From Doubt to Confidence:

The Art of Trusting Yourself.

"Self-trust is the first secret of success."

– Ralph Waldo Emerson -

We wander through life so caught up in the intrinsic affair of the material world, what others think, are we doing the right thing, what are we doing with our lives and we should be doing better. We have concerns about who we are in relation to our body shape and size, the job we gave and the role we play within society. Some of us are even achieve huge success based on the perception of success provided by society and yet believe it is not enough. When is enough enough? Is it when you have achieved the job you have worked so hard for? or married the person of your dreams? Have the perfect body and the perfect look? Achieved financial abundance? When is enough enough? Why do we feel the need to keep chasing our happiness, believing that happiness is a result found outside of ourselves?

I see people walking through life not from a place of trust but from a place of societal consciousness, in other words what the media portrays life to be and what our peers expect and your role in it. I hear people, me included, asking people for their opinions or advice regarding a good or not so good situation. Of course, the answer received is always going to be that person’s opinion based on their level of knowledge on the topic, and in most cases they have very little knowledge in that area. But we are always willing to hear their advice and even follow through with it, even knowing that the advice is based on the other persons opinion or truth and not your own.

In my own life experiences, I have been willing to put my trust in another person before trusting myself. I have done this numerous times throughout my life ranging from career, health, finances and my education. Every time I would find myself dissatisfied with the outcome, and a feeling like my soul was being taxed.

It sounds like I am painting a bleak picture of life, but really, I am not. What I have illustrated is the life of the vast majority of people who wake up each morning not trusting themselves. Trust is not just the meaning defined within the dictionary of having confidence in a thing or a person, it goes deeper than that. Trust comes first from self, trusting you and by you I am referring to the Authentic Self that resides deep within you. That gut feeling that provides guidance if we are willing to listen to it. The trust that comes when we are ready to let go of all expectations and agendas, allowing patience, harmony and clarity to be at the core instead of fear, anger and frustration.

When I find myself centred and calm, answers come to me with ease, and I usually find the answer to be extremely simple…quickly followed by ’Gee why didn’t I think of that earlier’ kinda thing. But when I come from a place of fear, I cut myself off from this inner clarity and I get myself all worked up over the situation. I can even make myself sick from the outcome because of the emotions I have stirred within, and these emotions affect my nervous system which in turn affects my immune system. A diseased body is really a body that is not at ease. Something to think about the next time you find yourself unwell.

I recall a time when I went out for a motorbike ride with my husband. I was experiencing issues cornering on my bike, now I know how to ride, and I know how to corner but I had a moment of feeling insecure, and in this moment, I did not trust myself on the bike or even the bike itself, I also found myself not trusting my environment. I became stiff on the bike and took the corners hesitantly, this packaged all together is a very dangerous situation to put yourself in on a motorbike. The more I kept doing this the more I kept giving myself a hard time about not cornering correctly, which would wound me up even more. Then suddenly, I started to observe what was occurring, with this new awareness I was able to make the decision to centre myself. I took a number of deep breaths, and each breath assisted in calming my body so I would be more relaxed on the bike, and with each breath I took it helped to centre myself and created harmony and faith within. I assured myself that I was more than capable of cornering on a motorbike. From this place of calmness, I cornered at the right speed on the right lines, in a safe manner, and achieved the best outcome.

This little lesson got me observing other areas of my life where I was not trusting in self first. Let me tell you there were a few. I made the decision to start working on this immediately, because not trusting myself in all areas of life was holding me back from truly expressing my true potential.

With this new awareness I started to contemplate and observe my surroundings. I have always found nature to be a great place to get insight and it did not take long to see how much nature exists on trust. When a bird wakes in the morning and flies off to forage for food it knows without a doubt it will find food, the bird does not wake and mope around questioning if food will be found and then becomes too fearful to even search for the food because it may not be found. The bird just flies out stretches its wings and uses its instincts (gut feeling) to find the food, and sure enough it does.

The same could be said for the beauty of a flower unfolding at dawn. The flower does not question whether its petals will unfold they just unfold to show the beauty of the flower for all to see. Humans have a beauty that naturally unfolds if there is a willingness to let go of fear and stop craving the need to be accepted.

When your beauty starts to shine through other people will not be able to stop themselves from being attracted to you. You will find situations and events occur to aid you in your quest. Life starts to show up and matches your happiness.

The “Universe cannot do for you what it cannot do through you”, when you start trusting yourself, you are in fact trusting in everything and this will allow the universe to work through you with ease. It is a wonderful thing to witness.

“With realisation of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.”

- Dalai Lama -