Section 7: Trust Yourself

BELIEVE IN YOU

To trust yourself is ultimately to believe in yourself. We all need people outside of ourselves to believe in us. This is NOT codependency, its humanity. But we also need to be able to believe in ourselves as well. It’s a question of faith. No matter what your religious or spiritual belief system is, you have faith. Unless you suffer from a rare psychiatric illness where you literally are too afraid to leave your home, you have faith that you are going to survive the day. To get in a car, to get on a plane, to cross the street. If you take faith a step further, it’s the belief that you will be able to handle the stresses of the day. Personally, I at times get very thrown when things in my day do not go as planned. This is a deluded addiction to certainty because life is UNcertain.  But when I restore my trust - faith - belief in myself, I get through it.

INTUITION

Intuition is the brain of your gut, your inner voice, inner knowing, and sixth sense. It’s the part of you that just “knows”. Everyone has an intuition including men. That being said, it is generally much stronger in women, and I believe it is one of our gifts. But when“the mind” becomes imbalanced, it will rev up obsessive and / or unclear thinking which clouds our intuition. 

This is what threatens both the strength of your intuition as well as your ability to listen to it:

• Over-analyzation: The mind and it’s analyzation skills are very useful but are also limited. Too much analysis leads to “analysis paralysis”. Meaning, you’ll get stuck. This is why more times than not, you have to just go with your gut.

• Getting stuck in “I should” or “I shouldn’t”. Perfectionism, a lack of trust, and fear of failure all will block your intuition.

• Believing the answers to your problems are to be found outside of yourself. All the answers you seek are already inside of you. No doubt you will need help as everyone does figuring out complex problems, but ultimately anyone who held you is just leading you back to you.

• Fear. Whatever terrorizes you - abandonment, failure, rejection, loneliness, boredom, not being enough - all of these fears and more will thwart your ability to listen to the whisper inside of you thats trying to guide you.

Tools to help you strengthen and connect better to your inner guide:

• Master your heart: I firmly believe that the practice of mastering our thoughts and emotions is really the practice of mastering our hearts. Meaning, if we want to feel better - to feel healthier emotionally and mentally, then we are faced with one crucial task: do more of what makes you come alive and less of what you do in reaction to fear. Mastering our hearts is the practice of truly living. When we do more of what lights us up, our intuition gets stronger.

• Meditate. When you don't know what to do or which direction to take, meditate until you do know. Sitting still and getting quiet is the pathway to your intuition.

• Move: Intuition is primal and often we get hits of it through bodily sensations. It’s a feeling. In order to listen to it, you must be connected to your body. Movement is a direct pathway to your body. Walking is GREAT for this.

• Honor. Sometimes it is just as simple as honoring the voice inside of you instead of reacting to fear.