If Not You, Who Can You Trust?

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010

Have you ever struggled to make a decision or enter into a commitment because you didn?t trust your ability to make the right choice? How many times have you gotten a feeling in the pit of your stomach that something was not right? Did you pay attention to your intuition or did you ignore it? Deep in our core, we know what is best for us. So why don?t we trust that?

Some of us were taught as a child that we can?t trust ourselves. Maybe we weren?t able to trust our loved ones or our loved ones were unable to trust us. Sometimes life experiences shatter our trust in our self. Perhaps you can recall an event in which you trusted yourself and the outcome was disastrous and painful. The inability to trust our self can stem from not knowing who we are and what?s important to us. Other times we know what is right for us but we fail to honor that because of fear, external pressure, or a belief that we are not worthy.

Sometimes we do make decisions that don?t turn out as planned. I once signed up for tap dance lessons because I was sure I was going to love it. As a child, I had always wanted to learn tap dancing. Within the first two lessons, I knew I didn?t like it. Learning to tap dance was hard and boring. I did not have the desire I thought I had. It is fun to watch, but tap dancing was not for me.

When we make decisions, there are times the red flags are there, and we ignore them. All the warning signs were there before I married my ex-husband. I can distinctly remember feeling extremely apprehensive the morning of our wedding. I even called a girlfriend in tears because of something he had said to me that morning. Despite the negative character qualities, I went through with the marriage. I convinced myself that it was the right choice for our little boy, who was only one then. Within one year, we were separated.

Other times we truly make the best decision we can. Ask any successful entrepreneur about her process of decision making. She will probably tell you she weighed all the pros and cons and tried to anticipate any problems. She might have looked to the experts for helpful insight. In the end, she made the most informed decision she could. If you ask her if all her decisions were the right ones, she will tell you no. Life changes; people change. Just because something doesn?t work out the way you wanted does not mean you cannot trust yourself in the future.

Trusting yourself is essential to loving yourself. You know yourself better than anyone and no one is going to take care of you except you. Until you trust yourself, you will not be able to fully trust anyone. Let me give you an example. For a very long time, every morning my husband would come downstairs before leaving for work and ask me how his hair looked. I would tell him it looked fine. He would go to work and other people would tell him his hair looked good. However, other people or his wife could do nothing to convince him that his hair was okay. He would even say to me, ?I don?t know if I can believe people when they say my hair looks good?. He did not trust anyone because he didn?t trust himself. He was not comfortable with his hair, so he assumed everyone else felt the same way as him.

When you don?t trust yourself, you will seek guidance from everyone else. Your life will be outer-focused, and people will make decisions about your life for you. Make your personal decisions based on what?s most important to you and what works best for you. You can ask other people?s opinions as long as you are willing to pay most attention to your feelings. If you are unsure of yourself, take the time to really listen to your gut. If you have a relationship with a Higher Power, spend time in prayer and ask that the truth be revealed to you.

During my coaching training, we were taught to listen to our intuition. A lot of us questioned how we know if we?re right? In other words, how can we know for sure if we can trust ourselves? You don?t know for sure unless you test it out. We were instructed as coaches to blurt out what our intuition was telling us, and then wait to see how the client responds. The more we test our intuition and discover that it?s telling the truth, the more we begin to trust ourselves.

So try some experiments. The next time you feel confused about a decision, pay attention to your gut-level reaction. Don?t rationalize or talk yourself out of your feelings. Go with it and see how it turns out. You can even make a list of times you trust your intuition and things go well. The more you practice trusting yourself, the easier it will become. If you trust yourself and find out later it was a mistake, learn from it and move on. It?s okay to be wrong. It?s better to trust yourself and be wrong than to not trust yourself at all.