Trusting yourself is one of the most important things you can do. Without self-trust you will be buffeted around by the winds of others whims, wills and desires, finding yourself both frustrated and resentful. Abandon your intuition consistently and for long enough, and it will begin to erode your self-esteem and disrupt the flow of your life.
We can all relate to that experience of not trusting ourselves: we go ahead with something that, despite an inner unease, theoretically sounds wonderful and lo and behold sooner or later down the line we are shown that our initial feeling was spot on. The gut never lies.
When we do trust ourselves however, we notice that life flows more and we get what we want, it also bolsters our self-confidence and well-being.
So what does trusting yourself mean? Well it means being able to first of all hear your intuition and secondly possessing the courage to act on this intuition. In truth your intuition is an unflinching truth-teller committed to your well-being, it is a potent form of inner wisdom, not mediated by the intellect or logical, conscious mind. We all have access to it. However, many of us though are not used to listening to our intuition, the reason for this is our conditioning. We are simply not taught to. We are often taught by our caregivers to trust others above ourselves; this is then reinforced by teachers or other figures of authority in regular contact. Our subconscious mind, which simply doesn’t understand time, can take beliefs on such ‘as other people know best’, this belief then unconsciously, yet powerfully, affects our decisions and we can end up handing our power over to others. As children, it is true that others know best, we need that guidance, but as adults we need to update the script, we need to learn to listen to our inner guidance system, to trust ourselves, to take our power back and get the very best out of our lives and selves.
So for many of us learning to trust ourselves, is something we need to re-learn. We can begin this by listening to our intuition. So, how do we do that? Well, I have found the following 6 steps the most powerful way to begin the journey towards clarity:
1. Allow space – the intuitive voice is a powerful one, but when you are beginning to listen to your intuition it needs a calm, quiet environment in order to be heard. As you become more finely attuned to your own intuition and more practised you will be able to hear it in all manner of situations but in the early days it’s important to give yourself the time and space amongst the clamour and clatter of the modern world to listen to it.
2. Pay attention to your initial emotions – we’ve all had that experience when on first encountering someone, or something e.g. a situation, we’ve had a distinctly uneasy feeling, we don’t know why we feel like that, only that we do, in truth this is our inner guidance telling us that this person or situation isn’t right, if we go ahead and get involved in some way with this person or situation we may well notice that our first feeling was right. Intuition comes from our subconscious which is fast in it’s emotional response, if our gut reaction to something is good our intuition is giving us the thumbs up and if our gut reaction is one of anxiety or unease our intuition is warning us away. If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t!
3. Write it out – journaling is fantastic for getting in touch with you really feel about stuff, sometimes we just don’t know! Sometimes the white noise of others opinions, voices and demands, life’s stresses and challenges is deafening to our own intuition, taking time out to write and get in touch with yourself can be invaluable.
4. Start small – it can be frightening to listen to our intuition first of all, even more so to begin acting on it, so just as when you are doing anything for the first time the best way to support yourself is by starting small. You don’t have to make life-changing upheavals, consult your intuition on minor decisions initially and build from there.
5. Practice, practice, practice – the truth is self trust is like a muscle, it gets stronger the more you use it, the same as if you worked on your abs every day! Turn every decision you can’t make instantly over to your intuition and be patient until it let’s you know, it will.
6. Commit to it – as you get more confident with trusting yourself you will notice wonderful changes in your life and your level of self belief and self confidence, committing to it even more deeply will only serve to further these positive changes.
Your intuition is like your internal satellite navigation system, albeit with a softer voice, but if you commit to listening to it, it will never fail you. The other good news? The more faithful you are to your own truth the happier you will be.
I’m going to end with a quote by Goethe which I believe sums it up perfectly:
[pullquote align=”normal”]Just trust yourself, and then you will know how to live. [/pullquote]
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Zoe Clews is a Hypnotist & Hypnotherapist with over a decades experience, specialising in anxiety, confidence & relationship issues. Through her extensive study of hypnosis and the subconscious mind Zoe came to realise that our lives are shaped by our inherited and subconscious beliefs and the patterns that are run as a result of this. The subconscious beliefs act as invisible walls, hidden from the conscious mind, until we become ‘conscious’ of it and realise we are repeating the same behaviour and situation again and again. Changing these beliefs and patterns to positive and powerful ones that serve you is incredibly freeing and has the potential to transform your life.
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