Trusting Yourself is Life's Greatest Reward
A friend recently wrote to wish me Happy Birthday. In her email, she reminded me of some words of comfort I gave her during one of her darkest days, when she didn’t think she’d ever recover from her divorce. The words: “…at the heart of the issue is you don’t trust yourself that you will be ok. But I do. You’re an awesome person.”
While my friend ultimately made it through her darkest days, and is now thriving, her words reminded me why trusting yourself is the ultimate gamble in life that will yield the greatest reward. It is the one thing that you completely own, that is all yours, and when exercised authentically, allows you to live a truly full life. Self-trust requires you to have enough confidence to rely on your own ability and character to know that you can handle any obstacle or challenge that comes your way and that you can take care of your own needs and safety. In general, it is a world view that believes no matter what or who, you always have yourself and you will be ok. It recognizes that you may stumble or fall but that you have, no in fact you will, get back up. Trusting yourself requires a firm conviction that you are the best arbiter of what is and isn’t for you because no one knows you better than you.
Although trusting yourself sounds like a simple proposition, I know it isn’t because most of us have spent our lives listening to everyone but us. We have listened to our parents, our teachers, our supervisors, our government and our friends. Also life in many cases has taught us as children that we couldn’t trust ourselves and that other people know better than us. Maybe this occurred because we made a decision that ended up causing us a lot of pain, or we made a decision that injured us, or other people simply told us they knew what was best for us so this part of our personality never developed fully. The lack of trusting ourselves may also come from not knowing who we are or what we want, and even when we do, things sometimes don’t go as planned. The truth is we all make decisions that turn out not as planned. We all have been betrayed. We all have felt pain and hurt. The truth is we all fall down and anyone can hurt us. Trusting ourselves is not about isolating ourselves to avoid those things. Rather, it is about doing the opposite. It is about living life on our own terms and living it fully because we have the self-confidence to deepen our connections with others and to look fear in the face to take on new challenges.
Three things we all can do to help build self-trust:
1. Build your self-confidence. Sounds easy, right? Well at the core of developing self-trust is having confidence. One of the reasons so many people don’t trust themselves is because they don’t trust their own abilities, skills or talents. Take some time to list and value your abilities, skills and talents. What are you good at? What are your strengths? Own that. Keep that list near and dear to your heart. Look at that list and know that you truly are capable.
2. Take risks. This is probably one of the best things that you can do. Many people don’t take risks because they fear failing or making mistakes. But like anything, risk taking is also a muscle you can strengthen the more you do it. I have to admit this was an area I also had issues with. Then one day when I was debating whether to take a speaking engagement because of the number of people that would be in attendance, and I didn’t want to say something stupid, my son reminded me of the concept of forward failure. He said that failure is not defeat as long as you fail forward. In other words, you get up and you keep moving forward toward your goal. When I started to look at it like that, I realized it was part of the natural process of growth and development, and now, I don’t fear taking risks. Rather, I bake it into the process.
3. Listen to yourself. There is no way you can build self-trust if you don’t listen to yourself and how you feel. This is the core of self-trust. Be true to how you feel about things. Your feelings and how you think are important.
In the end, if you want to live a fully, authentic, life, you have to learn to trust yourself. It really does reap life’s greatest rewards.
Kim Crouch, is an attorney, and author of Mother to Son: Words of Wisdom, Inspiration and Hope for Today’s Young African-American Men. --
Great post, Kim. As always, you put into words observations I have made but not connected the way you do. I am going to share this with a few young women I know. Thanks!
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