Know Yourself Before You Trust Yourself

When facing difficult decisions, the advice from others is often to trust your gut feelings. "Listen to your inner voice", they say. While such words of advice may have good intentions, they're not necessarily the best course of action. Or would you sail in a stormy sea without a compass? In the same way, it's essential to know yourself and your values before trusting your gut feelings.

How To Build Self-Trust

"Look inward. Don't let the true nature or value of anything elude you." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.3

Building self-trust begins with getting to know yourself. The more you know your strengths and weaknesses, character traits, values, and emotions, the easier it will be to trust yourself and your decisions.

As long as you don't have an answer to those things, you probably shouldn't trust yourself and your gut feelings. You might act contrary to your values or put yourself in a situation you can't handle, getting you off balance.

But, once you've acquired that knowledge, making rational decisions that push you in the right direction - your direction - is becoming easier. Strengthening the connection with yourself infuses you with the self-trust needed to make decisions that align with your identity.

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5 Tips To Learn To Trust Yourself

The techniques below will help you on your self-discovery journey and help you learn to trust yourself with more confidence and self-esteem.

Journal

While there's no right or wrong journaling, to build self-trust and self-knowledge, I recommend starting like this:

1. First, write about everything that concerns you. Grammar, punctuation, or readability doesn't matter. The vital thing is to free your mind from its burdens.
2. Then, consider the difficulties you had in the recent past, your successes, and your emotions connected to those.
3. Next, journal about situations or events that trigger strong emotional reactions. 

1. What are the exact triggers? A single word? A specific behavior?
2. How does the upcoming emotion feel? What bodily reactions occur? Can you feel a faster heartbeat, sweating hands, or tension in your facial muscles?

1. Once you've documented these experiences, try to identify recurring patterns. Knowing them will enable you to handle them more efficiently.
2. Lastly, contemplate the most significant decisions in life you've ever made or life-changing experiences.

1. How had spontaneous, emotional behavior influenced them? 
2. What was the basis of your decision?
3. Would you do something differently today? Would you consider other aspects?
4. What was your reaction when you were forced into a situation (breakup with a loved one)? What have you learned from that?

These steps are about gaining self-awareness and understanding of your current behavioral patterns. Don't judge yourself, but take it with a neutral view to capture the status quo.

I also recommend going through this process for several days or weeks to get a complete picture.

In Stoicism, there's another way that is very well applicable and doesn't require a lot of time. Every evening, ask yourself the following three questions:

1. What went well?
2. What went wrong?
3. Where can I improve?

With time and consistency, you'll get a well-rounded picture of yourself and build the foundation of self-trust.

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Focus On Your Own Behavior

Focusing solely on your behavior is vital to build self-trust, as it is the only thing you can truly influence. The dichotomy of control is a concept of Stoicism that fosters such a mindset.

While you can't control outside events and what others might do, you can always control your response. So, start paying attention to your behavior and actively change it in a way that is according to your values.

Focus On Virtue And Character Development

To build rock-solid trust in yourself and your abilities, focus on gathering virtue and cultivate a robust and resilient character.

In our everyday struggles, it's easy to forget our values and neglect important character traits to follow the path of least resistance. We just respond to situations without further thought. That's why practicing Stoics design their role model - the so-called Stoic sage. This individual serves as a reminder of the ideal person they strive to become.

The idea is to craft a clearly defined character that you can live by. Consequently, the sage incorporates all of your values and character traits you admire in others. You can ask yourself what your sage would do when navigating uncertainty and facing challenging situations. Very powerful.

When focusing on virtue and character growth, you build your own moral compass that guides you through stormy times. With such a tool, you're not leaving essential life decisions to random chance or impulsive reactions. Instead, your choices are based on what you believe is right.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the foundation of all spiritual practices as well as personal development. How can you have true self-trust without being present with yourself?

Mindfulness means being present in the current moment and paying attention to your thoughts and feelings. Without judgment, you simply accept what is. This non-judgmental and radical acceptance opens the door to questioning your first impressions, thoughts, and emotions and examining them with reason (and the Stoic sage at hand).

As a consequence, mindfulness enables you to align yourself with your values immediately.

Learn From Your Experiences

Experiences are gold nuggets by the wayside of learning to trust yourself. You just have to pick them up.

To avoid going through life with a tunnel view, ignoring those precious nuggets within reach, you need a tool - reflection. So, whatever you go through - huge successes or total failures - it's vital to learn from your experiences as it contribute massively to building self-trust and confidence. Reflect on them and look at what they teach you, as only reflection offers the insights needed for advancement.

Consider everything as a gift and material you can learn from. You're the sculptor of your self-trust, and each experience offers you new material to shape yourself.

Final Thoughts

The road to self-trust is called self-knowledge. You can go there with just a little bit of effort and the willpower to cultivate this knowledge about yourself. Do it, and it's likely that you'll never ask yourself the question, "How can I trust myself?" again. Ignore it, and you probably miss living a life with your full potential, a life that is according to who you are, a life where you can truly flourish.