The Energy of Trust: Why Mindset Alone Isn’t Enough

In this episode, James dives deep into the concept of trust — not just as a word or belief, but as a frequency we can embody. Sharing insights from a recent session with his coach, he reflects on how many of us say we "trust ourselves" or "trust the universe," yet don’t truly feel it in our bodies. Through powerful self-enquiry, James explores how trust — like confidence, connection, and accountability — is less about mental understanding and more about energetic alignment.

He introduces the idea of a “Trust List” — a simple yet impactful tool to build inner trust by tracking moments where you followed your intuition, took a brave step, or received evidence that things are working out. James also guides listeners through a body-based practice for connecting with trust and expanding it through the nervous system.

The episode wraps with an introduction to his upcoming Dragon Energy Retreat, where participants will explore embodiment, authenticity, and self-healing through movement, creativity, and ceremony.

This episode is for anyone on a journey of self-awareness, who’s ready to stop forcing trust and start feeling it from the inside out.

🎧 A grounded, heart-led episode for deep thinkers and soulful seekers.

Transcript

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​In this episode, I explored the idea that trust is a frequency, not just a concept, how trust or different qualities can be located in the body, and this allows us to fully embody them. I talked about some practical ways that you can start to connect to this trust frequency and so much more. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in. What, what is trust and how do we understand it, and how can we actually comprehend the whole idea of. Trusting ourselves, trusting someone else, and trusting the universe. So I've recently got myself a new business coach. All the other business es I've had in the past have been working from the outside in. So they've been working on marketing strategies and how I can get new clients and what I can do with regards to, um, get myself out there. But unless you change from the inside. Change the beliefs, change our own perspective, change the way, and now change the way that we act our habits. I feel it's a hard, hard slog. I feel it's possible, but I feel it's a really, really hard slog with regards to stepping into that version, whereas I. With a new coach, Cara. Actually, it's Cara Elizabeth. I think I, I have interviewed her on a past podcast. We are working from the inside out. So we are creating that new identity of the person who runs successful sellout retreats, the one who creates podcasts where people, thousands and thousands of views. The one where he. Speaks and people are in awe and it's understanding how does that, how does that person act? How is he being? Is he, is he needy? Is he, is he, does he feel worthy? Does he feel enough? And all them kind of questions. And yesterday, during. The coaching session, she asked me the question, How do I feel about trust? Trust in myself, trust in the universe, knowing that everything that I've got on my list will happen. And I never really, I've never really thought about it so deeply as I did yesterday because in the past you say, oh yeah, yeah, I trust myself. I trust the universe. I can do this, I can do that. And yeah, I've had some successes with regards to my house, but when I. When I connected to the word trust, I felt there. I felt very, very disconnected, and I felt disconnected. No, I felt, I felt connected to disconnection. And the reason why I felt connected to disconnection was because we throw around terms like trust, surrender, connection, accountability, but I don't have a. An ounce or a clue what they really mean. You can have the idea in your head of what it means, but there's this level of how can we embody these? How can we embody these qualities? Confidence is another one. You can have this idea of what the mind thinks they are, but if you really, really connect to these words, I found this disconnection and I found this disconnection because I feel these words are a frequency. So what I mean by that is that each of these, each of these different words, each of these different qualities vibrate, I feel at a different frequency. But if you don't allow yourself to be at that frequency, or you can't get to that frequency at its moment in time, you can't embody these qualities. And this is just me kind of pondering here now, and so tr I feel like try say, if you use the word trust, just trying to comprehend trusting myself feels awkward. It feels. Disconnected. And then with a little bit of discussion with the coach, we, Cara asked me the question, how does the idea of trusting myself sound? And that sounded so much more better than. Trusting myself, so trusting myself feels like I've got to step in fully to trust in myself, just in the universe, whereas having the idea of trusting myself feels less pressure. There feels a sense of easiness towards it. It feels easy to embody. Because there's no pressure to have to trust myself fully or trust the universe. And so what I'm really getting at here is that I don't feel like we, I don't feel like I, and I feel like it's works with other people as well. I don't feel like I can fully trust myself, but I can take steps. To start to trust myself more and I feel like the more. The more that I try to embody it, and the more evidence, the, the higher my frequency will get to connect that level of tr uh, that level of trust. And it's the same I feel for confidence, for connection, for accountability, for whatever. I feel like we throw these terms around. We think we fully embody them, but it's this idea that. It's a, I feel like it's a step-by-step process. And while we're chatting, I came up with this concept or creating a trust list or a connection list or a confidence list. And it's all about becoming aware, becoming conscious throughout your day and writing down things that give you more trust. So I'll give you an example. I'm running a retreat on the January the 10th, and I had been having no look. But I've been trying to trust myself to know that I will get the people. And then the other day, two people signed on and this created, this could be two, uh, a on my trust list. This could be a idea that write I two, two people have signed up to my retreat. I'll write that on my trust list. And so that's kind of starts to cement the idea of trust in myself, in my ability. Another one could be recording this podcast episode now, and I was supposed to do this, record this to, uh, yes, tomorrow. Sorry, I'm supposed to be recording this tomorrow, but. I decided I got some free time. I'm going to record it now. And I had no, no prep, no idea what I was gonna talk about. And then this, this whole idea of trust and this idea exploring, this whole concept came to to the forefront. So I can write on my trust list. I trust to know what I can say on my podcast, and then I can see, and then I could perhaps. Every day or every couple of days or once a week, I could go through my trust list and I could see these different things and I could see that these different ideas, these different concepts, these different things that I've done are creating, helping me to step into that frequency of trusting myself fully, of trusting the universe, of trusting, uh, I could write a, a trust list on trusting other people. So that that could involve the idea that perhaps you've asked somebody to do something for you and they do it, so then you can write your trust list. Such and such did helped me do this, this, and this. So then I can create more trust in other people. But I feel like. It needs to come. I feel like it needs to come from the inside out. So creating this concept of trust in ourselves before we can, I feel, I feel before we can trust others. Another thing that I've. Being able to realize with regards to trust is that when I sit by, sit on my own in some silence, I contend. I tend to find in my body the specific places where I feel trust and I might focus on that spot where I feel trust and allow that feeling, which creates that frequency of trust. To fully embody myself so that I feel that sense of feeling of trust inside myself. And so this, this might look like you might go and sit down for, let's say five, 10 minutes, and you might have the intention of feeling more trust in the body. So sit down, take a few nice deep breaths. Then you might ask yourself the question, where are my body? Do I feel trust? And you might not feel trust in your, in your body. This is, this is just an idea and this is I. Then what you do is, and. If you're gonna ask yourself, nice gently, where do I feel my, where do I feel trust in my body? And what you'll notice is that you will subtly feel your awareness, go to a part of your body, and then you'll go into. You can, just to confirm, you can ask that part of your body is this trust. And you might feel a subtle yes or you might feel a little subtle. No. If it's a no, ask the question again and see if you get a, a reading. But it's practice. The more that you become connected to the body, the easier this will be. And then once you have found that spot where you feel trust. Just go into that, go into that area, feel the sensations, feel the feeling, and just be with that, feeling, that sensation for a couple of minutes. And then as you feel ready, you can expand that feeling beyond that area and you can keep expanding it until it fully em, until it fully fills your body. And if you wanted to go be beyond the body, and then from there you can just allow yourself to sit in that sensation, in that thing. And I feel like that would massively help you to connect the frequency of trust. And obviously the more that you do this, the more that you'll be able to feel that frequency, to feel that sensation, to feel that feeling in your body, which will allow you to, to feel that sense of. Trust, and those are the only two ways at the moment I feel like I've discovered that could help you to increase the frequency of trust. You could do this with connection. I feel like if you, I can now, if I feel where, where my body do I feel connection. I feel connection. I feel like it's in the, the belly area below the, below the navel, below the solar plexus. And I feel like you can go into that spot and feel more and more connection. I think as human beings, we get so caught up on the outside, but there's this realization in myself that. If I feel connected, if I feel I trust myself fully, if I feel more confidence in my, in my own body, in my own sense of self, if I feel worthy, if I feel good enough, that is reflected on the outside. Yeah, so I, I just wanted to chat about that really, because I feel like this is a really, really powerful concept. And I feel like this is the place to start to, to create more trust, especially if you don't trust yourself or don't trust people around you or don't trust the universe. I feel like this is the place to start, but as, as I said, this can be used for any, any, anything really. I feel like this can be used for. Building confidence internally building, um, accountability. I feel it can be used to create self-awareness. So before I end this short episode, I just want to talk quickly about Saturday the 10th of January, 2026. So I'm running a one day retreat. All based on the concept of Dragon, on the energy of Dragon and how you can start to embody that energy. I. For, for me, dragon represents self-awareness, standing in my own power. It represents my authenticity, it represents speaking my own truth, intuition, abundance, almost anything because I feel like Dragon can be not just fire, it can be water, it can be uh, earth, it can be wind, and so. I feel like being able to embody the dragon. Is such a powerful, powerful concept. From my own experience of working with Dragon, I've used Dragon to heal different parts of my body, to clear certain beliefs, to clear my aura when I'm feeling a bit down, to remove negativity, to feel more balanced. Yeah, it's, I feel like it's, it's an endless. It's an endless pursuit. I think working with the energy of Dragon only just yesterday, I've added to my morning routine to do with connecting to the dragon using fire as a big fireball around me. Like, I dunno if anybody's watched Harry Potter in a half Plin, where, uh, I almost said Kandor. Where Dumbo door. Is uses wand and he creates a fireball kind of pushing away all these, um, zombies coming out the water. And it's more like that. And it's that fireball that fire connected fire's able to create a sense of release, a sense of purification, and so yeah. Throughout the day retreat, we will obviously connect to the dragon. We'll use movement to connect Dragon even deeper. There'll be a little bit of creativity, so it'd be like, um, drawing what comes to mind, but also what, what resistance is there too. And then in the afternoon we'll use Dragon Energy to clear blocks to heal. And then finally we'll do a fire ceremony where. That way, something that you wanna release, or maybe that resistance that we drew early on the day can be released out into the universe. And so this would be a great way to start the year to really step into who you're becoming. So really that's a little bit about the retreat. It's six, it's 66 pound, it's in church. It's closest to church streton at in s rupture. So that's gonna be eat inter manor it's called. And yeah, it's a one day retreat, 10 till four, and. If you get the, if you feel the urge to join me and you're in the UK or even abroad, if you wanna come fly in, come and join me. It's gonna be an amazing, amazing day. That being said, thank you for listening, and if this resonates with you, then please tell your friends, because the more that we get things, messages are like this out into the world, the more that it can help people. So thank you for listening, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning in to Man a Quest. Find meaning if today's conversation sparked something in you, take a moment to reflect, then take a step. Remember, real growth comes from action, not just insight. If you found value in this episode, share it with a friend. Leave her a review, or reach out and let me know what resonated. Your feedback helps shape the journey we are on together. 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