Lately I have been becoming more intimate with the concept of trusting myself. Maybe it was my latest read: Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love or just the general circumstances of my life at the moment, but I have been coming to understand more and more how important it is to me to be able to trust myself fully. And do I? That is the million dollar question.
It usually quickly becomes apparent when we have a friend or family member in our lives that we don’t trust completely. We learn who the ones are that arrive late, the ones that break plans, the ones that have a new fad diet each week and so on. But we do not so often look inward to see which untrustworthy qualities we ourselves identify with. I have decided to venture inward and see what I find.
There are people in my life that I do not consider reliable and I am sure this is a common tale. I do not love the unreliables any less or even feel hurt when they go back on their word (after having come to expect it), however to some extent I do feel that my friendship with these people has grown as much as it can in many respects. A relationship with little-to-no growth potential is not something I am really looking for this lifetime. This truth has been easy enough for me to realize when looking at the friendships I have surrounding me, however before recently I had never thought to consider this in regards to the ultimate relationship: the one I have with myself.
Upon further analysis I have found that there are certain things I do (or better put, things I do NOT do) that leave me feeling disappointed. Hm, I wonder why. Well, diving deeper I have found that they tend to have a common link. For example, here are a few common things that I have thought lately:
- “Well, another day has gone by and we still do not have a new home. This is so lame and frustrating. Well, maybe we can just live out of our plywood trailer…”
- “Why did I eat that? And right before bed? Hm, I better get up and start doing some push-ups or heavy rhythmic dance moves to burn it off. On second thought, my head-bang would probably wake up my hosts. I’ll start the dancing in the morning instead. Or I’ll just eat better tomorrow…”
- “Sh**! How did it get to be so late without doing my (daily) squats? It looks like another midnight session is in my future.”
- “I’ll definitely write that blog entry this week! Yea, I’ll do that right after I look into that student loan repayment plan…”
If these thoughts were coming from a friend of mine, it would be easier for me to see them for what I think they really are. So let me have an out of body experience for a moment and look in on these thoughts from the outside. My mental answers would be something like this:
- Ok, you do not have a home yet. You need to make peace with the fact that you are still in the process of seeing where your next move will be and trust that everything will turn out just as it should. If my living companion does not have a job and you do not have home by “X” day, you will get one in the place that appeals to you the most and start your new life there. Now let it go.
- You are right, getting your groove on in the wee hours of the night while everyone else in the house sleeps is not a great idea. What would be a better idea is to take a deep breath before you want to eat something in the future and see whether or not it is in line with your greatest desires, one of which is having a beautifully clean body. BUZZZZ- TIP: If you have to stop and think that hard, it’s usually NOT in line with your greatest desires.
- The good news is that you are sticking to your daily goal of getting your squats done. You know (ie you TRUST) you will do them every day, so that is a good thing. But you want to trust that you will do them earlier in the day. So you have to do this really complicated thing: Do them earlier. That’s the ticket. Just set a timer and do them. Don’t procrastinate. Just get them done, then move on.
- Ok, stop right there, buddy. Putting anything on your list AFTER a student loan is a sure-fire way of never getting to it. So I ask you, do you like blogging? I know you do. So find a time that you generally enjoy putting your thoughts into words, decide on a frequency, put it in your calendar and hold yourself accountable. Then do it. Every time it comes up in your calendar. If it turns out you are not enjoying it, change the frequency or omit it from your life all together. But you can leave the drama behind about deciding you want to do it and not doing it, because that is just silly.
Suddenly, when I’m talking to the “friend-me” I’m such the expert. It all seems so simple. But wait now, if it seems so simple, why can’t it be? The truth is, it can. Things are either as simple or challenging as we say and believe they are. My squats are a 2.5 to 3 minute endeavor each day. What is so intimidating about 3 minutes, even if it does end with sore thighs and huffing and puffing? The more important thing to remember is that it ends with stronger thighs and a better-feeling me.
So, lately when I have been having these disappointing thoughts, I have been diving deeper and asking myself the following questions after a thought comes up:
How do you feel right now?
Do you enjoy feeling this way?
Why do you feel let down in this moment?
Is there a way that you could fix this right now or in the future?
What would you gain if you changed this old pattern that is not serving you anymore?
Would you trust yourself more if you stuck to the goals you set out to achieve (keeping in mind to always set goals that are achievable and in line with your greatest desires)?
How would it feel to trust yourself completely?
…How would it feel to trust myself completely? Holy sh…it would feel FANTASTIC! I want that! I can have that. We can all have that.
Today, I am working on trusting myself completely.
Because I want to grow in my relationship with myself.
Because want to achieve all that I know I can.
Because I do not want to go to bed at night with feelings of discontentment about how I lived my day. Or even more so, someday, my life.
I think in the end, this little experiment and more so this philosophy comes full circle. Trusting myself completely will bring about more trust-worthy people and situations. For something to manifest externally it must first begin internally, right?
Thanks for coming along for this post of self-analysis. I want to leave you with that same ultimate question. Do you trust yourself completely? If not, how would you feel if you did? How would you feel to know that giving yourself your word meant it was as good as done? You owe it to yourself to ponder…