What is Self Trust?

Self-trust is built like trust in any other relationship - in small deposits over time. You erode your self-trust every time you abandon yourself, don't follow through on what you say you'll do, or don't take care of yourself in the way you know you need to.

If I could boil self-trust down to 5 things it would be these…

1.Hearing your inner voice.

You can't trust yourself if you can't hear your inner voice. That requires sensitivity at the level of the body, it doesn't just happen in your head.

2. Becoming more internally referenced.

It's common for the inner voice to feel like a bunch of voices with different viewpoints.

On one level that's because we're habituated to looking outside ourselves for answers, and our minds are full of other people's ideas and opinions - parents, media, religion, etc. You gotta go through the process of peeling back those layers to feel what's yours and what's not. And you've gotta practice the skill of internal referencing - it's a different kind of orientation of attention and energy when you look inside versus outside for what's right, good, and true.

3. Accessing the deepest truths.

On another level, a chaotic inner voice happens because different parts of us actually do have different voices, desires, and agendas.

But there's almost always a deeper truth at the heart of you that needs to be uncovered. (Sometimes those deep truths are hard pills to swallow, and it's 'easier' to remain in the drama of being stuck!)

Again, these are body-based processes, they can't just happen at the level of the mind.

4. Having the courage to act on what your inner voice is telling you.

In many cases this is the hardest of the three. Quite often sensitivity, the inner voice, and deepest truths are accessible with a sincere curiosity & intention. But acting on them is another matter.

This one is a bit chicken-or-egg because you need to trust yourself to have the courage to act on your inner voice, but it's acting on your inner voice that builds self-trust over time.

This is where small actions or deposits really work over the long term. You take small steps to follow your inner voice in situations or relationships where there's a lot of safety, or low risks, so you build your trust muscle - just like any other muscle, by exercising it over and over.

You start to see how your inner compass points you in the right direction, and you build a positive feedback loop - good things happen when I follow my inner voice, I can trust my inner voice. I build evidence that I'm going to be ok, that I know I can figure things out.

5. Tough love time... It also takes cleaning up those areas where you are leaking energy & leaking self trust by abandoning yourself or not following through.

If your friend repeatedly tells you they will do something and they flake out, would you trust them? Nah. Eventually you'd be like, bro, you never show up when you say you will. Or, I said I didn't like that but you keep doing it anyway. It's the same with yourself.

If you get really honest, where are you abandoning yourself, abandoning your deepest held values and truths?

Where are you allowing boundaries to be crossed, or muddy? Where are you not doing what you told yourself you would?

Really deeply trusting yourself requires you to clean that shit up. I'm not saying it's easy. There's probably a lot to unpack for you in those situations. But it's really worth taking that journey.

The most beautiful creative impulses and desires can only come in where there's energetic space for them AND a level of self trust that allows you to take risks and actualize big things that will make waves in the world.