Trusting ourselves is, in general, always a good thing. It becomes even more vital when we start to tread a path off the proverbial beaten one. When we’re living life in a way that’s different to the ‘norm’, or starting to consider doing so, the only option we have is to trust ourselves. To make our own voices rise above those of society, the people who tell us that we’re wrong and should be doing things differently. Developing self trust is learning to trust our inner voice – our intuition – and no, it isn’t easy.
My journey with developing self-trust
In 2017 I chose trust as my word of the year. I’d thrown myself into a year of BIG life changes –training as a yoga teacher, moving to a new city, starting up as self-employed – and I knew I had to rely on trust to carry me through. If I didn’t trust myself, trust that everything was as it should be, I could easily have ended up an anxious heap on the floor.
And so I threw myself into trust. My yoga practice helped, and learning more about yogic philosophy. Feeling how my body was always there for me as I moved on the mat allowed me to feel a sense of trust that I would always be there for myself, no matter what. I could always see myself through. At the same time as this, I was doing a year long Happiness Project inspired by the author Gretchen Rubin who wrote the book The Happiness Project. Over 12 months I focused on different areas of my life, and ways I could improve my own happiness. This process guided me to knowing myself better, and knowing – again – that I could always trust myself to know how to bring myself back to a state of feeling good.
When the trust wavers and doubt creeps in
Living in a continuous state of trusting ourselves is a practice. It takes dedication, time and the willingness to fail and get back to it. Over the past few years I’ve doubted myself a lot. Doubted I would achieve the dreams I determinedly followed and worked to make a reality; that I could ever have ‘success’ treading my different path.
When other voices become louder than our own the only thing we can do is notice, and practice turning up the volume on us.
Pin for later
The tools that help me return to self-trust
These are some practices that work for me, hopefully they will give you some inspiration for things that might work for you:
- Meditation is my top tool for amping up the volume on my own voice.
- Physical yoga practice trusting that my body is here to support me, that the ground is there to catch me when I fall out of a shape and that I can give myself the physical practice I need.
- Doing something new when we have a go at new things we’re building our trust muscle – we learn that we can do so much more than we thought, and that even when we ‘fail’ the world doesn’t end.
- Tarot I find Tarot cards an excellent way to connect to my intuition.
- Experimenting with following my intuition rather than following external ‘shoulds’, for example doing a gentle yoga practice instead of the run an external fitness programme says I should do because I know my body needs something restful.
- Affirmations are a practice I’ve been trying recently. There is a lot written about how affirmations can help to re-wire our brains, and shift our self-talk from negative to positive. It’s not a practice I find particularly easy, especially not right away, but I do find the more I repeat an affirmation the more I can spot myself slipping into negative talk and use the affirmation to guide myself away from that.
- Kindling
Would you like some support creating your own affirmations unique to you to help build your self-trust? Just send us an email at info@hearth-sea.com and ask us to send you our Self Trust Affirmations resource!