trusting yourself by amyra mah

Self-Trust: The Magic Of Trusting Yourself

Personal Power, Spiritual Guidance

In spiritual circles, the importance of trust has been drummed into us, as a fundamental practice to encourage ease and flow in life.  I too am an advocate of trusting in the Universal Intelligence.  More recently, however, I have discovered the power of Self-Trust, which I find to be the precursor of trusting in general.  Without self-trust, you can’t really trust in the Universe, life, your spirit guides, or anything else.

Trusting yourself may be easier than you think.  I’ll show you how in this post.  But first, here are some benefits of practising self-trust:

Self-trust is a big component of self-love.

Trusting yourself entails placing loving attention towards yourself and solidly grounding within yourself.  You can never truly love yourself without exercising these steps.

Self-trust enables you to take your power back.

With self-trust, you instantly take your power back and tip the balance from victimhood to empowerment.  It is a quick way to reclaim your power; to come back to your place of power.

Self-trust increases your spiritual strength.

The whole point of doing personal development work is ultimately to strengthen you internally.  All the benefits of knowing yourself more deeply, understanding more about life and your role in it, etc. are to lead you to being strong inside.  Having a strong spiritual core translates to your ability to deal with your practical life and to participate in the game of life joyously.

Self-trust helps you get things done.

Procrastination and putting things off are results of not trusting yourself – a self-validating mechanism that drives you to generate these behaviours as evidence that you cannot trust yourself.  With self–trust, doing tasks and completing projects become more effortless.

Self-trust makes you feel safer.

When you trust yourself, the world around you seems nicer and kinder.  Otherwise, you would tend to operate out of a template of feeling unsafe – with all the resultant struggles of trying to compensate for it, which often lead in turn to greater struggles.

Do a quick assessment.  Do you trust yourself?

How much do you trust yourself?

If you feel a little wobbly when asking yourself these questions, you need to build your self-trust muscle.  There are very good reasons why.

Consequences of Not Trusting Yourself

When you don’t trust yourself, you are constantly looking out for other people’s viewpoints and opinions.  This is one of the most destructive consequences of lacking trust in you.  You would feel desperate or too eager to comply with what others say or think, easily swayed by the opinions of others, and too quick to adapt your actions to fit other people.

You seek approval and validation from others.  As a result, you are likely to attract The Unavailable Mother or The Critical Father into your life – in your personal, intimate, social and even professional lives.

When you don’t have self-trust, you would tend to trust others too easily, as overcompensation.  This can lead to messy outcomes – such as being betrayed, taken advantage of or manipulated – as you are being too opened with people and lacking discernment.

You may find yourself wanting to tell people everything.  It is a control mechanism on your part; in your mind, if you lay out all the facts, leaving nothing out, you can have that person’s concurrence be a validation for something for which you are lacking trust within yourself.  But it frequently leads to the same messy outcomes of feeling betrayed, etc….

…Because you don’t trust the only person whom you can truly trust, who at the end of the day will not betray or disappoint you, who can truly be reliable: You.  If you choose to place that trust in yourself.

It is not only that you can’t trust other people as much as you can trust yourself.  Whilst it is true that some people cannot be trusted (and on some days it can feel as if most people can’t be trusted), what is more pertinent here is that you not trusting yourself is out of alignment with your true divine nature.  Some part of you – the part that is devoted to your soul’s growth – will lovingly support you in coming back into alignment.  If all you do is keep placing your trust outside in lieu of yourself and nothing ‘bad’ happens as a result, you would never become conscious of this misalignment and be prompted to find your way back to your true divine nature.

Everything is more difficult when you don’t trust yourself.  There’s an underlying feeling of having many boxes to tick, many tasks o fulfil, many people to attend to, constantly having to get all your ducks in a row and being overwhelmed.  Everything is complicated.  You make it more complex than it needs to be.

You don’t feel safe.  This can permeate and torment you in the background of every area of your life.  For instance, you don’t feel safe in your body and your health, since you doubt your discernment in choosing the right foods to eat, and all the self-beating that follows.  When you trust yourself, you have less self-doubting and self-beating.  Self-trust adds a layer of safety and security – giving you a sense of enduring peace, calm and centeredness.

Without self-trust, you can become angry with yourself.  Lack of self-trust is such a misalignment that deep down you are bound to sense this misalignment.  You may project this anger to those around you, since it is easier to be angry with others than to see that we are angry with ourselves – and damage relationships.  Being overly defensive and belligerent can be the result of lacking self-trust, masking the discomfort you are feeling inside.

Addictive behaviours can be a coping mechanism to numb out the uncomfortable feelings of not trusting yourself and the ensuing sense of insecurity.  When you lack self-trust, you will feel lost and empty within yourself.

All of these can be eradicated from your life when you start trusting yourself.

How to Trust Yourself and What You Can Gain

#1  Self-Trust is a Choice.

Choosing to trust yourself is simple.  Decide.  That means, gathering all the units of your attention which you have placed outside of you (looking for validation and approval) back into yourself.

You may find yourself digging up a slew of stories from your memory bank about why you can’t trust yourself.  Therefore, you think, it is not safe for you to trust yourself.  Instead of beating yourself up for past actions and seeing them as evidence that you really can’t trust yourself, ask yourself if there was an element of lack of self-trust in those times that had you giving your power away, resulting in certain undesired outcomes.  In other words, were they preceded by you not trusting yourself, which brought on the undesired outcomes?  The ‘evidence’ that it is not safe to trust yourself could be a result of not trusting yourself.

Look at a few situations in your life when you had made a decision and something undesired happened.  Maybe you have behaviours that you regret, or things you feel guilty or ashamed about.  Think back to those times.  Did the outcomes come about because you did not trust yourself but placed your trust over to someone or something outside of you?

In the big picture, they had happened the way they happened to guide you back to a place of self-trust.

#2  What if you don’t have to wait to hear other people’s opinions about it?

Start breaking your habit of waiting for someone else to tell you their opinions.  Stop seeking validation for what you can decide to know.  Other people’s opinions are just that; it doesn’t make them more knowledgeable or wiser than you, especially about things that pertain to your life.

What if you are the best source of information?  What if you have the best guidance, based on your intuition, your inner guidance?  What if you are a channel of higher wisdom?  Even if you are not convinced yet, having an openness will enable you to grow your self-trust.

#3  Who is the Self you are trusting or not trusting?

Sometimes, having a vague sense of who you are can block you from trusting yourself.  It is a vicious cycle, since not trusting yourself dilutes your sense of yourself, which in turn makes it more difficult to trust yourself.

But you can make a conscious decision right at this moment to bring more presence into yourself and trust yourself at the same time NOW.

When you don’t hold a solid sense about you, it is easy to get upset by what other people say or think about you.  But you can use it as a prompt to increase your self-trust.  Affirm to yourself that what other people say about you negatively is not what you know yourself to be.  For instance, if someone in your family remarks that you are lazy and irresponsible, yet you know you are extremely hardworking and in fact you are known by your peers to be the most hardworking person around, decide to focus on who you know yourself to be and cut off the energy drain to the direction of the false opinion.  It is enough that you know your truth.  You trust yourself and that is that.

#4  Be available to yourself.

Being available means being attentive and responsive to your own needs.  You listen to what you are guided to do, and you do it.  You have integrity with yourself, which translates to you doing what you say you would do and finishing tasks – and it is easy and natural, without you forcing yourself or dreading it.

To facilitate being available, take care of your inner state of being.  Are you addressing your emotions and nurturing yourself emotionally?  How is your energy?  Are you mentally scattered?  It is imperative for your overall health, not only for the purpose of building self-trust, to take time out for these things.

Feel centered and grounded, in your power.  The more you maintain this state, the more you can be available to yourself.  Without being available, there is nothing with which to practise self-trust.

#5  Follow and act on your guidance.

You will have more peace when you commit to following your inner guidance.  You will know there is a reason why you do certain things: a strong guidance despite what your mind says you should or shouldn’t do, beyond the rationale.

With self-trust, you are grounded in your own actions, instead of giving your power away.

#6  Doing the best you can.

Decide you trust yourself to do the best that you can – knowing that you are following your intuitive guidance as best as you can and that as long as you stay connected with your inner self you will continue to receive the best guidance for your life.

You don’t doubt yourself.  You don’t beat yourself up.

#7  Trust and move on.

Full stop.  No more wasting mental energy on debating, going over the facts, is it right or wrong.

Accept that you won’t get it right all the time.  It will likely be imperfect at first, but you are not going to wait until you know for sure.  The whole point of learning to trust yourself is to act while being in the unknown.  If there was a guarantee that your action would be correct, you’d be missing the environment in which self-trust can be developed.

Give yourself the benefit of doubt.  Everyone makes mistakes; that is how we learn and how our soul evolves.  As long as you continue to practise self-trust, the pieces will continue to align in the direction of your highest good.

#8  Do things right by you.

Remind yourself that at the end of the day, it is between you and yourself, not you and other people.  This is the most important relationship you have, for it is from here that your other relationships flow.

When you decide to trust yourself, you know that your only job is to do the best you can, follow your guidance about your inner truth, and act with the highest integrity.  By tapping into your moral guidance, you will be guided to do the right thing.  No more games, manipulation, power play or holding back giving, due to feeling unfairness or lack.

As a result, your relationships will be more harmonious.  Not trusting yourself makes you wobbly.  Since you doubt your choice in your actions (e.g. eating junk food), your head is filled with self-beating thoughts, and with the slightest trigger you lash out at those around you.  But if you trust yourself, you trust even your choice of junk food, and you’re less likely to be triggered and losing your temper.

#9  When you trust yourself, there is always a way.

It opens the doors to things flowing.  Since the practice of self-trust is aligned with your true divine nature, it will align all the pieces to the path of highest good.

Don’t be too quick to judge an outcome to be bad or negative.  The way the Universe works is mysterious and non-linear.  We are programmed to think linearly, so that when one logical step is missing we think something has gone wrong.  Self-trust is part of the machinery of Universal Intelligence; it is a vehicle that bypasses logical progression and taps into the rich, fluid realms beyond limitations.  In other words, self-trust is your manifestation act towards something magical you have been foretold.

#10  Built through conscious efforts.

Each time you exercise self-trust through taking an action (or refraining from a behaviour that is based on not trusting yourself), you activate a strand in your self-trust muscle.  If you keep at it, you can quite quickly flip to the other side of the self-trust scale.  In the beginning, you need to ask yourself constantly and consistently whether you are practising self-trust or not trusting yourself.

Here’s an exercise I love that you can do daily at the end of your day to help build self-trust:

  • Today, I am so proud of myself for…………… (fill in the blanks).
  • How is that a reflection of me trusting myself?
    e.g. “It is a reflection of me trusting myself because I listened to my own inner truth despite what other people said.”
  • Feel your pride expand within you

Repeat for a total of 5 times.  Then

  • Today, I am so grateful for……….. (fill in the blanks).
  • How is that evidence that I really can trust myself?
    e.g. A positive outcome that came about from one of your actions of trusting yourself.
  • Feel joy and gratitude for this outcome. 

Repeat for a total of 5 times.

You will quickly see that they come full circle.  An action you are proud of that required you to stretch your self-trust muscle yielding a positive outcome for which you feel grateful, which reinforces that you can indeed trust yourself.

From a grounded place of trusting yourself, you can trust in the Universe, the greater world, and have healthy trust in people.  You begin to experience more flow, harmony and joy.

sacred feathers - influences on my philosophy by amyra mah
unusual wisdom by amyra mah


Comments
  1. When I felt more centered in my life. I gave information on self-trust to my very young son. I am now experiencing a great lack of self-trust myself. Your article on self-trust may prove to be a daily reading for me. Thanks so much.

  2. Dear Amyra,
    Thank you for your heart felt and inspirational words and wisdom.
    Two years ago,I was listening to a interview with Bill Murray(American actor).
    When the host asked him “What projects he was working on?” He said that his New Years resolution was to become more available. I assumed that he meant to be more available to others…family,close friends etc…..However,he then continued to say that he was referring to his own life.Making sure his life felt balanced,healthy.
    #4 Be available to yourself! Thank You for reinforcing within me that my personal journey is on the right track.You have a beautiful way with words!

  3. Tom, thank you for this! I love the story about Bill Murray. I hope you are being available to yourself, as those you love and care for will be able to have more of your wonderful self!

    Love and Blessings,
    Amyra

  4. Amyra,
    I recently spent about a week without my self trust and my whole world turned upside down! I was really slapped in the face with this fragile and scary reality that reminded of my past and how much I gave others the ability to destroy me. I love this article! It helped me get my power back! The whole event just reminded me how far I’ve come and where I needed a little more healing and power. I wish I could go back to 2013 and find your blog for the first time all over again ?The juiciest stuff on the planet!
    Love,
    Molly

  5. Dear Molly,

    Such a powerful message that we could all do to be reminded about from time to time. Life can knock us off sideways or flat on the ground. It is the journey of getting back up and aligned with our power – stronger and wiser than ever – that counts.

    Thank you for sharing your experience. What a beautiful story. No doubt it has helped shaped the spiritual warrior you are today.

    Love,
    Amyra

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