Learning to Trust Yourself Through Everything

In this episode, I explore what it really means to trust, and why the search for trust outside ourselves can never fully resolve the deeper longing within.

We often look for trust in other people: in partners, teachers, therapists, friends, or those we see as authorities. 

We hope that if someone is reliable enough, consistent enough, or “trustworthy” enough, we will finally feel safe.

But even when we choose someone as an authority, it is still our choice. And at the deepest level, everything comes back to us, to our perception, our expectations, and the meaning we give to our experiences.

Perhaps the question is not whether we can trust others, but whether we can trust ourselves.

Human beings are shaped by their conditioning, their experiences, their beliefs, and their patterns. 

When we begin to see this clearly, something shifts within. and Instead of expecting others to behave in certain ways, we begin to recognise that we can trust people to act according to their nature - whether that is predictable or unpredictable!.

From there, trust takes on a different quality.

It becomes less about controlling outcomes and more about trusting our capacity to meet whatever arises.Trust as an inner state rooted in awareness and presence.

Through personal reflection, including experiences of loss, disappointment, and growth, this episode leads us inward, toward a deeper kind of trust, one that is not dependent on certainty, predictability, or other people behaving in particular ways.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Bodhisattva Conversations. My name is Julia Carl, and this podcast explores the practice of being so that we can live with greater presence, awareness, and freedom, and experience the truth of who we are. In today's podcast, I'm going to talk about trust and essentially about trusting ourselves because yesterday I was working with a client and we were exploring a situation that's going on in his life, and he said, I don't feel I can trust anyone. And what arose as we talked and investigated was that maybe the question isn't actually about trusting others and whether really and truly it's about trusting ourselves. And that's the absolute place of safety. So really, today's episode I'm going to investigate more or explore more what it means when we stop seeking to trust others or seek trust outside ourselves, whether that's people, situations, jobs, events, anything that we deem is going to be security, safety, there is a trust in it. And really instead go towards an inner journey, as always. It's always the inner journey, but to begin to find that trust, you know, within within yourself. Because we also, of course, put trust often in people. We put it in our the trust in our friends, in our family. We then will put trust in the kind of you know authority figures outside ourselves, whether that's um therapists, teachers, books, books, podcasts. Here we have a podcast, articles, um, a guru, all manner of things that we might put our trust in outside ourselves. Doctors, of course, um, all manner of different types of practitioners for our for our physical, mental, emotional health. But of course, even when we do choose an authority, it's still our choice, and that's the empowering thing, because it's always, always your life and your knowing of what is right or not right. Now, of course, that can be very complicated because we can't put our trust in something outside ourselves which is our choice, we felt it to be right, and then it doesn't work out for whatever reason. Something goes very wrong with the situation, it can be a legal thing, a medical thing, all manner of things. So it's very, very, you know, these are very big and complicated situations. So I know that again in a 20-minute podcast, I'm just giving you an idea just to reflect on that everything comes back to us, everything comes back to you, and also recognising that we are you know, we are seeing the world through our own filter often. We're seeing the world as we are. I mean, sometimes we're seeing it really clearly because the clearer we are, the more we're going to be able to be observant of things and have it through a much cleaner and clearer mirror. But sometimes, of course, we're looking through the projection of our own filter, which can be a very distorted mirror. And therefore, if we've got uh patterns or um an idea that we can't trust people, that things don't work out for us, that you know nobody's got our back, all those sorts of beliefs, we we will often tend to find to get you know that we find we get what we expect, um, because you know we often are projecting onto others what we're always carrying, and so therefore, if we expect betrayal, we can often experience it again and again. Um, but again, if if we expect safety, that tends to happen. If we expect people to be kind to us or respectful or all of those things, we'll often get that reflected back. Um, and again, none of this is about blame, blame of ourselves or blame of the others, as I explored in last week's podcast, but it is an awareness, and as I say, these concepts they're just for reflection because I do recognise that you might be listening and you might feel in a big, big process of feeling very let down by an authority that you put your trust in. Um, so it's quite a journey to go to the place of um of that we, you know, our choice and our um inner trust, even you know, when things have been very difficult. Um so, really and truly, then it comes back to, as I said at the beginning, that it's not necessarily about trusting people to behave in the way we want them to. But we can, you know, we can trust that people are going to behave according to their conditioning, they're going to behave according to their history, their beliefs, their patterns, their culture, their you know, societal setup, all manner of things that influence us, how we, you know, how we behave. And also that we might put our trust in people who make mistakes. You know, we're we're human, all of us, we can make mistakes, so we can put our trust in an authority figure, a legal figure, or you know, all manner of different things that people go, oh brilliant, I'll trust this person. Um, and then they don't do a good job for whatever reason, and it's still our choice. And also something that's really can be helpful is to recognise that we can trust people to behave as they are. We can trust that people are going to behave according to their conditioning and their history, their beliefs, that you know, people are going to behave as they are, even if that's a pattern that we won't see for a while. But it's it kind of reduces expectation and projection, and it makes us more willing to come back to presence and come back to being more connected to ourselves and our choices, and knowing that we mustn't actually make anyone else our authority, not a book, not a person, nobody. So that doesn't mean that we won't, of course, seek other people to help us with things, of course. But at the same time, when we put our trust in someone else, we have to first put our trust in ourselves and know that sometimes you know part of the part of the journey might be that you know we have to meet whatever arises. So the real trust isn't in others, it's in the place of depth within yourself, within ourselves. So instead, we might say, Can I trust myself to meet whatever arises? So, whatever goes on in life, can we meet whatever arises? And can I trust that whatever happens, I will still learn, and that I will respond, and that I'll continue, I'll continue in my own journey, continue investigating, continue exploring. Because you can then really, really trust that even when something doesn't work, you you will learn from it, and this can be big things, and I I do recognise, as I said earlier, this is a very short investigation, very short podcast on a very deep subject, and I think probably every human has been let down and has let down. Um, you know, sometimes the balance will be more, and sometimes I don't want to, you know, cast anything over anyone if there's people who feel who are listening and saying I've never let anyone down or I've never been let down. But generally I would say that we have we have been let down and we've let down, even in small ways. We've you know, somebody's trusted we're going to turn up to their wedding, and at the last minute we didn't go for whatever reason. Um there's you know big and small ways in which people will act according to themselves, and therefore we have to trust that we can deal with whatever um whatever happens. Um, we trust ourselves to meet whatever arises, to learn from it, to respond to it, and to continue in our life. I can remember after um my mother died, and I was talking with my father some time after, and I was kind of trying to do a deal with destiny. And I said, you know, as as we've had that bad thing happen, does that mean that you know other that's it now? We've had our quota and we won't have other bad things happen. Is that can it be like that? Or or will it mean we have that's it, we keep having bad things happening? What is it? I was asking for him to give me some kind of I don't know, reassurance, something that I could, you know, follow. And he just said to me, Um, darling, we have to have faith. And that was all he said. He just said, Darling, we have to have faith. And like I was on, I've always been on a path of the inner journey, and I probably was about 19 when I asked him that. My my mother had been, you know, not she'd pass three years previously, but I was sort of work trying to work it all out, and I remember just that's all he said, darling, you have to have we have to have faith. I was what's that really mean? And I have as the you know the years have unfolded, it's essentially what I'm saying here that that faith is that we trust ourselves because we trust our divinity, we trust our essence, we trust the unchanging nature of ourselves, and we trust that we can we are the ones that are making the choices, we're living this incarnation, and ultimately we come back to that inner ease, that inner that inner silence, and it it led me to gradually, gradually over the years get a quiet trust in life itself, in presence, in something unchanging beneath everything that changes. And I was brought up as a a Christian, so I sang a lot of hymns back in the day. I moved away from the organized religion of the Christian church, but I may I carried on on this inner journey of. I remember when I was reading the teachings of Jesus, and one of the things that was in the in the teachings was the kingdom of heaven is within within you. So I recognize that that divinity, that essence is is within us all, and therefore ultimately it's getting to that place of that everything changes, except for that stillness. And one of the hymns was um everything changes, but God changes not. And I know that the word God can be a bit kind of triggering for people, but actually, if we think of God as the essence, the presence, the stillness within us all, if so, therefore, it comes back to if we expect people to behave in certain ways, trust becomes fragile, and and that's everywhere, that's our friendships, our parents, our children, our partners, professional people around us. Now, obviously, this can feel therefore everything super fragile because oh my goodness, we can't trust anyone. But that was what my client said. He said, I don't think I can trust anyone. Well, if you bring it back to presence and trusting yourself, then you can trust everybody because you can trust they're going to behave in a certain way. And even if if people behave in an unpredictable way, they've they've behaved out of whatever happened. So even if somebody you've put your trust in to do your legal thing with your house and it they made a mistake, you can trust that perhaps that day they were super tired, they they had something going on, they just missed a you know, they missed something. So you can trust that we're going to be human. We can try you can trust people make mistakes. Um, you know, my um I remember my my father gathered my sister and I to talk about again after my mother's illness and death, and the um the GP had come round to the house to apologize because he'd hadn't picked up on um a tumour in her leg and he hadn't picked up on it, and anyway, the unfolding scenario that then happened was um you know uh eventually led to her death. And he came to my father and he said that he was sorry. And my father, because again he was on a Christian path, um, he said he he counseled us that we must um you know recognise again that this was part of life's unfolding and trust it and that people make mistakes and that that wasn't a cause to you know for us to put blame out or any of those things. So we were we were taught. I I am very uh grateful to the example my mother and father gave to us. Um but again he my dad taught us about having faith and that trust trusting bringing us back to ourselves, and I I see it more and more and more as the years have gone by because he also passed many years ago when I was in my 30s in 1994. So he and he faced his own death with great with great presence. So I had a great example of trust, of trust of self, of trust of the you know, of presence, and and ultimately recognizing that when we're it's very fragile if we're putting something out there that we're going to trust these people out there, are going to somehow make life okay. Whereas if we trust that it's always okay at the depth of us at the centre of our being. Um, because as I said, if we expect people to behave in certain ways, life becomes so fragile. Whereas when we release that, then trust trust kind of happens naturally, um, and that isn't because people are predictable. The joy of being on this journey is people are predictable. Um, we're not, you know, we get more free when we're not depending on other people for our inner stability, and we come back to ourself because from presence, if we come back to presence, then there is an acceptance. Um, and when we're really accepting, we we can genuinely have love for others, we can genuinely, genuinely have compassion for the way people behave. Now, it doesn't mean we want to spend our time with certain people that don't resonate in the same way, or we don't want to spend our time with people who we have had a difficult experience with where we've been hurt. I'm not saying any of that, but we do come to a place of compassion if we have an acceptance. Because if we have been hurt and betrayed, of course it can feel very difficult to live again, trust again, because trust is about living again and going again and opening our heart and engaging in relationship again with you know with life again, because healing isn't actually about forcing us to self-forcing ourselves to trust others. Um it's about again returning to trust in ourselves, coming back and back. And really, really, the the really freeing thing is we have to loosen an attachment to our story. Now, again, I've been a front of people and a therapist forever. You know, I've been in front of people for 50 years, firstly as a personal trainer and had a gym, but always, always talking with people. So I'm very, very aware that people have all sorts of difficulties and hurts and betrayals and you know, abusive situations. So I do recognise that there is a journey to self-trust, but really often, yeah, need to get help. People have come to me for help to essentially loosen our attachment to our story. So we don't we don't dismiss it, we've all got a history, we've all got a story, we've all been through stuff, but we we don't live inside it anymore, we're not identified with it, we're not, you know, and we're not there for someone, therefore we can't trust people because we've been hurt by people or any of these things, but we can you know look at our past, really, really um understand it, work through it, and see that we have survived it and we're here, we're here living now. And often we might need help. I've helped a lot of people to unloosen you know our stories, and also with myself, you know, we have to let go of our history. I always say to people that our past really needs to be like the wake of a boat, so it doesn't mean we haven't got a story, but if we've still got energy attached to it and we're still identified to the pain or guilt, because it can be both sides, then we you know, when we're carrying a heavy burden, we we need to work through it and let it be like the wake of a boat that it disappears. Because in my own experience, I was I was let down by my coach it's um at around the same time as my mother died, and so obviously, for a teenager it was a difficult time when I look back at it. I mean, I I don't have an attachment to the story now because I worked I've worked through it, but also I let my first husband down, and so it's often helpful to really look at both sides. So when I was let down when the the stuff all happened with my coach, I really learned to trust myself and I used to play I Will Survive. Do you remember that Gloria Gainer? I used to play that on in a repeat and really loud and sing at the top of my voice, and I really learned through that self-trust, and I learned a lot that has helped me to help others with the journey. And when I let my first husband down, I really learned responsibility. Personally, I had to take responsibility for my actions, I had to grow, I had to again come back to self-trust and and and keep living and not carry guilt. So both sides, you know, being hurt or causing hurt, they both we both have to, both of them have to come back, we have to come back to self-trust and trust the unfolding, trust the unfolding of all of this because everything that's going on is actually just a creation of our mind, and it's just the mind play out, really, all of this, all of this whole you know, incredible thing that we experience called life. But at the core of it is presence, is essence. So we have to trust the unfolding, we trust the learning, we trust the process, because everything, everything changes except for presence and awareness. People change, they change as the years go by, um, relationships change, people come and go, circumstances change, and even 100% trustworthy people may go. My mother, I felt 100% that I trusted her and she passed away. People may have may leave, they may need to go to the other side of the world for whatever you know reason takes them there. They may change. People change as the years go by. You know, we live a we live a long time now, so lots of circumstances and life events happen and people change. Um, but there is something that doesn't change, always, always the stillness, that the awareness, the still small voice of calm. I again I come back to the hymn I grew up on, which was um speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, oh still small voice of calm. I always loved that. Love that. I won't and I won't endeavour to sing it to you, but I used to love that. Well, I do love that hymn. So, really, when we stop seeking trust outside ourselves, really recognize that everybody's been let down, everybody's had difficult experiences, um, and that we need to come back to self trust, then that is the beginning of trusting yourself. And when you trust yourself and you no longer need the world then to be predictable in order to feel safe, you really, really recognize, you really come back to self-trust, you come back to presence, you come back to I am where I am, it's okay. I trust myself, I love myself, I honour myself. You come back to self-love, self-trust, and that is the beginning of a completely different orientation in the world to trust yourself. Thank you for listening to Bodisat for Conversations. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to being with you again next time.