Hello! I hope your summer is going well! Something I talk often about is self-trust. If you ask most people "Do you trust yourself?", their knee-jerk reaction is "of course!". But what is self-trust? And if you really sit and think about it, how strong is your trust for yourself? Are there areas of life you trust yourself more in?

As a basic definition, self-trust is taking care of your needs and safety. We usually think of it in terms of survival situations and physical safety situations. "I trust myself to get out of dangerous situations."

But self-trust is more than that. It also includes emotional situations. It requires us to listen to our "gut" AKA our intuition.

Self-trust means that we notice how things make us feel and trust that this feeling is important.

Then it means knowing that you can make the right choice for yourself. This can mean finding your voice in difficult situations, walking away from situations or people who aren't healthy for you, or acknowledging when you need to deal with something you've been avoiding. 

So how do we increase self-trust? A couple of ideas...

1). Do most people in your life try to build you up? It is important to surround yourself with people who lessen feelings of self-doubt. If you have someone in your life who constantly makes you question yourself, maybe they aren't healthy for you.

2). Do you talk to yourself in a compassionate, kind way? Self-compassion and grace is a huge component of self-trust. It is the opposite of tearing yourself down because of a mistake. 

These quotes from Brene Brown are two of my favorite when it comes to trust:

"I write a lot about trust as a marble jar. We build trust like we collect marbles- one small gesture at a time. It's not a big, sweeping act or a single gesture in a stressful moment. Trust is a collection of small moments.

We talk about trust between people and groups, but we often forget about self-trust. Self-trust is normally the first casualty of failure or mistakes. We stop trusting ourselves when we hurt, get hurt, feel shame, or question our worth."

So building self-trust is like a marble jar- it takes time and small gestures to 1) acknowledge how we feel about something, and 2) make an effort to make the right choice for ourselves based on how we feel (not on how others feel). 

What is one thing you can do today to start building more self-trust?

Thanks for reading and being in connection with me,

Steph