This past year has brought into my awareness that myself and many others lack trust in themselves. When we are living a life that is ‘small’ but safe, we tend to think everything is ok and do not question ourselves.
Starting up and growing a business, whatever it may be, you suddenly realise you have to depend on yourself and there is no accountability to anyone else, no manager or boss. This obviously brings benefits, but it also brings disadvantages.
Hence, this year I became aware of my own lack of trust. I am still in the process of learning, developing and growing myself, as well as my business.
My habit has been to run to others for guidance and support, seeking out their opinions and advice. Thus, this reinforces the belief that I cannot be trusted by ‘me’.
However, I have some excellent teachers and mentors who keep showing me the boundaries and helping me to look to myself for my learning and development (counsellors, life coaches and mentors, facilitate learning not spoon feed, there is a skill to it).
Recently I have come across the concept of analysis paralysis, that the left brain in us all wants to direct our thinking and actions, it wants to keep us safe and overthinks. This stops the right brain and the heart space from directing us and answering our most, deepest questions. Our heart space is sacred and if allowed to play and create, it will tell us what it is we want on the deepest level. But then of course we need to trust in it. Being kind to this side of ourselves is important in order to allow safety in our inner being. This is how trust in the self can be allowed to develop. I say allowed as we need to give ourselves permission to trust and to be kind.
The payoff of trusting others instead of ourselves is that we avoid responsibility. With that comes an ever sense of lack and emptiness, but no responsibility. So, looking at trust from both angles you may now see that trusting the self is a win-win situation, so how do we do it?
As Mike Robbins (March 2015) recommends, consider what makes it difficult or challenging for you to fully trust yourself. Being aware of this with empathy will help you move beyond it. Being able to let go of our story.
There are 3 simple exercises you can do to start to trust yourself:
- Listen to your inner wisdom
Maybe you know it as your intuition. As you practise listening to your inner wisdom: through meditation, prayer, quiet time and the breath, you will begin to trust yourself on a deeper level.
- Be willing to take risks, go for it and make a mistake
Often we don’t try for fear of failure. You need to build your ability to take risks (it’s a muscle you have to exercise). This grows the capacity to be courageous, allowing us to trust ourselves.
- Forgive yourself
Another reason we don’t trust ourselves is due to not forgiving mistakes we previously made, pain we’ve caused and regrets. These demons give us evidence not to trust ourselves in the future. If we enhance our capacity to forgive ourselves, we heal, breathing new life into the present and future. Forgiveness helps to let go of the attachment to perfectionism.
If you have an important decision to make right now, if you fully trusted yourself what would you do? Look carefully with open heart and mind, I’m sure you know the decision you need to make.