Building Self-Trust
Self-trust can feel like a scary thing. So often trust in ourselves has been damaged by messages from society or others telling us that we need to be different than we are. Messages that we should be thinner or more productive. That we should be making more money or spending more time doing things for others. We have been told over and over again that we need to live according to outside rules or influences and, eventually we start to believe it. We begin living out of alignment and stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage. We try to force ourselves to live according to the rules, but then rebel and end up burning the whole thing down when it starts to feel like too much. This rebellion seems to prove the point and the idea of trusting ourselves starts to feel dangerous. It feels like if we don’t force ourselves to live according to external rules that we will only end up doing things that hurt us. Our self trust is broken and we begin to lose connection to our inner cues. We are living by rules that don’t resonate with us but we don’t know what else to do. We have lost our inner power and feel out of control.
This cycle can feel impossible to break. It perpetuates itself. The more forced and controlled we feel, the more we rebel and do things that hurt us. And then the more control we think we need. Beginning to trust ourselves and give our bodies the things they ask for can feel like a leap of faith. But it starts in small ways. It starts by ending the battles that rage within us every day. That means, for example, giving ourselves permission to eat what we crave and feed our body every time it is hungry. It may feel like we will never stop or never honor our nutritional needs, but the opposite is true. When our body learns that it can trust being fed, it will intuitively want to stop eating before feeling sick or overly full and crave foods that nourish it. The same is true for rest. When we push ourselves further than our body can go, we end up collapsed and burned out. We avoid our responsibilities because we associate productivity with over extension. But when we learn to honor our natural rhythms, our motivation and natural drive to pursue our goals will have space to flourish. The same is true for every other area of life where we may feel conflicted. By honoring our bodies and needs in small ways, we begin to learn that we can trust ourselves.
When our minds are strained by the daily conflicts of control and rebellion, we lose touch with our intuition on a deeper level as well. When we are able to learn to trust our bodies, it gets easier to trust our wise inner voice in all areas of our lives. It gets easier to look within ourselves for the answers, rather than looking outside. When we let go of trying to control who we are according to external rules, we begin to benefit from all the richness inside us. This could mean learning to gently challenge negative thoughts and trust our inner self-compassion, trust that all is well. It could mean taking a risk in a relationship or a job that isn’t serving us, and pursuing something that does. It could mean learning to ask for help and open ourselves up to love, even when it feels scary. It could mean connecting to ourselves, to each other, to this world and our spirituality on a deeper level. It could mean pursuing a life full of all the things that bring us joy and meaning. It could mean becoming, as fully as possible, who we are. It is our own inner wisdom that will take us where we need to go, in big ways and in small.
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