When the Hardest Person to Trust Is Yourself: The Practice of Choosing Yourself

“I’m tired!” my client blurted out.

“I’m so damned tired of all the things I need to do. And the thing is,” she paused, “I want to lead with compassion. And with confidence. Yet, I’m afraid that if I do, my team won’t respect me. That deadlines will slip and it will hurt the business. And I’ll fail.”

We sat there for a moment, letting her confession remain in the air. She felt relief for saying it all, and embarrassed for being unable to succeed at all the things she needed to do.

Part of her was nervous that I was going to point her back to the conventional way and coach her on how to be successful at it.

I didn’t. Instead, I asked her to notice what she was experiencing in her body.

“Umm... I don’t know... I feel a little bit like I could cry.”

I asked her to listen to the compassionate leader within her, the one who wants to do things differently. Again, I asked her to notice what she was experiencing in her body.

“Now, I am crying,” she said, wiping a tear, “except they’re different tears. These feel like, I don’t know, tears of relief. Maybe...” She stopped and shrugged her shoulders.

She looked down, then shifted her gaze up, as if looking for the answer.

“Tears of... fuck, what is it? It’s like confidence and compassion.”

She looked up.

"It’s trusting myself.”

It feels safer to follow someone else’s plan and ideas rather than to trust yourself and “fail.” Because failing after self-trust means something different. It’s not just the outcome that’s in question. It’s whether we can trust ourselves at all.

So we seek experts who tell us what to do. How to make millions. How to lose weight. How to save a marriage. How to change careers or get more followers. We listen to the voices of the outside world, people, algorithms, a computer’s voice, because it’s easier than trusting our own.

Often because we’re afraid of not being good enough.

To listen from wholeness will take you toward yourself. To listen while seeking wholeness will take you away from yourself.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Attributed to Rumi

Imagine yourself standing on a path.

Behind you are all of your life experiences, including messages from your family and culture that have told you who you are, what you need to become, and what it is to be worthy.

There are infinite paths ahead of you. Now imagine there are two different selves.

One self keeps listening to the outside world. Makes the familiar choices. Forms the same relationships. Thinks the same thoughts. Feels the same way. Behaves the same way.

The other self listens to your deep knowing. You feel enough as you are. You stop assuming your voice leads to failure, rejection, or being disliked. You stop assuming that success means danger. You know freedom starts from within. You know where you want to go, and trust that one of the infinite paths will get you there.

Where is the familiar self likely to go?

Where is the one listening to deep knowing likely to go?

Everyone wants to know how. “How do I trust myself? How do I choose that path?”

You’re already doing it. Imagining the two paths is the first step. The next step is alignment. Choosing the one who listens.

My client did.

She imagined both paths. One she saw leading the way she always had, competent, defensive, proving herself. The other she saw leading with an open ear and meeting hard decisions with compassion instead of armor.

She took the second path. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t one decision. It was something we kept returning to, again and again, until it became a practice.

The deadlines didn’t disappear and the team didn’t magically work more efficiently overnight. But her team started coming to her instead of around her. The hard decisions got a little easier. And her own confidence grew, not because she’d proven anything, but because she’d stopped needing to.

Whether you’re in the boardroom or sitting in the bathroom scrolling your phone, the deepest truth of who you are doesn’t change: you are whole.

I help people change careers, run companies, perform at higher levels, but none of it comes from chasing worthiness. It starts there instead.

And when your drive is rooted in wholeness and knowing, you don’t hustle to prove you’re good enough. You accomplish as an expression of knowing who you are, and your worthiness.

How do you do this? Listen to your deep knowing, and imagine yourself there so vividly that you can’t tell the difference between this reality and that one.

With love,

Sarah

I write regularly about aliveness, fear, and the inner choices that shape our lives. Get the next one in your inbox.