We’ve all heard of self-confidence and self-esteem, but just what exactly is ‘self-trust’?
Most of us would say that we can trust ourselves not to run off with our own partners, or to make away with our savings. In that sense, we certainly trust ourselves. We know what our intentions are and we’re the one person we can’t keep secrets from… so why wouldn’t we trust ourselves?
Well, this comes down to what we trust ourselves to be capable of. Sure, we know that we’re going to try and do what’s best for us. The question is whether we trust ourselves to know what that is or to be able to look after us.
In this regard, self-trust is similar to self-reliance. Do you trust yourself to be able to take care of things around the house? Do you trust yourself to be able to meet new people and make friends? Or to be able to earn a living? Do you trust yourself to be able to make the right decisions and not give in to temptations?
Often, trusting yourself will boil down to liking yourself and so it’s highly important that you feel that you know yourself and that you can rely on yourself. But if you’ve lost faith, how can you get back to that point?
Testing Yourself
The problem with losing self-trust, is that it is very hard to get back. The best way to get your trust back once you’ve lost it, is to put yourself to the test and then give yourself the chance to ‘prove yourself’. Unfortunately, this is something you might feel loathe to do once you’ve lost your self-trust.
But the only way to get out of this vicious cycle is to take the chance. So even if you suspect that things might go wrong, you need to start relying on yourself more. One way to do that is to spend some more time alone. This is one of the reasons that many people will go on trips to ‘find themselves’ and often they will be surprised at just how well they can cope as a fish out of water.
Even if you don’t choose to go this far though, you can still plan some shorter trips on your own that will push yourself just outside of your comfort zone.
Building Your Confidence
If there’s an aspect of yourself that you don’t trust or if you lack confidence in general, then another good way to combat that is simply to develop yourself and to build your confidence by adding to your set of skills.
For example, if you find you are someone who struggles with speaking in public, then why not consider taking stand up comedy classes? Or acting? This is a fantastic way to improve your presentation skills and your confidence more importantly and it can ‘undo’ some of the concern or lack of confidence that you might have been experiencing.
Alternatively, another option is to build your confidence by developing a general skill. Find a hobby that you like and that you feel you might be naturally gifted at and spend some time developing that. As you do, you’ll give yourself something new to feel good about and you’ll be expanding your capabilities.
Define What You Want to Achieve
If you feel that you can’t trust yourself or that you don’t like yourself, then perhaps that means that you’re not accomplishing the things you want to fully.
But if you don’t know precisely what it is that you want to accomplish, then you can’t very well be expected to accomplish them… can you?
By knowing what you want to accomplish and what’s important to you, you can thereby ignore all the things that don’t matter to you. And when you learn to do that, you can in turn ensure that you’re focussing on the right things and making progress.
Who cares if you can successfully change a lightbulb?
If your colleagues are your best friends?
Or if people like the way you dress?
If you know what you want and you’re accomplishing that goal, then nothing else matters. When I was growing up, this always helped me to have rock solid confidence even when everyone else was going through their awkward teenage years. I wanted to be really strong. And I was really strong. So there wasn’t really much that could hurt my confidence…
Spend Time With Friends and Family Who Believe in You
Finally, try to surround yourself with other more positive people. No doubt there are many people out there who trust you implicitly, who love you and who believe in you. If you can spend more time with them, you’ll find that it helps to build the confidence you have in yourself.
Conversely, if there are negative, toxic people in your life who are making you feel worse about yourself, then try to avoid them and consider stopping spending time with them. If you find that you work in a toxic environment, or if the place you’re working in is damaging your confidence in any way… why not leave?
Whatever you decide is the best tonic for your lack of self-trust, the single most important thing is that you recognize this as a problem and work toward fixing it. That might mean spending time focussing on your goals, developing yourself, finding more rewarding work or just surrounding yourself with the right people. Just make sure you see this as a priority and work to get your esteem back on track as soon as you can.
After all, you’re stuck with you!