Emma is a career coaching client in her early 30s. She has a difficult boss and wants to quit. But she doesn’t know if it’s the right move. There’s an inner scream that says, Leave! And there’s a little voice that whispers, Maybe you should stay and work it out … What if you can’t find another job, or when you do, that boss is worse?
Emma’s pleading eyes look straight into her webcam. “Which voice should I listen to?” She asks me. “How do I trust myself to know the ‘right’ one?”
Which gut do I trust?
Emma reminded me of myself in 1994, when I sat in a pitch-black room, known as a “meditation cave,” and wrestled with whether or not to leave the ashram I had lived in and thrived at for over a year (the topic of my recent memoir, This Incredible Longing). I had become a meditation teacher and speaker. If I left, it might mean that all the investment I had made in my spiritual growth and ashram career was for naught. Would I fall into the depression that led me there, or start a new chapter of my life?
I wanted to “trust my gut,” but I couldn’t tell which voice was my gut and which was my head. You may be in a similar predicament, arguing both sides of a big question: Should I leave this relationship? Change cities? Quit my corporate job and hike the Pacific Coast Trail? and wondering … how do I trust myself?
Here’s the scary and freeing truth: Emma doesn’t know what’s “right.” And I didn’t know either. If by “gut” we mean the voice that speaks our truth, the only way any of us learn how to hear it and trust ourselves is by taking a risk, making a choice, living through the results, and learning about ourselves in the process.
Trust takes time.
Imagine meeting a new friend; someone you’re attracted to in spirit. You feel connected to this person in a way you haven’t felt before. You could spend hours together talking, and it all feels easy.
Do you immediately trust this person?
You might think you do. We tend to think of trust as something automatic… until it’s broken. But that’s not how trust really works. Trust is an iterative process, which means that it builds on itself over time. You make a date with your new friend, and they show up as scheduled. You share a secret, and they respond with care. You have a disagreement, and you both are able to make amends … This is how trust is established: one action after another.
Whether it’s with someone you’re getting to know or your own inner self, building trust begins with risk. Sometimes you will take a risk, and the outcomes will be better than imagined. As Author Heather Sweeney recounts in her memoir Camouflage, although she worried that getting divorced from her military spouse would wreak havoc on her kids and her financial life, after much contemplation and effort to make it work, leaving turned out to be an incredibly empowering decision.
Other times, you will make a choice that you regret, like when you break up with a loving person but only realize how loving once you’re with another who you thought was a better fit but doesn’t treat you well. But rather than thinking you made a “wrong” choice and living with regret, accept that you made the right choice for you at the time, and learn from it. As you accumulate lived experience, you’ll know yourself better and will be able to make big choices more quickly.
Create a process
Create a process to build trust with yourself around big decisions. Don’t isolate: when you’re on the fence, it can help to talk things through with others first. Consult with a close friend, family member, and /or therapist in order to think through all the outcomes of your decision. You might make a pros and cons list and /or consult with a chatbot. Having a systemized process for thinking through decisions helps build self trust.
It’s up to you
Ultimately, only you can decide what’s right for you. And even if, after doing your due diligence, you’re still not one-hundred percent sure, what matters is making a choice.
It turns out that leaving the ashram was the right decision for me. Now, more than 30 years later, I have a tired-and-true process for making decisions and I trust myself to deal with the consequences, no matter what. As for Emma, only time will tell whether she chooses to stay or go. But whatever happens — good, bad, or ugly— she will be there to guide herself through the next logical steps in the greater process of building trust with herself.
Feature image from Canva.
