When we think about leaving a job we don’t enjoy and pursuing work that is more fulfilling, many of us have one obstacle standing in our way: FEAR.
Fear can disguise itself in so many different ways including perfectionism and very logical sounding excuses as to why now is “not the right time”. Sometimes fear can even show up as “I should just be grateful for what I have” or “I’m trying to be realistic.”
Most of the time it’s all just fear. And usually our fear comes down to the fact that we don’t trust ourselves.
What fear really is
When we are scared to quit our job because “what if we can’t find another job in this economy”. What we are saying is we don’t trust ourselves to do what it takes to make ends meet. We don’t trust in our resourcefulness, our scrappiness.
When we are scared of failure and are wondering “what if it doesn’t work out”. What we are really saying is, we don’t trust in our resilience. We don’t trust that we can bounce back from a setback. That we don’t believe we are capable of learning and growing through failiure and using it to fuel our inevitable success.
When we are scared of people telling us no. What we are saying is we don’t trust our own emotional capacity to process and move through the painful feelings associated with rejection.
When we say that we don’t know where to start, what we are really saying is we don’t trust in our creativity, our ingenuity, or ability to figure things out. We don’t trust in our sheer determination and commitment to our goal which will help us ovecome any obstacle.
Trusting ourselves vs not trusting ourselves
When we don’t trust ourselves…. we can never succeed.
We won’t take risks. We won’t follow our intuition. We won’t ever walk into the unknown. We won’t invest in ourselves or our dreams. We will essentially let our fears govern our lives.
Trusting yourself is the absolute foundation of following your intuition, pursuing your purpose and living a life you love.
Trusting yourself means believing that no matter what happens to you, no matter what life throws at you, you know you can handle it. You know you can figure it out.
Trusting yourself means making a commitment. It is knowing that you will do what you say you are going to do. That you will follow through with your commitments. Even when it’s hard. Even when you don’t feel like it.
Two ways to build trust in ourselves
So how do we start to build this deep trust in ourselves? There are two ways that have been successful for me and my clients.
Start small and follow through
The first way is to start small.
Make one small commitment that you will stick to every single day for 30 days. Most of the time we overcommit ourselves. We try to do too much; change a million different things at once. Then the result is, we can’t follow through. This erodes our self trust over time.
Start small and make it easy for yourself.
My first commitment was to give up drinking for 30 days. This was difficult, but only really required me NOT doing something. Each day that I stuck to my commitment I felt stronger and sturdier and when I finally reached that 30 day mark, I had this incredible feeling that I could do anything.
So what will you commit to? What is something you have been wanting to do for so long and how can you make it super easy for yourself? The only important thing is that you set a behavioral goal and you follow through. Do you want to move your body for 10 minutes a day? Drink 2L of water a day? Spend 15 minutes/ day learning a language?
Whatever it is: pick something, write it down and then stick to it.
Give yourself some credit
Another way to build self trust is to give yourself credit. So many times we blaze through life paying more attention to our failures, rejections and disappointments than we do to our wins and successes.
We think of all the wins as just the bare minimum, the status quo and the way things should go. We dismiss or completely forget all the times we showed up, took risks, figured things out and put ourselves out there.
So lets give ourselves some credit.
Get out your journal and try this exercise.
Think of all the times you’ve been resourceful in the past. All the times you had no idea what you were doing but you figured things out. All the ways you’ve risen to the occasion. All the ways you’ve surprised yourself. All the times you did hard things. All the times where you were brave. All the times where you didn’t know if you could handle something, but you surprised yourself and did it anyways. All the ways you’ve been a total badass. The times you were put in a challenging situation and succeeded. Times where you defied and exceeded expectations.
Once you’ve listed out each situation, take some time to reflect even more deeply on each of these moments.
What does that say about you and your ability to figure things out? About your resourcefulness? Your persistence? Your resilience? What did that take for you to create success in that situation? Based on all of this evidence, what do you know you are capable of doing in the future?
When I did this exercise here are some of the things that came up for me.
- Getting into medical school. It was a huge, daunting goal to get into medical school, but I didn’t let that stop me. I looked at where I wanted to go and reverse engineered how I could make that happen. I found a way to get all the necessary extracurricular and volunteer experience, the grades and the test scores so that I would be a successful applicant. This required huge commitment and unwavering focus. This required me to put myself out there to reach out to strangers about shadowing opportunities. It required me to be bold and determined. It required me to sacrifice. To me this shows that when I set my mind to something, when I set a goal for myself, I can do what it takes to achieve that goal.
- Solo hiking and camping trips. I learned how to put up a tent and set up all the logistics. I learned how to start a fire. I was scared of running into wildlife like bears while on my own, but I learned how to sit with that fear and overcome it so I could be out in nature by myself. I was scared of being by myself in the woods at night, but I learned how to be brave and strong and do to it anyways. This showed me that I am so capable of learning new skills and being brave and overcoming my fears.
- Moving to South Korea where I didn’t know anyone and didn’t know the language. This showed me that I am capable of making new friends and navigating myself through a foreign country. This showed me I can be resourceful and learn how to get around. I can jump into scary unknown situations and thrive.
Doing this exercise and really giving yourself credit for how resourceful you’ve been in the past is a great way to cultivate this trust in yourself. It can help give you the faith you need that you really are amazing. You really can figure things out. You can do hard things.
So often we underestimate ourselves and our magnificent potential.
We discount how much we’ve already accomplished and we underestimate what we are capable of in the future. This exercise will help counteract all of that and will show you how incredible you truly are. It will also get you so excited for everything you are capable of in the future.
Because once you trust yourself and believe in your full potential, you are really capable of anything.
