His answer wasn’t really true, but it does inspire a kind of confidence in him. He seems like a guy who is in charge of himself, who doesn’t go around doing things for no good reason. Compare him with a guy who offers a more truthful account: “I don’t really know why I got up or where I’m going. Sometimes I just do stuff for reasons that make no sense to me.” If those two guys were your neighbors in a hunter-gatherer village, which one would you want to go hunting with?
I once went hiking with a group of CEOs. We came to a fork, and the guy in front confidently went "this way!". An hour later we figured out we had gone the wrong way and had to backtrack, causing us to get to our campsite almost in the dark. He later admitted he hadn't known the right way, but had thought it was the way he picked and since his job is to make decisions confidently, he had so. It was convincing!
