7 Ways to Trust yourself More

Many people agree that building trust in themselves can have many benefits in different life areas. Consider 7 ways to trust yourself more:

1.  Deepen connection with yourself

Trusting our own intuition may not seem easy if adversity or traume have taught us to distrust.  These experiences are like energetic blockages to self-trust.  So, if feeling indecisive, consider asking or journalling, “is this what I really want?” When we repeat this, true feelings get louder.  We only hear when ready to truly listen. As we reconnect with inner voice, creating boundaries happens naturally and help us distance from harmful actions or relationships.

2. Practice Self-Compassion

Sometimes, a mistrust of self can come from a lack of self-compassion.  Sometimes we forget every human is imperfect.  Come what may, life choices do not define us. Being kind to ourselves makes us less judgemental.  Shifting into self love and acceptance is the road to building the foundation of self-trust.

3. Revisit the power of intention

Although it’s wonderful to have lofty goals in the long term, it can help to set some reasonable goals that are achieveable in a shorter term. If we only aim high, we may get frustrated or discouraged. This could impact self-trust and affect overall energy level and motivation.  Setting clear intentions are ery important also.

4. Value Solitude 

Many people are afraid to be alone. It can bring up feelings of discomfort or loneliness.  While loneliness may harm your mental health, there are benefits to spending some quality time in solitude. Alone time can help you work out your own needs and preferences. It gives you time to make decisions that feel right to you without being influenced by the external.

5. Master a New Skill

When you lose trust in yourself, you also lose confidence that you can cope or care for yourself.  Building mastery over a specific skill can help you regain your self-esteem and trust in your ability to cope with life’s challenges.  To get started, choose a skill that evokes enthusiasm. Commit to learning and practicing this skill until you feel confident in your ability to perform it.

6. Consult a Mentor

While on the journey to learning something new or shifting habits and life focus, it can be helpful to work with a mentor or coach to keep you on track.  It is valuable to be exposed to different perspectives that you may not have considered.  Interacting with someone having deep insight or simialr life experience has unexpected benefits.

7. Commit to Dreamwork

What we dream during the night can be very educational.  Yet, many people do not recall details regularly or see value in closer reflection.  Dreams can reveal how we are feeling and coping with life or obstacles we are facing. It can offer insight about level of consciousness and other gems. Consider taking exploring self-view from different vantage points during day and nightime hours.

5 Ways to begin taking radical responsibility

To draw on the theme of a new online radical responsibility course I am offering, consider 5 ways to begin taking radical responsibility:

1. Recognize that you create all of your life experiences. 

This may be a shocker: No one and nothing is doing anything to you. Stop looking outside of yourself to people and conditions and thinking they are happening to you. Unconscious individuals look at lack of peer feedback and believe peers are the issue. Conscious individuals shift attention off the external and focus on themselves. This is a choice. Where are you placing your attention? 

2. Accept your deepest intentions (unconscious commitment) are not in your words, but in results showing up. 

If the world is not giving you abundance, useful feedback, opportunities, clients, you feel unappreciated, these are results. Regardless of what you say you want (e.g. opportunity, clients, praise), you’re unconsciously committed to getting results you get.

3. Allow curiousity to guide you. 

Your unconscious commitment/ will (the actual result) is perfect for your next developmental step in becoming a conscious co-creator. No one is doing anything wrong. Right and wrong do not exist. This is a feeling based journey you are making conscious to reclaim inner power. Everything exists for your deep learning and growth.  

4. Answer two powerful questions from a place of curiosity and wonder. #1: “How do I create and perpetuate this situation? ” #2: “What do I get from creating and perpetuating this situation?”

The answers that arise are pivotal for raising your awareness of what you can do, how you can live differently

Question #1: Imagine you’ve been asked to teach a class called, “How to get feedback & appreciation.” Note results you get now. Be the expert. Have fun with this: create a slide presentation on how to create a boss who doesn't treat you well. Typical points might include: Don’t ask your boss for feedback. Think that all feedback must be verbal and labeled as “feedback.” Get defensive when your boss gives you feedback. As you answer question #2, it dawns you’re not crazy. You’re creating this situation and you benefit from having it be this way. Discover what they are. Own what you’re getting. 

5. If you’re willing to shift your unconscious commitment (intention), examine your presentation and apply what you learn to your life. Discover the power of conscious intenation. Follow your own prescription. Results are pointers to inner voice or vibration. SHift inside and the outside can only mirror that. Its universal law.

This is an example of how many mystery writers create their scenarios. They tend to begin with the solution to the mystery and write their story backwards. So, there is more than psychology to this.  The formula works! Go with it. See what happens.

Access more joy

Notice for some, joy may seem out of reach or not experienced regularly in daily life. What is your experience of happiness for no reason, that which is embodied, open, energetic, alive? Does anything arise? Were these passing states? Is it just a state you imagine when you feel stressed and seek to get somewhere else? What is required to tap into it as an enduring part of our Being? How often do we celebrate simply Being right where we are, come what may? How often do we sense beauty and tenderness? Aliveness and openness grow more accessible as we open and value the whole of existence. Its like shifting awareness from viewing life as a problem to solve, into seeing life a mystery to experience. Do we feel obligated to feel joy or is it spontaneous? In the same way, to commit to realize full potential, empathize with the suffering to around us makes us feel more connected to our world. It is also part of our commitment to being whole to feel open to loving the world as it is. As we cultivate presence, this natural capacity within each of us, we actually cultivate paths for joy. Being open to light-heartedness happens as we pay attention and cherish all of existence. The quality of life is experienced in proportion to allowing our capacity for delight to guide us. This is a gift we give ourselves as we pay attention. Joy happens. It arises from the simple experiences; jumping into piles of leaves, tuning into the scent of a flower, the wind blowing on our face, a snowflake landing on the tongue, the taste of a strawberry. The experience of joy is so-life giving that it feels natural to find joy in everything from sunrise to sunset and all that unfolds in between.

Tap into life-restoring power

Many people are familliar with the phrase, you are the Answer you seek. Yet, what does this look and feel like in practice? It may involve clarifying your ideal client, adding detail to a life vision, company manifesto, short-term goals, or deciding what kind of legacy to create and leave.  

At this stage, you may be in the brainstorming phase or encountering shifts and changes to original plans. This can lead to asking yourself for ways to access new energy and inspiration.  Choosing to work with me can accelerate your process and trigger new revelations. Ponder these five tips to tap into life-restoring power:

1. Stretch yourself

You grow and gain from what you do not know, not from living as if you already know.

Recall Anthony Robbins who echoes: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." Stretching yourself is about trusting intuition.  Its about no longer saying "I can't" but identifying core beliefs which translate into resistance, fear and low self-worth that block the dream. 

2. Listen differently

Its common practice to listen with the intend to reply wrather thatn with the intention to understand.  Watch your perception and reality shift as you repeatedly ask, what opportunity or lesson is this encounter bringing me? If you do not listen or hear yourself, you do not do this effectively with others.

3. Empathize

This is about getting into another person's shoes or situation, discovering what that person feels.  Allow yourself to move beyond fear of vulnerability and sympathy to truly feel the connection or intimacy you seek.  A difference exist between imagining emotions and opening yourself to feel.

4. Be Committed

Decide that to achieve a specific role brings dignity and self-respect.  You could have many flames in the fire yet which one(s) are actually extensions of your passion, core values and bring you fountains of joy?

The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. -Vince Lombardi

5.  Value your Independence & Uniqueness

This is meant to take shape financially, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, and on othe levels as part of achieving inner balance.  The more you love yourself, the easier it is to see that your entire life is pointing to the state of your self-worth.   Make the unconscious conscious and the bare Truth is revealed.

11 Tips to embrace change with grace

More and more people are growing aware of changes and opportunities for change are unfolding all around them. 

You may find yourself feeling confused, uncomfortable, getting emotional more often, noticing opportunity for change knocking at your door or change happening without you in different situations.  Consider 11 tips for embacing change with grace:

1) Focus inward

Pay attention to how you are thinking and feeling. Be aware of core beliefs you project are what reflects and your external reality.

2) Notice your emotional triggers

Being aware of your emotional triggers implies not only recognizing when you are triggered, uncovering and healing deeper reasons for them.  This empowers you to create a new reality.

3) Talk less, listen more

Rather than listen with the intent to reply, listen with the intent to understand how you/ people are feeling. This approach offers surprising insight into why it feels easy or hard to go with the flow of change.

4) Validate yourself

Validating yourself is being heartfelt. Listening to the heart means taking more action based on intuition, and having the courage to do what feels right rather than on what you are conditioned to believe is acceptable or would appease others.

5) Invest more in personal development

When spiritual or related programs, workshops, courses, books, videos, coaches or mentoring enter your scope, you are ready.  Its up to you to see the value in investing in yourself and actually commit.

6) Offer workshops or courses

Share insight based on your passion, interest or hobby. Join skillshare, offer your own on-line courses, propose a physical airbnb experience in your local area.  The options are only limited by your imagination. 

7) See everything is connected

What is happening in education, economies, religion and other spheres is all connected.  From the moment you grow more aware of trends and interconnectedness, you begin to see through illusions of separation on a whole new level.

8) Accept yourself

The degree you accept (or reject) yourself is reflected back in every area of your perception and life. As you grow in tolerance and understanding of the world around you, this reflects changing self-acceptance.

9) Love more

As you can begin to find something to appreciate whatever you perceive to be happening, you are beginning to see through your own filters of judgement and negativity. Resistance to change is akin to resisting love.

10) Feel deeper

Feelings are key to understanding yourself and why you choose to suffer, see and create the world as you do. Suppressing feelings is the conditioned way to live.  The more you explore your feelings in the moment and along timelines rather than overlook or deny them, the more you begin to understand yourself and why you accept or resist your destiny in thi s (and other) lifetime (s).

11) Explore breathwork

Consciousness flows through the breath.  Exploring breathwork is a kind of rebirthing process which allows you to gain invaluable insight into how and why you create habits, behaviours and patterns. All of this shapes your perception of Self and the external. It helps you understand your unconscious motives for creating and responding to change. Nothing transforms your life like making the unconscious conscious.