If I asked you if you trusted your best friend, what would you say? What about your partner? Your sister? Your boss?
Trust is this mysterious feeling we get when we know for sure someone will show up in the way that they promised. It’s a sense of certainty about something.
Yet when we flip the question to check in with ourselves, what comes up for you? How much do you trust yourself?
You may trust yourself to follow through on a deadline at work, to meet your friend for coffee at the time and place you said you would, or even to keep a “secret” your friend tells you because she asked you too.
You know you’re a “good person”, so yea, generally you could say you trust yourself.
But what about the deeper elements of trust. The feeling of certainty that it conjures. When you think about something that you are stuck on right now in your life, or an area that you’d really love to change—what is it that is stopping you?
Most of my clients will share that it’s some version of fear. They’re worried what their boss would think of them if they didn’t get that thing right. Or how to tell their mother they don’t really want to “do” their career anymore. Or whether they’ll be good enough for that promotion (so they just don’t try).
Fears are common to all of us. I’ll often enthusiastically respond to my clients “yay! You’ve passed the human test!”. Because every single one of us experiences a version of these fears, worries, concerns. The things that keep us stuck – in procrastination, in perfectionism, in excuse-making, in not taking action on our dreams.
Will I be good enough? Will they judge me? What if I don’t belong? Will I be loved?
Which one hits a chord for you most? Mine’s belong. Every decision I ever made (totally unconsciously, on autopilot mode) I can trace back to worries about whether I’d still “belong” afterwards. Will this make me look good? Will people think I’m cool? Will I fit in?
And while this fear can still be triggered in me, I know how to acknowledge it and move beyond it. To return to a deeper place within me. The place that knows for sure I can handle it. That choosing me is far more important than choosing fear.
The place within me that gathers all the evidence from my entire almost four decades earthside – that I have handled it before and I can handle it again.
That’s the level of deep trust I want you to have in yourself. To keep showing up for you despite any of the fears that may trick you otherwise. You deserve to choose yourself. To acknowledge your inner whispers. To go after that big, fat, audacious, incredible dream.
You deserve all of it.
What are you waiting for? Trust expands when you take action.