Self-Trust

In life, making decisions is part of the deal. And that can be hard if you don’t (fully) trust yourself, so today we’re looking at how to cultivate self-trust by strengthening our intuition, learning about the necessity of uncertainty and the power of imagination.

Defining Self-trust

I found these two definitions of trust:

– to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable (Cambrigde Dictionary)

– to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of; to place confidence in; to hope or expect confidently (Merriam-Webster)

So combining those two, I’d say that self-trust can be defined as: ‘relying on yourself to act in your best interest; feeling safe to listen to your inner guidance and confident in making your own decisions’. When you trust yourself, you can make conscious choices based on what makes sense to you, instead of outside expectations. It’s about autonomy and authenticity. To trust yourself is to have faith in yourself. In this post I want to focus on three main things to cultivate self-trust: intuition, uncertainty and imagination.

Intuition

To truly start trusting yourself (again), I think it’s crucial that you listen to your own voice before listening to anyone else’s. I believe everyone has an inner voice. An innate knowledge of what you need and where you want to go. That knowledge is expressed in your intuition. You can be spiritual about it, but to me intuition is just previous experiences saved in your nervous system and your unconscious memory. It is the combined knowledge of your body, your mind and your emotions and rears its head when you need it most. You can probably think of a time where your intuition kept you out of trouble, or a time when you regretted ignoring it. This form of intelligence isn’t nearly focused on enough. Logic and reason can only get us so far. Sometimes, an unexplainable inkling is what we should listen to. But what if you haven’t been able to hear your intuition for a while? You practice tuning in again. Here are three ways of strengthening your intuition:

Body: Our body is an incredible source of information. If we tune in to all the sensations that are swirling around, we can find the answers we need. So, what we can do to strengthen our intuition is to deepen our relationship with our physical body. Start practicing tuning in to your body daily, for example by doing a body scan. When you notice you’re having a bad feeling about something, where do you feel it? What does it tell you? What does ‘no’ feel like in your body, and what does ‘yes’ feel like?

Dreamwork: to get a glimpse of what is going on in your subconscious, paying more attention to your dreams can be very helpful. Dreams are not logical at all, which is great for developing this alternative form of intelligence. Keep a dream journal and write down everything you remember as soon as you wake up. Reflect on the colours, events and feelings you experienced. What do they mean to you? Are there any recurring themes to be found?

Divination: another form of accessing intuitive wisdom is by using various forms of divination. Although divination is mostly associated with predicting the future, one of its main purposes is seeking knowledge or answers to a question by interpreting images. Examples of this are reading tarot cards, cloud watching, or water scrying. The most important thing is to listen to what comes up in your mind when you’re looking at a picture, and to then further explore why this has come up. It’s just like the Rorschach test, but less academic.

Necessity of uncertainty

It seems like we are always supposed to be certain of everything we’re doing. And although I think it’s good to live with intention, we cannot avoid feeling lost sometimes. We shouldn’t even want to, in fact. Trying to immediately know everything is not helpful. It doesn’t allow for the fruitful period of uncertainty that is crucial for some insights to come to the surface naturally. In winter, it’s no use trying to force new plants to come out of the ground, but underneath the surface, so much is happening to prepare for new organisms to sprout in the spring time. If you allow the necessary ‘incubation time’ to happen, your path will reveal itself to you clearly. Invite curiosity instead of trying to control things. Tell yourself: ‘I’m curious to see what will pop up if I let go a little and give it some more time.’ It can feel scary to embrace uncertainty, but trusting that the answers you seek will present themselves in time is a very powerful thing.

Power of imagination

So, what if you’ve embraced uncertainty and you still feel stuck? In that case, it can be immensely helpful to visualize yourself into different scenarios. Apparently, our brains cannot differentiate between reality and imagination. So if we really imagine ourselves into a certain situation, we can feel how that imagined reality would impact us. We can experiment with the feelings and thoughts it would bring us. This can be very helpful if we need to make a choice. I once wrote down the best and worst case scenarios of the future of my relationship with an ex and it was illuminating. We broke up a week later. How’s that for clarifying?

Exercise of the day

We’re bringing everything we’ve learned together in a visualization exercise. Think about a problem you want to solve or a decision you need to make. Sit down, close your eyes and imagine one outcome (as a result of a particular choice). What do you feel? Where do you feel it? What happens to your mood seeing this outcome in your mind? Then, let that image go. Make a different choice. Imagine the outcome of that decision. Ask yourself the same questions. Really focus on the sensations in your body. If you’re having thoughts about it, pay less attention to them. This is not about finding an answer right now. It’s about seeing how you feel in different potential circumstances. Then let it rest.