How to start trusting yourself

Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash

You’re moving through your day, and then something happens. In a matter of seconds you get excited, nervous, frustrated, exhausted, deflated, or any combination of the above. It must be from something that just happened, right? Something out of your control. You say, wow, suddenly I’m exhausted. I need coffee. I need a nap. I need something.

This is how we often experience life. We add a story to that experience, something that begins with what’s wrong with me? Which further colors how we see ourselves and experience life. 

What’s really happening 

We need to consider that a similar event can happen at a different time and we respond differently, with a different story. There is no fault here. Just information.

Making the connection

How rested are you? How did your morning go? What did you do the night before? What have you eaten and when? What story about yourself or someone close to you has been running through your head? When’s the last time you sipped on some water? Were you feeling powerful or completely depleted? 

Become an expert on yourself. Get to know what lifts you up and makes you collapse. 

You might have heard the saying, it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you respond to it. 

When you start to make connections between your habits and how they impact your response-ability, you begin to see choices and the opportunities to make different decisions. When you do that, you begin to connect with and conquer the biggest obstacle that stands in the way for most of us: ourselves. We become more response-able to ourselves.

Two scenarios

I could be having a great day and something happens and I lose my shit. Until then I was lucky to be having a fine day because great things were happening: I didn’t oversleep, the sun was shining, people were being non-confrontational and cooperative, no monkey wrench. Until monkey wrench happened.

OR

All the things could be “going wrong” all day: I don’t get to do my full yoga practice because instead of pressing “snooze” I pressed “off” by mistake and slept in a half hour too long, it’s rainy and cold, I lose a client. This happens all week long, but I don’t lose my edge. In fact I learned something, and by that, I just sharpened my edge.

And of course there's a full spectrum in between.

I invite you to make the connections, use your response-ability, and become un-mess-with-able. 

Figuring out what works for you

From practices like daily morning meditation to how you feed and nourish yourself, to what you say YES and NO to, to how clear your language is (esp with yourself), how much sleep you get (and when!)... these connections matter. For example, I can’t tell you how many clients have said, when I miss my morning practice, my day is just not the same. Or when I eat this, I feel unmotivated to do anything afterwards.

These are connections. They get to make decisions on information.

Figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t is a very personal journey, one that shifts depending on what season of your life you’re in and where in your journey you’re coming from. Ask yourself,

by doing this, what sort of energy am I seeding? How will this impact how I feel about anything just 5 minutes later?

You’ll see how your decision impacts you in 5 minutes, one hour, later in the day, the next morning. These observations can make you more self-referred, informed and empowered IF you decide not to beat yourself up.

To make this happen, you’ll need to stop the mental chatter, the stories, the judgments, the justifications. You’ll need to stop looking at how your decisions look to others, and instead tune into yourself. Notice the connections and act on them on your own authority. Each time you do, your trust will grow deeper roots. 

Love, Savitree