Building on my previous post, I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to trust myself. Perhaps it simply means to be confident in my convictions and to stop second guessing my intuition.

The question now is, “How do I learn to trust myself?”

Maybe this means that I need to give myself a gentle reminder whenever I have a gut feeling about something or have a difficult decision to make. Whatever the course of action I take, it needs to be informed by an intention to go with my intuition despite the naysayers both inside and outside of my head. These are opportunities for me to willingly trust what my gut is telling me and to act on those motivations. I will try to do this as often as I can. Practice makes perfect.

Trusting my intuition will help me to determine whether someone is being disingenuous or hurtful. It can help me figure out a true desire underneath a need to please others or be expedient. Trusting myself means that I will be guided by my own principles and standards that may be different from those of others.

I also need to make time for reflection and contemplation—to give myself moments of solitude in which I can be alone with my thoughts whenever difficult circumstances arise that need my attention and decisiveness.

What then is the opposite of trusting myself?

This would look like a person constantly consumed by guilt and anxiety over every decision made. It would also mean giving over important decisions to other people regardless of how I feel or how it effects me. This is no good because it creates a passive existence in which my life moves at the whim of other people’s desires. That sounds miserable.

Trusting myself means that I get to steer the ship in my own life and get to make my own adult decisions without trying to constantly please others. This is how it needs to be.

-Roqué