How to cultivate trust in yourself

Hello Everyone! Welcome to On This Walk, a reflection on the winding journey of life in all its realness. We explore intimate, meaningful conversations surrounding pressing life questions, strolling through both the tension points and choice points that can move us closer to our deeper, authentic lives.?

Beginning with a compassionate exploration of our inner landscape, we seek to bring this essence and these gifts into our lives, relationships, and work, creating a life that feels aligned and authentic inside and out.?

Let’s go On This Walk together.

In my last newsletter, we covered moving through trauma to trust . Since then, trust has been a theme that I’ve been sitting with.?

Trusting ourselves should come naturally, right? If only it were as simple as that.?

What choices have we made that have taken us away from ourselves?

Have you ever poured your heart and soul into something, spending years working toward a goal, only to realize, just as it’s within your reach, that it isn’t actually what you want? This is what happens when we let others influence our desires, when we don’t check in and ask ourselves why, when we don’t trust ourselves.

This was an early part of my conversation with Mario Lanzarotti on the On This Walk podcast. Mario is a public speaker, conscious leader, and mindset coach. He helps solopreneurs and high-achieving individuals find their sense of self and the path that is meant for them.?

For Mario, he thought that he wanted to be a pilot, but when his dream was in sight, he realized it wasn’t what he wanted after all. This isn’t uncommon. We get caught up in the pursuit of what we think we should be doing.??

For me, this obligation to continue what I thought I should be doing allowed me to feel active. It allowed me to feel like I had earned something and was doing the things I was supposed to. If I let that go and just focused on being, how was I supposed to get anything done in my life?

I was always worried that if I could be satisfied with what I had, if it was enough, then I would get lazy. I thought if I felt content, I wouldn’t create or do as much. But what I was doing was training myself to look for the lack and want more. I was afraid to accept what I had as enough. I couldn’t trust myself to just be.

My tendency was to overcompensate and take on other people’s challenges and burdens because I wanted to be the rescuer or keep control of the situation. I thought that if I could keep control, I’d feel better about what was going on. Now I know that these choices disconnected me from being vulnerable, especially in my relationships. I needed to know how things were going to go or what the plan was. I was only able to find peace by learning to release this control, this pursuit of enough.?

If you’re struggling with accepting enough, ask yourself, “What is it that I really want?” And then, ask yourself why. At least five times. Keep going deeper and deeper. We want to look outward to answer the question of why, but in reality, we have to look within ourselves.?

Walking alone and trusting ourselves is scary. It’s easy to want to latch onto something. But at some point, you have to let go of the shore and release yourself to the river for this to really transform you. I had to learn that, in order to be present for my own journey, I had to surrender the fact that I wasn’t going to know what would happen. I had to learn to trust in myself, that I would know what I needed to know when I needed to know it.?

We don’t have to have the answers, we just have to listen for them.?

Start small.

If you’re learning to trust yourself, allow yourself to just be. This can be writing for just two or three minutes each morning. It can be sitting and watching the rain or snow fall and just allowing yourself to be present with nature. Can you allow yourself to be? Can you shift from doing to being??

Through doing inner work and trusting ourselves, we can find peace within.?

Until we go On This Walk again, be well.

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