There have been a lot of changes I wanted to make in my life, but I didn’t trust myself to follow through and do them. So I stopped setting goals and making promises to myself.
This is something I have bee through and coach many women on – the issue of not trusting yourself creates a situation where you don’t believe you CAN do it, you stop looking for ways to learn, you look to others for the solution and validation and you spin where you are – in indecisiveness, anxiety and maybe apathy.
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Showing up for others but not ourselves
Often this situation shows up in women who still ‘get things done‘ – but they are doing things FOR other people, whether held by accountability or expectation or role. But they don’t ‘get things done’ for THEMSELVES, they don’t show up for themselves and do what they said they would do.
Can you relate to the situation of not trusting yourself?
- We might have an idea of what we want, but we waver on it, we doubt it.
- We might try something new, but we are insecure about it the whole time, we half show up.
- We might want to address an issue but we shrink away from it
- We might want to make a big change, but don’t believe it is possible
- We aren’t sure we are capable, that we know enough, that we are strong enough
- We don’t trust ourselves to do the thing we set out to do
What do you use as evidence that you can’t trust yourself?
- how you have failed
- you did it wrong
- you didn’t feel confident or motivated enough
- you’ve never done it before
- other people do it better/easier/faster
I used to not trust myself, and I’m sharing that in this episode:
- How I went through most of my adult life, not trusting muself. In fact, angry at who I was and what I wasn’t doing with my life.
- The promises I made to myself that I would break
- How I am learning to become someone I can trust with my life
What happens when you trust yourself? What happens when you FOLLOW THROUGH on what you say you want to do?
I feel like I have been experiencing this over the past few years. I have taken back my power. I feel in control of my life. It feels possible to me that I can really do whatever I WANT to do in my life.
ACTION: I’m giving you a couple of simple questions to get yourself started with building back the trust in yourself.
More resources mentioned in this episode:
My C-Section and the Feelings I was Ashamed to Admit
The Annual Simple on Purpose Survey
The Life on Purpose ROADMAP COURSE
Book a consult call to learn about 1:1 coaching with Shawna
Bring your questions to the closed Facebook Group
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hey, friends. Welcome to the Simple on Purpose Podcast, episode 105.
This is the podcast for moms who want to simplify their home, their heart and their life and slow down to show up and enjoy their actual life, the actual life you have without overhauling it.
In the Facebook group, the simple on purpose community Facebook group, we were talking about our plans for the week. And I shared that I’m spending it mostly on coaching calls, but then it’s also my son’s 10th. Birthday 10. My oldest is going to be 10.
So it just takes me immediately back, as it always does. When you think about a birthday, you think about the birth day. And with him, he was a C section, it was an emergency c section. And at that time, I was so disappointed in my birthing experience it disappointed in my body, I felt disconnected from my son. And I was just so sad and confused about what was supposed to be this heart exploding experience.
So I’m a new mom and I reached out to other moms who had babies and tried to talk to them about it. Many of them didn’t have an emergency c section. And they they were just like, yeah, I didn’t really have that experience. And I looked up on online forums, to see that I wasn’t alone just for an echo that you’re not alone, you’re not being dramatic. And at that time online forums, they were not Facebook groups and Instagram pages, it was Yahoo groups remember those.
So at one point, I was on the phone with a public health nurse. And I was just getting really emotional about this whole experience and how hard it had been for me. And she said, You know what, you should just write about this, you should write it out, it will help you so much. And so I did. And I decided to post it, I created a blog at the time was called dove tail blog. And I posted it because I wanted a space for any other mom who felt disappointed in what was supposed to feel like magic. And you never knew love like this before. and blah, blah, blah. I just wanted a voice to say it’s okay. It’s okay to be bummed about it. It’s okay to not know what to do right now it’s okay to feel distant and tired before it’s even really started. And it can change, it can get better. And your heart will heal along with your body and you will become so close to this little person outside of your body.
I have a post on this. If you want more encouragement about it, it’s called a mom no matter what I’ll link it in the show notes.
And if you can’t find the show notes, whatever player you’re listening to, and head on over to simple on purpose.ca. Click Listen, and you’re going to find all of the episodes, they’re full of all the show notes.
Okay, so where I was going with the story is, I’m going to have a 10 year old, it seems crazy to me. so crazy, because his whole life has also been kind of reflected in my motherhood experience that I share online. And I just want to thank you who have been reading my blog all these years who have joined on for the podcast who follow along and became my Instagram friend who show up in the Facebook group and contribute to the conversation, I just want to thank you for growing up in motherhood with me.
This past week, I also shared the annual survey in the simple and Saturdays email and in the Facebook group. And I’m hearing from you guys about what simple purpose looks like for you. And what you want to hear more about. And I just really love your insights, your ideas, and I hope to just keep bringing you more posts, more courses, more workshops that are going to help you continue your simple on purpose journey.
So let’s talk more today about on purpose, living the life you want to live on purpose.
As a life coach, there are women that come to me for help on a variety of issues. Sometimes it’s making a big life decision, knowing what they want to do with their career, maybe questioning their parenting from the little things every day to the big things as parents having trouble following through on a goal they said or wanting to change habits. I mean, that’s how I kind of started this whole journey is wanting to change my personal habits. Some of them are avoiding conflict in their marriage or relationship. So lots of things.
And now people come to life coach to see what they can see, to see what they can’t see in themselves to see how they hold themselves back, to get awareness to get direction and to get unstuck. And I will never tell someone what exactly they have to do. I’m going to help them uncover that. And most importantly follow through on that.
But I do notice with a lot of the struggles we have and the goals we want to set that there can be this underlying menace this troll under the bridge that slows us down or stops us altogether. And this is the situation where me you any woman doesn’t trust herself. And here’s the interesting part. These people who come for coaching and me my experience, not really trusting themselves.
But generally these are women who get things done. They’re good at their jobs, they’re showing up for motherhood. But the difference that they come to see is that they often show up and follow through on things for other people, when other people expect them to do, and they don’t follow through on the things they wish they would do. They don’t trust themselves to follow through for them selves, when they aren’t being held accountable when someone else isn’t watching when they’re not doing it for someone else, when it’s just them, and what they want in their own life.
And maybe you can relate.
Maybe you’ve had an idea of what you want, like a course you want to take our paint color, choice that feels bold, or a move you want to make. But what we do is we waver on it, we doubt it in often we end up just talking ourselves right out of it. How much of what you really want have you talked yourself out of over the years?
We might want to try something new, whether it’s like a new style, or new parenting technique, or new, new exercise, new gym class something, but we’re insecure about it the whole time, we half show up, we play it down, we come more obsessed with the outcome rather than the process.
We might want to address an issue in our life, but we shrink away from it. I mean, we all have those conversations, that we never have those things in our own life to that we keep brushing under the rug
We might want to make a big change, but we don’t believe it’s possible. And whatever feels like a big change to you, it can be going sugar free starting a new business, setting personal boundaries, we just aren’t sure that we are capable, that we know enough that we’re strong enough.
And we don’t trust ourselves, to know and to show up and support and encourage ourselves. We don’t trust ourselves that we will do the thing that we want to do.
And it’s easy not to right? We have a lot of evidence not to trust ourselves. Think of all the evidence you’ve collected over the years of your bad choices, of the ways you failed of how you couldn’t do before of how you didn’t enjoy it. It wasn’t motivating. You didn’t have enough willpower, you didn’t feel confident. And we look at others and we see how they’re doing it better, faster, easier. It’s just more evidence that something is wrong with us.
And really this evidence, it’s a big box, all the case we have against ourselves that we can’t be trusted to do what we say we’re going to do for ourselves because we failed. We told ourselves, we would do something and we didn’t. Or maybe we did do the thing. But we didn’t do it right enough or well enough, blah, blah, blah, whatever still just more evidence that we have failed.
So when we stopped trusting ourselves here is what can happen. We stop making promises, we stop setting goals, we stop attempting any change. We doubt ourselves to have the answers. And so we’re going to constantly look outward at others, whether it’s for the solution, or the validation, or the commiseration. What we’re also doing is we’re spinning in indecisiveness, maybe we’re merging with others, maybe we’re getting anxiety about how we’re doing it all wrong. And we really start to believe really negative things about ourselves and what we’re capable of and what we’re not.
So now, we have gone so far down the other side of the spectrum towards despair, and insecurity. And figuring out how to get to that other side where we set a goal, where we do the work of tackling it, it feels way too far away. Ultimately, we’re going to stop doing the work. We’re going to stop learning how to trust ourselves, and it just perpetuates the cycle, that we cannot trust ourselves.
Breaking promises to ourselves. What if you told yourself that you would do and you didn’t, I’m going to get up early, I’m going to have that hard conversation. I’m going to say no to the wine. I’m going to sign up for that course. Okay, I’m going to do the course this week, I’m going to do more fun things with my kids, I’m going to be a more fun mom. I’m going to eat so well. This week. I’m going to exercise every day this week. This is a list of things I’ve promised to myself over the years, and I coach women on lots of these issues.
And here’s the thing I am all in for setting goals, changing habits for making a promise to yourself. But one thing I want you to know just going into it is we often set ourselves up for failure in so many different ways. Like the clarity of the goal, effective motivation, all or nothing thinking, negative self talk where we have given over our personal agency and control and so on. This is why any kind of coach or formal support in any format is really helpful.
But we’ve got this promise, we made a promise to ourselves. And this whole thing is just going to become another exercise in me letting myself down. I used to hate setting promises to myself. I had such a stigma about myself and my lack of willpower. And the motivation that I didn’t have.
And I really felt like there was another more energetic, more disciplined version of myself out there, living the life I wanted. And here I was flicking through Millionaire Matchmaker on the couch, staying up too late again, eating junk food, again, going to sleep in late again.
I hated making promises to myself. And eventually, I just stopped doing it. And most of my adult life, I’ve really believed, I’m incapable of change. Just living with this gross feeling about myself and the life I wasn’t living.
Now, I feel so much differently at 38, I feel empowered to really do anything I want to, I feel like I’ve grown in my skills to do the work and holding myself accountable and following through on making changes. And this doesn’t mean I do all the things right. Not everything is an option, I still want to keep my life simple on purpose. But I’m able to show up and do these things without a lot of negative self talk and mental chatter about how weak and lazy I am.
And here’s why I’m telling you all this is because I know you can too. Imagine what you would do in your day, your week, your month, if you trusted yourself to follow through on what you say, you are going to do.
Imagine, but also know that it isn’t easy. I’ve been working on this ever since I’ve learned about it through coach training some years ago. And I want to tell you, how it’s showing up for me in becoming someone who trust themselves. And I don’t say I do this perfectly. But I see that I do it most of the time. And that’s what matters to me.
Here are some areas of my life that I am working on becoming someone I can trust. So becoming someone who eats well eats healthy, eats nourishing, eats vegetables. Like over my life, I’ve had a really weird relationship with food, it was just there, I didn’t understand it, I miss used it. And over these past years, I’ve had so many changes to my diet, I’ve gone gluten free, I’ve reduced my coffee at one point I had to go dairy and gluten free from my daughter, my second born who had reflux issues. And I used to be someone who would say like, Oh, I just couldn’t live without that I couldn’t live without cheese or whatever. But now I know that I can live without anything really, when I approach it from the right direction. I become someone that feels life changing who follows their agenda from being agenda averse, feeling like, that’s just unnecessary. And I don’t want it because I didn’t trust myself to follow through on it. I imagine I can write it down. And if it’s the top priority, it’s going to get done. I feel like I’ve become someone who is doing braver things. Conflict Resolution is a big part of my life now where before conflict avoidance was the language I would talk in relationships. I’ve been showing up for the hard work doing this online stuff. There’s so many times maybe once a month, at a certain time a month, where I just want to throw my computer in the river and shut it all down. But I’ve been showing up for doing it and trying to enjoy it along the way and keep myself motivated. Exercising, exercising was something I never did, I did not self identify as someone who took care of their body or knew what to do or was athletic bla bla bla bla bla all of the reasons. Now I’m someone who does that. I’m becoming someone who doesn’t yell at their kids or show up and parent from a place of anger. And I still sometimes yell like even loving moms sometimes yell at their kids. But I am showing up more and more from enjoyment and peace for who I am and how I show up as a mum. Another thing is drinking a lot less. I mean, it’s a pretty easy thing to reward yourself with, especially in motherhood. And I am showing up and trusting myself that this is now my treat and not my habit.
Trusting yourself, showing up and doing what you’ve promised yourself you are going to do. It feels amazing. I feel powerful. Like I feel like I can change my life when I keep my promises to myself.
I added this whole topic as a module into the life on purpose roadmap course because I think showing up for yourself is a pivotal skill, a life skill that can transform what you do with your life, and how much you enjoy it and empower yourself along the way because this isn’t about strong-arming yourself, steamrolling yourself, shaming yourself into change. It’s about loving yourself and enjoying life as you do it.
So what would you do if you trusted yourself more? How would you support yourself in your decisions and your desires?
I really want you to think about these two questions because just asking them really thinking about the answers can start to open up awareness of your life where you want to show up more and I mean, show up and commit to following through on what you truly desire.
So think about it. Think about where you want to show up for yourself more Where you want to trust yourself more and start simple, show up for yourself in simple ways and work on building up that trust again.
And if you want more training on this in issues like planning your day, the myth of willpower, how to know what you want in life, then check out that self paced course, the life on purpose roadmap, it’s essentially a series of audio lessons to and you can listen to just like this podcast alongside of the workbook. I when I make made it, I said, This is my best content today. I remember telling one of my girlfriends, this is the best thing I’ve ever made. And I have jam packed it with all I have learned about living your life on purpose, because I want you to have that purpose in your life. Because from purpose, peace follows, and passion follows. And then we can stop showing up from a place of stress and victimhood and anxiety and step into something new and proactive and totally unique to you, and what you want and I want to uncover all of that and help you make it happen.
If that’s something you’re interested in, head on over to the lifeonpurpose academy.ca to learn more, email me any questions you have, and you guys know where to find me always on Instagram at similar purpose.ca and in the Facebook group. Come join us for any conversation that you want to continue.