How to trust ourselves

Have you been in a situation where you don’t know what decision to take and what will be the next step, when everything that is happening outside just feels so overwhelming that we feel totally lost?

It can be very difficult to trust people around us if we don’t have a sense of trust in ourselves.

To develop inner trust, we need to start creating a grounding space, knowing that it doesn’t matter how chaotic the world around us feels because we have the ability to come back to our centre.

You can start by imagining a big tree with roots growing down into earth: for those roots to keep growing, we need to start having an intimate conversation with ourselves. In the same way that you might check-in on the relationship with your partner, we need to check-in with ourselves, to listen to the voice that is talking from the inside.

Who is talking? Is it your true self or is it your internal critic? What is the tone of your internal dialogue? Are you gentle and caring towards yourself? Or is that inner voice very negative and constantly criticizing every decision that you make? We cannot grow unless we are prepared to look inside of ourselves. We cannot create self-trust if we don’t know what is our grounding.

Here are some few ways to start creating the foundations for self-trust:

1- Maintain an open and non-judgemental conversation with yourself, try to listen to yourself from a very neutral space, and just observe the nature of your internal dialogue. Sometimes we give too much power to the internal critic voice and we get bombarded with negative thoughts.

2- Increase body awareness by observing how your emotions, feelings and thoughts are felt on the body. When an external situation hits you, where exactly on the body you sense that? On your belly? Solar plexus? Heart? The body is trying to talk to us constantly, learn to listen. Rest when you need, have extra sleep, nourish yourself with good food. If we don’t learn to feel and listen to our body it will be very difficult that we give to ourselves what we need.

3- As this internal dialogue keeps developing, start making space and time for self-caring. What are the things that nurture your soul and make you feel good underneath your skin? It could be expending time in nature, having a massage, talking to someone that will uplift you or making time simply to do nothing. We are all different and we all have different needs.

4- Learn to say no. Many times we get overwhelmed because we take in too much, maybe to please other people, and we compromise ourselves to others. Learn to have healthy boundaries, keep a safe space just for yourself.

5- Don’t give up when things go wrong. Learn from your mistakes, that is what life is about… about learning who we are, beyond all those layers and belief system that we pile on top of ourselves. Every mistake is an opportunity to grow, to see things from a different perspective.

Please always remember that at the end trust will come from deeply loving yourself and being committed to who you are, knowing that whatever happens, you will take good care of yourself. This will unfold into inner knowledge and finding peace within yourself.

You need to become like a big lake with calm water. There will be storms, winds, rain and sun, but you will always know that your nature is not the different weathers, your nature is the stillness of your water. It doesn’t matter what could happen to us, you will always have your foundation, and you will always know the way back to your centre.

We are divine souls full of gifts, we just lose contact with our true nature.