10 Ways to Start Trusting Yourself Again

In this episode, I talk about something I think a lot of us struggle with at different points in life, learning how to trust ourselves again.

Sometimes after enough overthinking, outside opinions, or decisions that didn’t go the way we expected, we start second-guessing everything. Our intuition gets quieter, our confidence drops a little, and we find ourselves constantly asking other people what they think before making a move.

In this diary entry, I walk through ten ways to start rebuilding self-trust, from listening to your intuition again, to making small decisions without overanalyzing them, to remembering that you actually know yourself better than anyone else.

Because the truth is, trusting yourself isn’t something you suddenly wake up with one day. It’s something you rebuild slowly, decision by decision.

Dear Diary prompts

Where in my life am I constantly looking for outside validation?
What would change if I trusted my own instincts a little more?

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Transcript

Welcome To The Dry Diaries

unknown 0:06

This is the Dry Diaries with your author Alex Dry.

How Self-Trust Gets Lost

Start With Small Promises

Stop Outsourcing Your Decisions

Fear Versus Intuition

Forgive Your Past Choices

Notice What Drains Your Energy

Boundaries Beat People Pleasing

Act Before You Feel Ready

Break The Comparison Habit

Get Quiet And Spend Time Alone

Inner Child Confidence Returns

Trust Themes And Relationship Ripples

Final Reminder And Goodbye

Alex 0:17

Hey guys, what's up? It's your author, Alex Dry, and I am back with another entry of the Dry Diaries. Today we are talking about something that I personally resonate with, but I think most women experience this at some point and it's losing trust. And it's not because you're not capable or you don't know what you're doing, but because somewhere along the way you just started second guessing everything. You start second guessing what you say, where, your relationships. You even second guess your decisions. You start asking everybody around you what they think before making a move. You even overthink your texts, what to say, the opportunities that come your way, and you overthink things that honestly don't even matter. Suddenly you just don't even recognize the confident version of yourself anymore. The more you second guess yourself, the harder it does become to trust your own intuition. So today's episode or intrigue building your self-trust. I think trusting yourself again is actually one of the biggest glow-ups you can have because when you start trusting yourself, you definitely start moving, speaking, choosing differently, and you don't need the constant validation of everyone else. You stop asking what they think, and your life just starts to feel a lot more peaceful. So if you are struggling with trusting yourself again, or maybe you didn't even realize that you weren't trusting yourself until you started listening to this, and you're like, wait, I actually do look for a lot of outside validation. Here are the 10 ways to start trusting yourself again that have helped me personally. There is different things that came up. The first thing that I found that was really helpful was being able to keep those small promises to myself. A lot of the time, there's a whole checklist of things or goals to do, but we never really follow through with them. Whether it's a hectic schedule, you get overwhelmed, you have ADD. I mean, there's so many things. So keeping those small promises to myself was how I started this journey and trusting myself again. So it can be super small, like I'm gonna work out three days a week, I'm going to start that project that I've always wanted to. I'm going to stop texting that guy back. Your body and subconscious just starts to register. Number one, when you don't follow through, because it kind of, I don't want to say not that you're a failure. Personally, when I don't follow through, I do beat myself down about the things that I didn't do that I say I was gonna do. Again, can be the smallest things. Subconsciously, you start trusting yourself more, and confidence is built through evidence of the follow-through and keeping the small promises to yourself. Okay, the second one was stop asking for other people's opinion. I think that there's a big difference between advice and outsourcing your decisions because when you ask too many people what they think, you start to lose sight of what it even was that you wanted to do. Your intuition is usually right. Getting 10 different opinions causes even more confusion. And then you start doubting your original instinct. If you listen to the previous podcast with Masha, we talked all about your nervous system. And she said that your intuition is really quiet and it's hard to hear if your nervous system isn't regulated. So it's important before asking someone else what they think to ask yourself first: what do you want? What feels aligned, and what feels peaceful. Most of the time, you already know the answer. You just want the permission, or at least I did. And that's why I would always outsource so many different opinions. At the end of the day, I look back at some of the decisions that I ended up making. I realized that they weren't even because I really wanted them. It was because I outsourced the opinions of others and I went with what they thought would work or what they thought was best. Because I thought that's what would be popular, successful, or work. I look back now and I was like, wow, my intuition was telling me to do the complete opposite. Now that I went with my intuition, it worked out a lot better because it was more authentic to myself. And I started trusting myself more. But I do think that a huge part in that it's learning the difference between fear and intuition. Because me personally, I want instant results. So I'm always worrying about the fear of taking too long, the fear of missing the opportunity. It's not gonna win over people's approval. And so it's really just breaking down the difference of your fear versus intuition, because fear is chaotic and intuition is calm. Fear says, what if this goes wrong? What if I fall behind? What if I embarrass myself? What if this isn't successful? Whereas your intuition is gonna be that subtle, calm feeling. This feels right, or this feels off, this feels aligned. One feels like panic and one feels more like knowing. So again, the more you slow down, the easier it is to be able to tell a difference. And that's why I've personally loved getting into meditation and frequency healing because everyone has so much shit going on in their daily lives. And so just being able to sit and quiet, peace, and stillness is so important because I think that's when your nervous system is regulated and your intuition can speak the loudest. Okay, the fourth thing, which was really hard for me, is forgiving yourself for any past decisions. Sometimes we stop trusting ourselves because we've made this huge mistake in the past, or we stayed in a relationship, a friendship, a business situation too long. Maybe you ignored the red flags, or you chose something that didn't work out. But the truth is, and something I have to constantly remind myself of, is you made the best decision you could with the information that you had at that time. And everything is a learning, growing experience. You were evolving, and self-trust comes back when you stop punishing yourself for being human, which somebody told me that, and it was honestly such a game changer. I feel like the word punish is so intense. But at the end of the day, I really was punishing myself because I wasn't fully pursuing the things I wanted to because I had this subconscious guilt, fear, or regret of past decisions that I had made or labeled myself. Another thing is pay attention to things that dream you. Your body is constantly giving you feedback, and it's really important to notice who makes you feel anxious, what makes you feel anxious, what environments make you feel small, what situations make you overthink. That's a huge one for me because I'm an overthinker. But sometimes losing trust in yourself actually comes from being in spaces that don't align with you anymore. Choosing environments that feel more supportive and calm, your confidence will naturally start coming back. Do not neglect yourself to charge somebody else. Eventually, your cup's gonna run out and you're just gonna feel empty and drained. Actually, recently that's what happened. I got sick, slept for two days straight. I do have narcolepsy, so I fall asleep easily. But that's not me on a typical week. I just was so drained and tired that I kept going until the point where I got sick. And I had to really just sit there and be like, it's okay, Alex. Your body needs to recharge. You're drained, and you don't need to stress. Everything is gonna be okay at the end of the day, and giving yourself that reminder. Another thing I had to learn was stop abandoning yourself to keep the peace because people pleasing lose self-trust. This is anytime you've said yes when you really wanted to say no or agreed to something that doesn't feel good. Every time you ignore your own needs, you are sending yourself the message that your feelings don't matter, or the feelings of somebody else come above yourself and you stop honoring your boundaries. You don't have to explain and you don't have to justify everything to everybody. Protecting your peace does build self-respect, and self-respect builds trust within yourself. The other thing is, and it goes back to what I was talking about earlier, but it's taking action before you feel ready or you feel adequate enough because confidence doesn't come before action. Confidence comes after the action. And waiting until you feel 100% ready usually just leads to procrastinating and sometimes trusting yourself means saying, I don't know exactly how this is gonna work out, but I'm going to figure it out. You are more capable than you think. Once you start those little actions, they just progress further and everything has to start somewhere. A lot of people do struggle with comparison. So comparing themselves to maybe another business that they want to start or a goal that they have in mind. And so limiting comparison, it's one of the fastest ways to disconnect from yourself. When you constantly consume what everyone else is doing, how everyone else looks, feels, or how everyone else is succeeding, then you start questioning your own timeline. Your path is not supposed to look like anyone else's. Self-trust really does grow when you stay focused on your own direction. That's something that I've learned is when I have wanted to start a business or even starting this podcast, it's very easy to start comparing yourself to other people that have been successful in the field because they've been doing this for years. So of course, where they're at is gonna look different than where you're starting from. So just being able to sit back and realize that there's a difference between comparison and admiration, that's something that I definitely had to learn. Is yes, I can admire somebody, but whenever you start comparing and pointing out the nitpicky things, that's when you start your self-confidence altogether. Because then you start to feel like you're not good enough. Whenever I realized that self-trust was an issue for me, it really took me to sit down with myself because you can't hear yourself if there's always noise and opinions around you. Spending time alone helps you reconnect with your thoughts, preferences, goals, passions, your intuition. And it can even be as small as going on a walk without your phone, journaling, and just sitting with your own energy. The more comfortable you become being alone, the more confident you feel in your own decisions. It's really telling about somebody who feels safe and secure being alone. It just shows that they have a sense of peace within themselves that nobody can touch. I don't know where I heard this, not to be motivational preaching at you guys, but if someone was talking about girls, it can be men too, but girls who spend time alone are some of the most dangerous and dangerous in the fact that they know and trust themselves so much that nothing or nobody can really affect or sway their path. I love being alone. It's probably to a point where it's a little bit unhealthy because now I'm like, am I the Grinch? I don't understand. I think that there's a fine line of balance. Being able to be alone and spend time with yourself that really does help build trust within yourself again. And the last thing is something that I got into the sheer of inner child healing when I was little. I had this crazy confidence. And so it's going back to remembering who you were before you started doubting yourself. There was a version of you who didn't overthink anything, tried things because they sounded fun or exciting, would also speak freely, trusted your instincts, and you didn't need the constant reassurance or opinions of everybody outside. And I just want to remind you, she's still there. She didn't disappear. She just got buried under the expectations, opinions, pressure, the experiences. And that's why I love inner child healing because it's trusting yourself again, going back to that little girl and coming home to who you already are, which is so funny to think about because one of the things that when I was doing my inner child healing, she was like, What did you like to do? Play outside, draw. Like those are things that you should still do every once in a while because it brings up that inner child, and then that builds more trust within yourself. So if you've been feeling disconnected from yourself lately, this is your reminder that you're not alone and nothing is wrong with you. Sometimes I think that with life and social media, it pulls us or at least me in so many directions. And sometimes we go through experiences that make you question or doubt yourself, but self-trust is something that you can rebuild. It's one decision at a time, one boundary at a time, one promise at a time. When you start trusting yourself again, everything's gonna change. You will feel this newfound confidence. Your relationships start changing, your standards start changing, and your confidence starts changing, which I think it boils down to like you stop settling for things that you settled for before, and you start choosing what actually aligns with the life that you want. I didn't want to make these solo episodes sound like I'm preaching or giving you guys advice because honestly, I'm just trying to figure it out too. And these are just things that have helped me in my journey. And like I've said before, each month I have a little theme. With March, it was all about reinvention, change. For April, it's more about stepping into that power and how you can really own and embody after you've gone through this reinvention phase. Trust is a really hard thing because we go through so many situations in life with relationships, people, and once that trust is broken, it's hard to rebuild. And then it reflects not only in that friendship between you and that person, but it starts reflecting throughout your life as a whole, and it can even be unintentionally. I know for me, trust loyalty is a huge thing. I am a Sagittarius, so like it's my shit. But if someone isn't loyal or I see a pattern, then I start to lose trust in that person, and it makes it hard for me to open myself up to new friendships, new relationships, or giving relationships an opportunity, like dating. But yeah, it does reflect in so many different things. You obviously can't control how other people act or react in situations. And so if at the end of the day you can trust yourself, then it's going to allow you to open the door to trusting other people more unconditionally, whether you've gone through bad experiences or not. I hope you guys enjoyed this little entry of the dry diaries. I will see you guys next week. Bye.