How to Trust Yourself Again (After You've Broken Promises to Yourself)

At some point, we waver in the belief of our own plans.
Not because we don’t care — but because we’ve made promises to ourselves we couldn’t keep, and we lost the ability to trust ourselves.

This episode is about rebuilding self-trust after that happens. Not through motivation, pressure, or big resets... but through smaller promises, honest expectations, and prioritizing showing up over getting it right.

It’s a conversation about integrity, follow-through, and learning how trust yourself to do everything that the best version of you does.

Mental Bandwidth Problem Episode

Instagram: @shrav_lucken

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Most people don't realize this, but the reason so many plans fall apart isn't lack of discipline or motivation, it's that over time we stop trusting ourselves. We say we'll do something, and then we don't. We say we'll try again, and eventually something in us just stops believing. What am I talking about? To help us start believing that we'll show up for ourselves more often, when we say we will do something, to follow through when we make plans and promises to ourselves. We'll explore what happens when self-trust erodes. Not because you're careless, but because life starts getting busy and hectic and heavy in ways that you didn't anticipate. It's about how easy it is to lose your self-trust in the busyness of it all. It's about why big changes and grand resets usually make it worse. And it's about how trust is rebuilt slowly by following through not by motivation. No hacks, no clean slates, just a way back into alignment with yourself. And I think it's pretty simple and pretty self-evident why this matters. When you don't trust yourself, the plans you make feel empty and hollow. When you don't trust yourself, the promises feel performative. And the goals feel like pressure instead of direction. The dangerous part isn't the failure. It's not making the plans, making the promises, having the goals and not following through and not doing what needs to be done or taking that first step. That's not the dangerous part. The danger is the meaning that you choose to give to that mess. It's the conclusion that you make after that sounds like, why bother trying? I already know how this ends. And in that moment, there's a problem that I want to address and help you reframe. Shift the meaning of that moment. Don't take it as proof that you're unreliable, but rather as a signal that something needs to change in how you ask yourself to do things, in how you make plans and promises for yourself. It's time to get curious. Okay, let's get into the mechanics of this episode. The exploration, the explanation of how does self-trust actually break? Let's start with that. I found that self-trust doesn't generally shatter in one moment. I'm sure it can if something really big happens, if you make a promise and you give enough meaning to the miss that you shatter all your self-trust in that moment. I'm I I can see that happening. But for me, it usually erodes through small repeated mismatches between my intention and my actions, between what I wanted and what I actually did, and the continuous acting out of alignment with the person who I wanted to be. And why does that happen? Well, it can happen because you're asking too much of yourself during low capacity periods, when your mental bandwidth is stretched, like when you're too tired or stressed, or when your schedule is overloaded and you're working out of scarcity. I'll link an episode down below where I speak more about that. But it can also happen because you're using pressure instead of honesty. You're trying to pressure yourself into being better. And that could work for some time, but I found that it's very oppressive and a very emotionally taxing method that just isn't sustainable in my experience. It can also happen because you're restarting loudly. When we want to do something, we want to start a new habit, or we want to start going to the gym, or we just want to start doing better for ourselves. We often start with big plans. We know the optimal ideal version of what it is that we want, and we want to start right there without getting started with the steps first. And we start restarting loudly and we tell everybody around us, or we we tell the people that matter what we're trying to do, and this ideal version of what we're trying to do. And instead of doing that, we need to focus on continuing quietly, on showing up for ourselves even when it's hard. There's no judgment here, there's no right or wrong, there's just a misalignment that needs some course correction. Okay? That's how we erode and eventually break our self-trust. And I used to believe that I do right by myself because I was motivated enough. At that moment, I was motivated enough to believe I would do what it took to get the results that I wanted. I mean, that's why you're listening, right? You want to trust yourself to keep showing up. And because of that motivation, I kept making empty promises to myself that I would get it right. Over and over again, I was making plans for myself that I never followed through with completely. And every time I did that, I chipped more and more away from my self-trust. I was missing something. I was missing that motivation is emotional. But trust is relational. You don't rebuild trust with someone by promising more. You rebuild it by doing small, predictable things consistently. And the same applies to yourself, to trusting yourself. You need to be doing the small, predictable things consistently. If you do the small, simple things well, you start building your capacity for doing more. You start raising the basement on what your bad days look like, and you start raising the ceiling on what your good days look like. So if you're like me and you also kept getting this wrong, what's the reality? The truth is that sometimes the most self-compassionate thing that you can do is stop letting yourself off the hook and start asking for less. But following through on what you're asking. That's the way that you start slowly building back the trust that you lost. Small step by step, all the while building your capacity to deliver on bigger promises to yourself and building even more trust. That's what confidence is, and all you have to do is start. That's simple, but it's not always easy. For me, I know that there were definitely moments where I stopped believing in my own plans, and looking back, I can pinpoint them when it happened and what led up to it, when I started postponing things automatically. If I missed enough days, that sort of just became the baseline. And I would wake up and automatically know that I'm just not gonna do it. Or I would wake up and know that I'm just gonna push it another day, and tomorrow I would do the same thing. That became an automatic mechanism for me when I started lowering my expectations slightly. And I did that because I didn't want to keep feeling disappointed by myself, because that's what happens when you lose trust in yourself. You keep getting disappointed by yourself day after day, and so to avoid that, you either change or you lower your expectations. Then I made a decision to not let myself off the hook. And though I didn't know it, I was actually starting small. I was starting with how I spoke to myself, and I started taking responsibility and I stopped blaming other things and other people. It was a very small change, a very small thing to do, but it was difficult. And that difficulty really shocked me when it happened because I didn't think it would be as difficult, and that just showed me how programmed my mind was to look for problems outside of myself. And when I realized that, hey, I actually have more agency and more control in what I'm doing, then my whole worldview started to shift. And I started to believe that I could do more. And when I believed that I could do more, I started making small changes that led to bigger changes that led to me trusting myself more. The point of the story isn't some redemption arc, and it's not me trying to promote myself, it's that's just how I figured out there was a problem, and that's how I started finding some solutions, my solutions, and it could look different for you. But what could it look like? What are some options that you have? What are some tools that you can add to your toolbox that could help you start dealing with this problem? I found a practical framework, something that's light and flexible. Importantly flexible. It's important to be flexible because that's what showing up on bad days looks like. It's not about grinding out and doing the absolute optimal that you can. It's about showing up. That's all it is. So step one is notice where your self-trust is thin. Notice where your trust is thin. And invite yourself to ask two questions. One, what promises do I no longer take seriously? And two, where have I stopped expecting to follow through? Don't judge yourself. There's no judgment here, just notice what's going on. So often we try to numb ourselves or we try to distract ourselves from really asking these hard questions. But it's important to figure out what you're doing that you could be doing better. Step two is to downscale, to make these promises a bit smaller, keep them boring, but make them achievable, make them doable. This trust doesn't come from intensity, it comes from reliability. Instead of making a fully blocked-out study schedule, fully color-coded, where you've got five hours of studying and you've you've timetabled when you're gonna eat, when you're gonna shower, when you're gonna use the toilet, when you're gonna sleep, instead of all of that, just five minutes of studying, five minutes of work instead of an hour. I know it sounds dumb, it sounds like it's not enough, but typically when you just commit to five minutes and you say, I'm going to do this five minutes, that five minutes can turn into 10, can turn into 15 or 20. And 20 minutes of studying a day isn't insufficient, it's not insignificant. You could also just have one action instead of a whole plan, instead of a to-do list, just focus on one thing. Complete that one thing for the day and take that as a win. When you're speaking to yourself, it's also important to reframe what you do. When you're trying to start something new and you start with this optimal version of what it looks like, that's good for direction, okay? But that's not good for starting now. That's not good for okay, what do I do to get there? That's amazing to know where you want to be. And I did the same thing. I looked at this optimal ideal version of myself, and I tried to be that ideal version of myself right away. And in a lot of ways, that was really good. But when I didn't measure up to it because I didn't have the capacity in that moment, I felt really discouraged, and that disappointment stopped me from showing up in certain ways. So another thing that we could do is instead of saying, from now on, I'm going to do this, from now on, I'm going to go to the gym every day, that is hard. That is a very difficult thing to do. Or saying, from now on, I'm going to read every day before I go to sleep. From now on, I'm going to meditate every day before I go to sleep. Instead of using from now on, try just for today. Just for today, I will do this. Just for today, I'll spend five minutes doing this. Just for today, I'll go to the gym. Just for today, I'll read a page of my book. If it feels unimpressive, it's probably the right size. Okay, so that's step two. Step three is keep your promises private at first. Public declarations add pressure, right? When we start, we get excited, we want to tell people about what we're doing, but doing those declarations add pressure. And that tension that you feel that comes from that pressure can be good, but not when you're starting, not when you're just starting to trust yourself again. It can be too much in the beginning, at least from my experience. Private follow-through builds this integrity. When you keep it quiet and you let your actions speak first, you start building your self-trust. Because imagine you decide you want to start something. You already don't have okay. Because imagine you want to start something and you're starting from a place where you've let yourself down a lot and you've eroded your self-trust a lot, and you don't have a lot to begin with. When you get excited about this new thing and you tell somebody else, and you add this pressure onto yourself, you're adding pressure onto you when you don't trust yourself enough to do these things in the beginning, right? So when that happens, you tend to avoid it. A lot of people, me included, I tended to avoid it. Because in that way I wouldn't disappoint myself. Because if I didn't get started, then I never really failed. So let your actions speak first. Build that trust and that integrity, and then start talking about it, and then take on a little bit more tension, a little bit more pressure. Make it easy first before you make it good. Okay. Step four is respond differently when you don't show up. This is the reframing step. This is the part that I really like and that I really respond to. The important step is instead of asking what's wrong with me when you don't show up, because you're not going to show up every day, try. Was that promise that I made to myself, was it realistic for the version of me that showed up today? And it could have been, it could have been realistic. And if it was, maybe you didn't have the energy, maybe you didn't have the time, maybe you were stressed, maybe you had too much on your schedule. If that was the issue, then scale down, adjust, and continue. That's all information because those days will happen. And if you missed one day, take all the information that you can from that and adjust it for the next time that a day like that shows up and continue. And if it wasn't realistic, then scale down on the promises and create a new baseline. Adjust and continue. Take it all as information because we're all doing this for the first time. So I hopefully have filled your toolbox, this practical framework. You don't have to do them in order, step by step. Just notice where your trust is then. Make small promises, boring small promises, keep them private. When you inevitably don't show up, when it happens, because you're human, don't beat yourself down. Get curious. Figure out what you can do to extract all information from that event, adjust, and show up again. Now that your toolbox is full, I want to give you a starting spot. Three quick, easy, simple experiments that I want to invite you to join. Experiment number one is one promise. Choose one small promise that you can keep today. Small being the keyword. Do it. Do that one small promise and don't celebrate. Just notice how it feels to follow through. Experiment number two is the capacity check. Before making your promises for this week, before making your plans for this week, ask, would I still do this on a bad day? If not, scale down. That's your baseline. What you would do on your bad days is your baseline. When you feel better, when you have the energy, when you have the time, when you have the emotional resources, you can do more. But scale down so that you're still showing up, so that you build that consistency. And experiment number three is the quiet streak. Track the promises that you keep privately for a week. Not to feel proud, but to start seeing and touching and feeling and writing out the proof that you can trust yourself and to start rebuilding that belief. That's very powerful. When you go about your day or your week, I want you to reflect on this episode and start asking questions about where you could apply what you've learned to start rebuilding trust, to start rebuilding capacity and your integrity to do more or to keep your promises. And maybe you're somebody who already does. Maybe you're somebody who can trust themselves and is reliable. But I know I believe I am one of these people as well. And I still miss days, and I still don't show up sometimes, and I still struggle with being discouraged. Encouraged. So as much as this is to help you, it's also helping me. It's helping me remind myself what I should be doing. And the questions to ask myself, and hopefully the questions that you can ask yourself are simple reflection prompts. You can also use them to journal if you'd like. One, where did I start asking more of myself than I could give? Two, what version of me do my promises assume? Three, what would rebuilding trust slowly look like? Four, what's one way that I can show myself that I'm reliable today? Rebuilding self-trust isn't about becoming better. It's about becoming more honest. Trust doesn't come from dramatic change. It comes from showing up, especially when no one is watching. You know when you're lying. You can't lie to yourself as easily as you can lie to other people. So it's much easier to break your self trust than to break trust with others. Keep your promises small, stay honest, and let trust grow at the pace it needs to. Show up for yourself today in one small way, and I'll see you next week.