Do You Trust Yourself?

 “I don’t know what to do.”

“What if I make a mistake?”

“What if I regret my decision?”

Indecision. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of regret.  All of these are expressions of a lack of self-trust.

What is self-trust? How did I become a person that struggles with trusting myself?

Merriam Webster defines trust as “a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.”  What does it mean when I don’t trust myself? When I don’t trust myself, I don’t trust my reliability, my truth, my ability, or my strength.   Pause, and let that sink in. Reread it if you need to.

Sheryl Paul, author of The Wisdom of Anxiety writes, “Individuals who lack self-trust usually don’t know who they are and don’t deeply value themselves and ultimately, trust themselves.”  How did we get to this place of so much uncertainty and confusion about who we are and where our worth lies?

Often, early in life, our knowing, our truth, our intuitions, and our perspectives, are not acknowledged or honored. This dishonoring behavior causes us to push this part of us down deeply so that it is out of our awareness. It’s just too painful when we aren’t allowed to know what we know and see what we see. We conclude that we are somehow internally flawed and deficient. As a result, we lose touch with our own inherent knowledge and begin depending on external authorities.

A lack of self-trust is something I am very familiar with.  This pattern in my life was deeply grooved into my psyche. It was so much a part of me, I didn’t even see it.  The habit of “me not trusting me” was unconscious, until it was brought into the light.

Enter the Enneagram and Enneagram coaching.

Enneagram wisdom teaches that we are three-brained people.  We have a brain in our head, a brain in our heart and a brain in our gut. It is a scientifically proven fact that there are three main neural networks within us. The Enneagram refers to these neural networks as the Three Centers of Intelligence. When I began to utilize all three centers of intelligence, I began to listen to my heart and gut rather than just my head. As I practiced noticing body sensations in my heart center and gut center, I was learning about myself; what I was feeling, what I was seeing, and what I know. I was learning who I was. I felt a sense of “coming home to myself”.

Walking through life with this new awareness surfaced patterns of behavior I hadn’t seen before.. I began catching myself “in the act”.

I caught myself when I was valuing other people’s opinions more than mine and I would pause, breathe, and check in with myself. What bodily sensations were with me in this present moment? What was my heart saying? What did my gut know?  What opinion did I hold?

I began catching myself when I allowed other people to tell me what was right for me. I slowed down my thinking and tuned into the deep well that is within me. I listened to my own desires and longings. I called upon my courage and acted on what I was sensing. I began to trust my instincts.  I was no longer giving my power, and my authority to others outside of me. I was deciding for myself what I wanted, believing that I knew what I knew, and saw what I saw.

I became aware of when I was making a decision based on how others would view me. How would I be seen? Would I be seen as a bitch? As a control freak? As selfish? Unkind? There are a zillion ways we could finish this sentence, and as long as my attention was focused externally, I was out of touch with my own mind, heart and body. How could I possibly trust myself when I was so worried about what others would think of me in fear of rejection? As I grow in self-acceptance, I am freer to release what other people think of me. I’m not so afraid of rejection. What other people think says more about them than it does about me anyway. My value isn’t dependent on the opinion of others.

I became more aware of how my underlying need to move through life perfectly kept me paralyzed, stuck and in a steady state of anxiety. I can see now that I only valued myself if I performed with excellence. I wasn’t living from the fundamental truth that my value isn’t dependent on my performance. Perfection was a way I tried to control my environment. No wonder I found it next to impossible to take a risk and maybe “do it wrong”, or “say it wrong”.  

Who can move through life without making mistakes? Making mistakes is part of being human. As I write this, I’m taking a deep breath of relief. How comforting it is to know that if I make a mistake, it’s ok! It’s normal! I can offer myself kindness and compassion and then figure out what to do next. I have given myself permission to move through life imperfectly. The result is freedom to live my life.

My first attempts at this were hard and extremely scary. I began to “show up” differently than those closest to me were used to. Here’s a disclaimer. People close to you are comfortable with the role you have taken. When you begin to change the way you interact, be prepared for some major push back and possibly the end of relationships. I was warned about this and it has definitely been my experience. The positive in this is that I have reclaimed my voice, and this has resulted in a heightened sense of self-worth and confidence.

Reflect on these questions for a minute or two.

If you don’t trust yourself to know what to do, or to make hard decisions, who are you willing to trust to tell you?

Are you willing to give other people, or institutions, that kind of power and authority over your life? 

The more you allow others to make decisions for you, the more out of touch you become with who you really are and what you really want. You are “de-selfing” yourself in the process. Who is living your life?

To grow in self-trust, we must journey inward to learn who we truly are. We must regain our intuitive contact with life. We must learn to value our own experience whether or not anyone else sees it, responds to it or approves of it.  This is no small undertaking. It’s not a quick fix. Growing in self-trust requires practice over a longer period of time. But little by little, as we pay attention to what our experience is in the present moment, we begin to live life from our True Self and our ability to trust the Self grows!

There is nothing more valuable in this life than to be set free to be unapologetically you!