The biggest lesson I have learned in my years of being a business owner is that if you don’t have self-trust, you don’t have anything. Self-trust is honestly EVERYTHING. Without it, you have no solid foundation to stand on, which is why it’s so important that we build self-trust from day one.
Self-trust is something that comes up at every new level of business, both for me and my clients. It goes hand-in-hand with self-confidence – and let’s be honest, sometimes from the outside, we can look super confident and like we are totally killing it, but deep down, we might be feeling completely the opposite and like we can’t trust ourselves at all.
You have to trust yourself over everyone else and anything else in your world. It’s the biggest lesson you can learn as a business owner, so today I want to share 4 ways that you can build self-trust. I use these in my own life, in my own business and in my own personal development journey. When you can build more self-trust, you can achieve a level of self-confidence that will change the way you experience life, business, the people you bring in, the money you make and the freedom you have.
No matter where you’re at in business, there’s a lesson for everyone in this episode. We can all benefit from building more self-trust, so let’s dive in and I’ll show you how.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- What it means to ‘drive down the road’ of self-trust
- Why it’s so damn important to trust yourself over others
- That you’re already doing things to build self-trust right now – you just don’t know it!
- The power of commitment and the cycle of building self-trust
Tune in to the episode here:
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The Episode Breakdown:
Today’s topic is a big one but an important one. It’s something that has come up a lot for both me and my clients over the years, and it’s a challenge that I face at every new level of my business. Today, we are talking about self-trust.
The biggest lesson that I have learned as a business owner is that if you don’t have self-trust, you don’t have anything. You have no solid foundation to stand on, so it’s so important that we build self-trust from day one.
Any time that I’m interviewed on another podcast and am asked about the biggest lessons I’ve learned as a business owner, my answer is always this – Trust yourself. Trust your own decisions. Trust your intuition, trust your gut and trust your heart. It never lies. You have to trust yourself over everyone else and anything else in your world.
I believe that self-trust and self-confidence go hand-in-hand. If you aren’t feeling super confident, it’s because there’s a lack of self-trust, and vice versa.
Sometimes, from the outside, we may look super confident and like we’re really solidly trusting ourselves. But looks can be deceiving – because maybe deep down, we don’t feel like we can trust ourselves with anything. That’s imposter syndrome, when you feel like “I am not who people think I am”. It’s something that we’ve all felt in one way or another.
Self-trust is about trusting yourself to make the right decision, trusting yourself when something feels off, and trusting yourself when you want to say no or when you want to say yes. It’s trusting that who you are and what you’re doing is enough. Self-trust and confidence affect everything in life and business, which is why I think learning to build self-trust is the most important lesson there is.
In this episode, I want to share 4 ways to build self-trust and to achieve a level of self-confidence that will transform the way that you experience your life and business.
1. Stop setting such huge expectations for yourself
This is one the most important things you can do when you’re trying to build self-trust.
No one else is setting expectations of you. *You* are setting expectations of you.
When you’re trying to build self-trust but set huge expectations of yourself, you’re setting yourself up for failure. You’re setting the bar so high that it’s so hard for you to achieve it and then when you don’t achieve it, it deepens the lack of self-trust that you already had. You’re affirming to yourself that you can’t trust yourself and you’re strengthening that belief.
Think of the neural pathways in your brain as little dirt roads. Every time you drive on that dirt road, it becomes stronger and stronger. But if you don’t drive on it, the road gets softer, more slippery and is no longer a strong, solid road. If you have a belief that you can’t trust yourself and set the bar for yourself so high and then don’t achieve it, you’re just driving over that road over and over again and proving to yourself that you can’t trust yourself. You’re forming a stronger neural pathway and solidifying it in your mind that you can’t trust yourself.
When you stop setting such huge expectations for yourself and start achieving those things that show you that you *can* trust yourself, what happens is that you stop driving over that road that says “I can’t trust myself” and you start driving over another road that says “I can”.
That road that you used to drive on that was full of self-doubt starts to go soft and fade away, and all of a sudden the grass has grown over it and there isn’t even a road there anymore. Because suddenly, you’re now driving on the five-lane freeway that is self-confidence and self-trust.
If you wanted to lose weight, would you expect yourself to lose 10kg in 2 weeks? Probably not. That’s too high of an expectation. It’s a lifestyle change and it takes time. You’re setting yourself up for failure and when you can’t do it, you’re driving over that road and proving to yourself that you can’t trust yourself.
Don’t set the bar so high that you can’t achieve it, because it’s only going to make that lack of self-trust even stronger.
It’s not about playing small. You can still stretch yourself and expand yourself – but don’t set the bar so high that it’s unachievable for you to reach it.
Stop setting such huge expectations for yourself and start lowering those expectations so that you can start to build that new neural pathway or road in your brain. Let the grass grow over that old road that’s full of self-doubt.
2. Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing or what everyone else thinks
This is self-trust 101. Trust *your* decisions, thoughts and beliefs over everyone else’s.
Spend time with yourself. This should be a priority for everyone no matter what stage of business you’re at and whether you feel full of self-confidence or self-doubt. You should be spending time with yourself to focus on you, your beliefs, your mindset and to build your level of self-trust.
Take time away from everyone else. Take time away from the apps on your phone, family and friends if you need to. It can be triggering to see everyone else moving fast, achieving and putting their opinions out there. When you’re already lacking self-trust and are surrounded by people who are oozing confidence and self-trust, it can be really hard for you to start building your own self-trust. There’s a time and place for taking on someone else’s belief, but that’s only when it serves you, so don’t feel bad about taking time away from people that are triggering you. You can always come back, you can always re-follow them. It’s not goodbye forever, it’s just goodbye for now while you work on your own self.
If you truly desire to be a leader, you have to be a leader in your own life first. Taking care of yourself and putting yourself first is part of being a leader. You have to get comfortable being by yourself in order to trust yourself.
Even if the people in your life have the best intentions for you – if your heart, your intuition or your gut says otherwise, you have to trust that.
I say this to my clients all the time – “Trust yourself before you trust me.”
One of my main goals when a client comes to work with me is that by the end of us working together, you will trust yourself. Yes, I want you to make more money, sign aligned clients and have more freedom, but none of that is going to happen if you’re lacking the self-trust that it takes to be a leader. Giving your power away to a coach and expecting them to give you all the answers builds a lack of self-trust. It’s not that you don’t know the answers – you probably already have them, but you just don’t trust yourself.
My aim for my clients is that they don’t need me. If a client decides to re-sign with me, it’s not because they feel that they can’t trust themselves and that I have all the answers. It’s because they *do* trust themselves. They trust themselves so much that they desire to invest in themselves by having my support to go wherever they’re going – because they’re going there regardless.
Trusting yourself over other people is a habit that you build over time. If you feel like you already know the answers, trust yourself.
You have everything within you right now to achieve everything you desire. You just have to trust yourself.
3. Start looking at ways that you *can* trust yourself
Instead of looking at ways that you can’t trust yourself, start looking at ways that you can.
The easiest way to do this is to start looking at the everyday, mundane tasks that you do in your life and business to prove to yourself that you *can* trust yourself.
These can be anything – when you said you’d go to bed by a certain time and you do it, when you said you’d go for a 5 minute walk and you do it, when you want to cut out a teaspoon of sugar in your tea or coffee and you do it.
Work your way up from there. Go to bed even earlier, go for a 10 minute walk and have half a sugar, then no sugar. It’s doing it step by step because if you set huge expectations for yourself and try to jump from 0-100 straight away, then you set yourself up for failure and you keep driving over that road. Start one step at a time and start noticing all of the ways that you can trust yourself.
Keep track of all the ways that you can trust yourself by keeping a note in your phone or journal where you can list out all the times, situations or circumstances where you’ve been able to trust yourself.
Write down that you did it and acknowledge that you did it because you didn’t set the bar so high that it was unachievable and you didn’t jump from 0-100. You just focused on one thing that you knew you could do and knew you could trust yourself on.
When you write it down, you’re showing yourself that you can trust yourself. So many of us trust ourselves a lot more than we realise because in the moment, we just brush on to the next thing and don’t acknowledge it. Writing it down allows you to acknowledge it and celebrate it.
Keep adding to the list and you’ll see that step by step, situation by situation, you are slowly but surely getting there.
Imagine your lack of self-trust as a hole in the ground. Where there’s a lack of dirt, there’s a lack of self-trust. When you set your expectations too high and you fail, you’re digging yourself even deeper into that hole. But when you take even just a small ice cream scoop and find those little things that you *can* trust yourself on, what you’re doing is putting little bits of dirt back in the hole, scoop by scoop. It may take a while, but eventually you will fill the hole. But if you don’t start noticing those little things and you keep setting your expectations so high, that hole is going to end up going all the way through the earth.
Make it a daily habit or practice. Even right now, you could list out all the ways that you can trust yourself or situations when you said you’d do something and you did it.
You don’t have to change your life and you don’t have to go from 0-100 to build new habits. Keep living your life the way that you’re already living it, but start noticing the ways that you can trust yourself.
4. Start being a woman of your word
If you say you’re going to do something – do it.
If you say you’re going to go to bed by 10pm, do it.
If you say you’re going to just have one teaspoon of sugar, do it.
If you say you’re going to stop having conversations with toxic people, do it.
Don’t be all talk and no walk.
This is leadership. If you want to bring in clients who trust you to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, it starts with this.
Don’t be all in – and then back out.
Don’t say you’re going to go for it – and then give up.
Decide you’re doing it, commit to doing it and then do it. If you’re constantly saying you’re going to do something but then you aren’t following through, it’s no wonder you can’t trust yourself.
Every time you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, you’re driving over that road and building a lack of self-trust, and it’s getting stronger and stronger.
This is called radical responsibility. It’s taking ownership and being a leader. It’s embodying what you want to call in with your clients. You can’t expect clients to want to invest in you if *you* aren’t. You can’t expect clients to believe in themselves if *you* don’t. Leadership is leading. It’s trusting in yourself, investing in yourself and going first. So start being a woman of your word – if you say you’re going to do something, do it.
Don’t set the expectations too high when you’re doing this, like we’ve said before. Set the expectations, decide that you’re doing it and commit to doing it at any cost. That’s how you build self-trust.
Then, once you’ve decided that you’re going to do something, the best thing you can do is set yourself up for success. If you decide that you want to go to bed by 10pm, set an alarm to remind yourself to start getting ready for bed. If you want to go for a walk in the morning, put your workout clothes out so they’re ready to go and you have no excuses when you wake up.
Start sticking to those decisions and commitments that you’ve set for yourself and then note them down on your list.
Let’s recap…
- Stop setting such huge expectations for yourself. You’re only going to set yourself up for failure. Set the expectations so that you can achieve them.
- Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing or thinking. Trust yourself over everyone else always.
- Start looking at ways that you can trust yourself. When you do something you said you were going to do, take note of it, write it down, celebrate it and bring awareness to it.
- Start being a woman of your word. If you say you’re going to do something – decide you’re doing it, commit to doing it and then do it.
The more that you do these things to build self-trust, the better you’ll get at trusting yourself and the more that you can expand it from there. It might take you a day, a week, a month or years, but the more you do it and the more you acknowledge it, the easier it gets.
There’s no timeline – however long it takes for you is perfect. Give yourself permission to just be present with yourself and focus on yourself. Where you are is exactly where you need to be and everything you’re doing is enough.
You can trust yourself, you just can’t see it yet. I feel like deep down, you know you can – it’s just that you’ve forgotten it.
I know every single one of you is an incredible human being and so powerful and so worthy of having everything you desire. I want you all to trust yourselves that much more, because the more that you do that, the more you will unlock those desires you have for yourself and your business. It all comes from self, it all comes from self-trust and it all comes from you.
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