roles I was not technically qualified for. I walked into rooms that intimidated me.
Was it uncomfortable? Completely. Did it sometimes feel fraudulent? Absolutely. Yet that feeling never truly disappears—it simply follows you to higher levels.
“The fraud feeling never goes away. It just follows you to higher levels.”
Every risk I took began as an act of pretending I could figure it out. Over time, the pretending became truth. None of it would have happened without that unreasonable self-belief.
The Fine Line Between Faith and Fantasy
Not every form of delusion is helpful. There is a dangerous kind that waits for miracles without effort. That is not empowerment—it is avoidance.
The kind that changes lives is strategic self-belief: the mindset that says, “I may not be there yet, yet I will act as if I am—and in the process, I will grow into it.”
It is the beginner who calls themselves an artist before anyone else does. The entrepreneur who believes in their vision before the market agrees. The student who studies as if success is already guaranteed.
“Healthy delusion does not ignore obstacles. It refuses to let them write the ending.”
Your task is to build the reality that does not yet exist and work until it catches up.
Become Your Own Source of Belief
In the early stages of any dream, support is scarce. People tend to believe once they see proof, and proof only appears after someone dares to leap.
Those first chapters are lonely. That is why a touch of delusion matters—it gives you the courage to clap for yourself when the stadium is empty, to keep writing when no one is reading, to keep showing up when no one notices.
“You must carry the torch long enough for others to see the flame.”
Eventually, the world catches up. Until then, you are the one who must believe enough to keep going.
Visionaries Were Once the “Crazy Ones”
Every leap in art, science, and culture began as someone’s private conversation with the impossible. Airplanes, democracy, equal rights, penicillin, the internet—each idea once seemed absurd.
History does not remember the skeptics. It remembers the believers who kept going in spite of them. The world moves forward because of those willing to look a little ridiculous.
“They will call you delusional—until they call you a visionary.”
Practicing Empowered Self-Belief
Name yourself early. Do not wait for permission. If you are creating, you are an artist. If you are writing, you are a writer.
Act as if. Show up the way your future self would. Speak, dress, and carry yourself like someone who already belongs.
Gather small evidence. Every page, every risk, every conversation becomes proof that your belief was not misplaced.
Reframe failure. Falling short does not mean you were wrong to try. It means you are learning what is required to continue.
Surround yourself with believers. Energy is contagious. Stay close to those who are building and experimenting. Their courage will fuel your own.
The World Needs Your “Delulu”
Realism alone has never built a bridge or a masterpiece. To create something extraordinary, you must believe in a version of yourself that does not yet exist and walk toward it until it does.
Every dream begins as a delusion. Every empire, book, invention, and love story was once someone’s unreasonable belief.
If your ambitions feel too large or your confidence too bold, take it as confirmation that you are exactly where you should be.
“Be a little delusional. The world has enough realists.”
It is missing people brave enough to believe in the impossible—and persistent enough to make it real.
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