3 Myths About What Trusting Yourself Looks Like
The following is an excerpt from the book, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: a path to peace and power.
When you don’t trust yourself, you move through life trying to memorize the right thing to do instead of trusting yourself to know it. You interpret setbacks as failures because you don’t feel secure; security comes from trust.
You need what you’re doing right now to work out (a relationship, a job, a creative project) because if the thing doesn’t work out, you don’t trust that you’ll figure out how to pivot and succeed regardless. You live with an attachment to a future outcome that generates chronic anxiety and you call that anxiety “hope.”
It doesn’t feel good to not trust yourself.
What does it feel like when you do trust yourself?
People who trust themselves allow themselves to adopt the role of “expert” in their own lives. Like all experts, those who develop trust with themselves move with confidence, not certainty.
It’s important to know that even the people who diligently commit to accessing their intuition and connecting to support still make mistakes and encounter ambiguity about what the best course of action is.
You don’t have to have all the answers to be an expert; that’s not what makes someone an expert.
Experts are people who stay committed to both informed and experiential approaches in their domain of expertise. Your domain of expertise is your own true self.
It’s okay if you’re not positive at every moment about how to be you; you’re constantly changing, so how could you be permanently sure?
It’s okay if what you thought was the right answer shifts as you gain more information and experience being you.
Listen closely and near constantly, you’ll hear experts say things like, “There’s no one right answer,” or “The reality is, it varies.” Situations can be complex, and there’s rarely one clear, right path. Acknowledging the layers and paradoxes within our lives, the smartest people in the world are the ones who say, “I don’t know” the most.
Now, without further adieu, here are three myths about what trusting yourself looks like:
If you trust yourself, you can let yourself do whatever you want whenever you want.
People who trust themselves trust themselves because they’re honest with themselves. More specifically, they’re honest about what they need to restrict themselves from or altogether avoid. We think that the more we trust ourselves, the fewer boundaries we’ll need; the opposite is true. The people who trust themselves the most are the ones who honor their boundaries the most.
When you trust yourself, you don’t need outside counsel or guidance.
Seeking counsel is a time-honored tradition in leadership. Authority figures who refuse to seek counsel signal both arrogance and insecurity. When you trust yourself to lead your own life, not only are you secure enough to hear other people’s perspectives, you’re secure enough to actively seek out those perspectives.
Trusting yourself means you make fewer mistakes.
Mistakes are a part of learning and taking risks. When you trust yourself, you’re not trying to prove anything. You may take more risks, which may mean you make more mistakes.
Trust engenders curiosity and openness. When you trust yourself, you focus on being curious about what you need instead of being suspicious about who you are. Instead of micro-managing yourself, you give yourself room to explore. When we explore, we missteps; you can’t have one without the other.
Healing is not about figuring out what to do; it doesn’t matter if you know what to do if you don’t trust yourself to do it. Healing is about learning to trust yourself.
Katherine Morgan Schafler is an NYC-based psychotherapist, author, and speaker. For more of her work: get her book, follow her on Instagram, subscribe to her newsletter, or visit her site.