About Trust and Control in Times of Uncertainty

Today I want to discuss TRUST, another one of the 9 words I recommended you try repeating during your morning walk. (See my two earlier articles.)

My intention is to help you approach your day feeling calmer and ready to embrace whatever arises. 

My goal is to make each of the 9 words real for you. Because simply repeating aspirational words does absolutely nothing. 

Words can only heal us if we feel them in our body. If we repeat them with a feeling of intense kindness towards ourselves.  If we also grant ourselves the right to resist the word, to not feel it, to feel unequipped to take in its meaning that day. 

We can only come to feel the true meaning each of these words has for us over time.

That’s why it’s called a practice.

If we grant ourselves permission to not feel each word right away, we’ll be more likely to eventually find ourselves able to feel its special meaning for us. We’ll be more likely to discover the way that word can serve us.  

Today, let’s focus on TRUST.

I have to admit here that “trust” has been the hardest word of the 9 words for me to truly experience.

I’ve struggled with trust because I’m a person who’s experienced anxiety most of my life. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been the “worry wort”.  When I was little, I was chronically worried about how things might unfold. 

When you think about what anxiety is, in many ways it is the exact opposite of trust. Wikipedia partly defines “anxiety” as “subjectively unpleasant feelings of dread over anticipated events.” It “involves the expectation of future threat.” 

Anxiety is what so many of us are feeling right now, as we monitor statistics and imagine all the bad things that might happen to us, our family, our neighbours, our communities or to the world as a whole.

Mirriam-Webster defines “trust”, on the other hand, as meaning “confidence that something is safe, reliable and effective”. Collins Dictionary lists as synonyms of trust “believe in, have faith in, depend on, count upon”. 

Trust seems a far cry from what most of us are experiencing right now.

But notice that there is something that anxiety and trust have in common. Both are caused by our predictions about the future. Which, in turn, means they’re both based on things we’ve totally made up in our imaginations. Since the future doesn’t exist yet.

As we’ve seen lately, anything can happen in the future. The world can shift radically in a moment.

The future has always been uncertain. But we’re absorbing the truth of that now.

What I’m NOT leading to here, though, is that we can simply decide to feel better – to trust in the future – by putting on blinders and predicting that everything will be alright. By imagining that no one we know will get sick or die or that the situation won’t get much worse.

What I AM suggesting is that you ask yourself what you CAN decide to trust in.

Even in the midst of all the mayhem and uncertainty, notice that there remain good things you can still trust in. Ask yourself, what are the things you can decide to trust to be true?

Here are some thoughts I’ve come up with about things I still trust to be true:

-         I trust myself to always keep learning from whatever experience unfolds for me.

-         I trust myself to keep loving my kids, dogs, family and friends.

-         I trust myself to have my back when I make mistakes.

-         I trust in my ability to see the beauty in the sky, lake, trees, fields and mountains, in all the nature and animals.

-         I trust in my continued willingness to allow the creative magic to flow through me, and to continue in my dedication to painting and creativity.

-         I trust myself to keep experiencing and allowing all my negative feelings - sad, anxious, lonely, angry, critical, hurt - and to be OK with that.

-         I trust myself to keep building my awareness, to keep noticing my thoughts and how they serve or don’t serve me.

-         I trust myself to keep building my business and serving my people, regardless of whatever new constraints the external world offers.

-         I trust myself to keep noticing the general goodness of people.

-         I trust myself to keep my spiritual faith and my feeling of connection with other humans.

Have you noticed a common theme? Every sentence is about how I CHOOSE to show up in the world.

That IS something I CAN trust in, because it’s something I can control. No matter what external events unfold, I get to choose to trust in myself. 

So when I say the word “trust” as part of my morning mantra, it brings to mind all the things I trust about myself. In effect, all the things I’m committed to keep doing. Repeating this word strengthens my resolve and commitment. It affects what I choose to do each day. Repeating this word serves me.

So, when you go on your walk, ask yourself what things you want to decide to trust in.  Practice trusting in those things to be true. And explore how those thoughts make you feel, and the actions you take when you’re feeling that way.

You always get to trust in yourself. No matter what.

If you’re struggling right now and feeling lost, worried, anxious or afraid, I can help. For the next few weeks, I’m adding time to my regular coaching schedule to allow people to coach with me for a single, one hour session. Even one hour of coaching can have you thinking and feeling differently about the challenges you’re facing. You can sign up for a one hour session by sending me an email at [email protected].  I’ll let you know the cost and we can arrange a time outside of my normal schedule.