So, You Want to Talk About Trust
What does it even mean to trust? The dictionary defines it as the ‘firm belief in the reliability, truth, integrity, or ability of someone or something”
Meaning, trust is a deep sense of confidence that you can depend on a person, situation or process. This sounds pretty straight forward, but often we get lost. Trust is easier said than done. It takes patience, compassion, kindness, care and effort.
We put importance on other people and tell them they need to build up our trust. We as humans generally don’t just trust anyone or anything. It takes time and real effort from people and real evidence. Building trust with others works the same way as with ourselves. We often seem to overlook the importance of building trust in ourselves.
Consequences of Not Trusting Ourselves
Constant Self-Doubt - You second guess everything, your choices, your decisions, your feelings, even your instincts. It’s debilitating. Always stuck in indecisiveness and the need for validation from outside sources.
Low Self-worth - You start believing it doesn’t matter. Listening to the voices that tell you, you’re not enough, you’re not smart enough, strong enough, good enough.
Need for Validation from Others - Always seeking out approval from others, make decisions for you, guide you and even tell you what to do where to go moving forward.
Intense Anxiety & Overthinking - The lack of self-trust is straight fuel for worry. Always making sure you aren’t making a mistake, trying to control every little outcome and a restless mind always.
Disconnection from Emotions & Needs - You dismiss or suppress feelings, needs, wants, desires and even might start gaslighting yourself. You confuse how you are feeling because you don’t allow space to recognize how you really feel because you don’t believe it’s worthy.
Fear Controls You - You allow fear to run your life, dictate the actions you do or do not take and essentially become a slave to the fear. You are not in control of your life, your reactions or how you want to move forward.
Sounds awful, I know. I’ve been living it my entire life. So, the question then leads to how do you build trust in yourself?
Well it starts with you of course.
Building Trust within Yourself
It starts with your word
If you say you are going to do something, do it or don’t say you will. I think we either experience this or are guilty of this at some point in our lives. Your friend tells you they are going to do something for you or they are gonna meet you somewhere and then flake or don’t follow through. This happens multiple times, what happens? That trust is lost, no one believes them ever anymore. The same thing goes for you and the commitments you make to yourself. You say you are going to go work out and then watch TV instead, the more it happens the less likely you are to follow through.
Listen to yourself
What in the world am I talking about? Your body, your intuition, those gut feelings you have. Your body is constantly communicating to you what it needs, what it craves, desires and thinks. Most of the time we learn to suppress our thoughts, feelings and desires. It is easy to stop listening to ourselves and start listening to everyone else. The less you listen to yourself the harder it is to trust your own judgement and your own abilities. So start allowing the little things in and listening.
Validate you own feelings
We are constantly seeking for validation in our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. We search outward for others approval and for them to validate us. But what about our own validation? We don’t give ourselves enough credit or the permission to feel the way we do, we question and constantly second guess ourselves. That is not building a very trusting environment. We have to allow ourselves to be human and know it is okay to feel what we are feeling and tell ourselves that we are doing the best we can sometimes. Your feelings are real. They make sense, they are valid and they are there for a reason.
Maintaining your own boundaries
Everyone is always talking about boundaries it seems. Creating them, maintaining them and upholding them, but what does that really look like? If you have a boundary and allow other people to continually overstep those boundaries and not put your foot down, what are you communicating to yourself? If you aren’t going to protect your own self, how could you possibly trust that you have got you?
Boundaries = Safety = Trust
You got to be your own protector and advocator, you got to show up and show that you got you!
Forgiveness
The hardest thing in the world to do sometimes. When we hurt, we hurt but forgiveness especially to ourselves creates space for growth. It does not excuse past behaviors, it is to provide a way to give yourself grace and compassion. It shows you what you are capable of and opens the door for exploring how to better show up for yourself and leaves room for kindness. After all, how can you trust yourself if you cannot forgive the past actions that created the mistrust in the first place.
Self-care
Oh that dreaded word. Self-care looks different for everyone and provides space to show yourself love. How can trust be present without intentional care and the desire to take care of yourself when you need it? It allows for space for stillness, reflection, growth and love. It shows, you got you. It doesn’t even have to be anything extravagant, it could be something as simple as a latte or time to do something you love. Small rewards for the work you are putting in. Celebrate your wins! You are worth it, every single one of them no matter how small is still a win. Making mistakes will happen. Messing up so bad you are embarrassed is inevitable. Making bad decisions will always happen, that is what makes you human. It is such an intense yet beautiful experience.
Acceptance
Accepting where you are right now is important for this journey you are on. Where you are is precisely where you are supposed to be. Can you accept where you are right now and again celebrate success and wins you already accomplished? You have wins each and every day, there are a list of things you’ve done right. We tend to fixate on the negative outlooks and completely miss the positive things that happened in a day. If you never acknowledge your progress, you will never believe in your potential.
Build Positive Habits
Small habits done consistently, compound into massive transformation. Here are the four laws of behavior change
Cue - Make it obvious
Craving - Make it attractive
Response - Make it easy
Reward - Make it satisfying
Focus on who you wish to become. Habits become habits because they are familiar, easy and provide some sort of reward. Positive habits can be just as easy to create as bad habits. It starts with the environment around you. No matter how strong the willpower you have is, the environment is stronger than willpower alone. So creating an environment where the good habits are the easy ones. It should be obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. There should be a cue something that sparks the idea or the desire to engage in the habit. The craving should be strong enough to make it attractive and of course easy to do. Then the reward for doing that habit should be satisfying and strong enough to want to continue doing it. Habits usually take some time and effort to build, but once they become habits, it is so easy. The more positive habits you build, the more growth and success you are going to have.
