I was listening to a lecture the other day and I heard the phrase,
“If you trust the ocean, you won’t be afraid of the waves”.
I was reminded of my own journey to trust myself and I want to share with you how to do that.
You might wonder what the ocean has to do with trusting yourself. The thing is when you learn to live from a place like the ocean, you’ll be able to ‘hold’ waves of anxiety, fear, and worry without being thrown emotionally off-balance.
When we are children we inherently make decisions that feel good to us, it’s not part of our makeup to second guess ourselves. If we feel like playing with a ball, we do that, if we feel like playing with play dough, we do that.
The point I want to make about this is that you were born to trust yourself but somewhere along the way, you lost that ability and began to second guess your decisions.
We become accustomed to looking ‘outside’ ourselves for answers when looking to make the ‘right’ decision. This can show up in many ways, like asking a lot of people for their opinion about what you should do. I’m not suggesting that that is a bad idea at all, but when it becomes a habitual way of being, it’s easy to lose our sense of self and therefore, lose a sense of what is ‘right’ for us.
That’s common behavior by the way.
There are many reasons why this happens but I think losing trust in ourselves is aided by our educational system. It indoctrinates you to behave and think in a certain way. This indoctrination begins to disassociate you from the ‘core’ or the ‘truth’ of who you are as a unique individual. You and your school mates must follow the rules within the educational system.
When you are told what to do and when to do it, that obedience becomes ‘imprinted’ in your subconscious mind. Science tells us that your subconscious mind controls 95% of your behavior and many of these subconscious imprints from your childhood play out in your daily life as an adult. When you lose your sense of self, your self-trust is lost as well.
At one point in my life, I came to the realization that most of the decisions I had made in my life up to that point were made out of a sense of fear or scarcity.
I stayed in a job that I didn’t like instead of pursuing what my soul was calling me to do out of a sense of financial security. It didn’t make sense to me to live a life in a job I didn’t like just so I could pay my bills. I knew there was something more I could offer the world.
I had wanted to be a coach and help change people’s lives for the better. I didn’t know that had I listened and followed my ‘gut’ and put one foot in front of the other walking in the direction I wanted. Each step was imbued with trust. It was a process, it took time to evolve. I had to train myself to make decisions from a place that felt good. I trained myself to know that everything would work out because it does (look at your own life when you questioned whether it would or not). It always works out when one follows their intuition and now I am a coach doing what I dreamed of doing.
Keep in mind, I wasn’t irresponsible when I started a new direction, I kept a job to make sure my bills were paid every month. But I was happier knowing that I was moving in the direction of my dreams, I didn’t feel ‘stuck’ in a job.
When you learn to trust yourself, anything ‘bad’ that happens to you will not ‘throw you off’ anymore because you are anchored into the truth of who you are and what you need. It’s very powerful because it’s a testament to what it is to live from your power.
You are the ocean that you trust.
Making decisions that are right for you starts with what you feel in your gut. You know the saying, “Trust your gut”. Some may call this ‘gut’ your intuition, whatever semantics you want to use is fine.
The question remains, “How do you learn to trust yourself?”.
As I lay out the steps for you, keep in mind that changing to a new way of being is a practice and it takes time. It needs to be consistent to lead to the trust that you desire.
Step One: Connect to your body
You have all the answers that you need within you. That knowing starts with connecting with your body. Most of us live in our minds and are disconnected from our bodies. I would invite you to do something on a regular basis that helps connect you with your body. Yoga, QiGong, breathwork, meditation, something that gets you out of your head. YouTube is a fantastic tool for finding good resources. It’s exciting to start something new.
Step Two: Be Still
This relates to step one but I wanted to emphasize it. The one ninja thing that connected me to my intuition so that I could trust myself is being still and for me, that took the form of meditation. It could also be breathwork. Learning to still your mind is actually a new way of experiencing yourself. It brings you closer to the truth of who you are – a powerful being. Being still helps you to become aware of your mind which allows you to begin to objectify it as opposed to identify with it. It allows you to experience yourself beyond your mind too. It’s a beautiful life long practice that changed my life in powerful ways and continues to do so.
I resisted it for so many years because I thought I wasn’t good at it, or that I was doing it wrong and my life didn’t change till long afterward. So please don’t give up on this practice because of those reasons. There is so much scientific evidence of how meditation literally changes your brain.
Step Three: When making a decision, ask, “Does this feel good to me?”
Usually, when you ask yourself a question, the first answer that you get is the one that is best for you. You know when something feels ‘off’ but you don’t listen or trust that voice when it shows up, but it is never wrong. As you practice connecting with your body, this question gets answered very quickly.
That’s it. Three simple steps to learn to trust yourself.
It’s funny how we tend to want to complicate things, but it’s usually the most simple of actions that yield the most significant results in our life.
These practices will not produce overnight results, I’m keeping it real. As you practice these steps, your progress will be subtle. You will eventually get to a point where you have absolute clarity as to what feels good to you when you are making a decision.
You are the ocean that you trust.