The Create Your Day Podcast

114. Why You Don't Trust Yourself (And How to Fix It)

• Jenn Cody | Productivity & Systems for Entrepreneurs • Season 1 • Episode 114

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You set the goal. You make the plan. You feel motivated. And then... you don't follow through.

Sound familiar?

Most people think they have a discipline problem or a motivation problem. But what if the real issue is that you've stopped trusting yourself?

In this episode, we explore why every decision you make - even the small ones - is actually a vote for the person you're becoming. Jenn breaks down why broken promises to yourself create a self-trust deficit that's quietly sabotaging your business, and shares a practical framework for rebuilding that trust starting today.

You'll learn why choosing the hard thing in the moment makes everything easier over time, the difference between strategic rest and avoidance, and the CEO identity shift that separates entrepreneurs who scale from those who stay stuck.

If you've ever wondered why you can't seem to stick to your own plans, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

  • Why your brain keeps score of every commitment you make to yourself
  • How self-trust compounds over time (for better or worse)
  • The "start stupid small" strategy for rebuilding broken trust
  • Why strategy doesn't matter if you don't trust yourself to execute

Thanks for listening!

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey everyone, welcome to the Create Your Day podcast. I'm your host, Jen Cody. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I appreciate you giving me your time, and today we are talking about something that might seem really small on the surface, but behind the scenes, trust me, it is running the entire show of your life and your business. And what we're talking about today are decisions. Not the big dramatic life-altering decisions, because those certainly do matter, but what we're talking about are everyday choices, little ones. What are the choices that you're making before your coffee kicks in, the ones you're negotiating with yourself with like at three o'clock in the afternoon when you're tired and overwhelmed? I want you to understand that every single decision means something. I don't want you to be filled with like pressure and anxiety over this, but I'm telling you that today we are going to talk about this. It's going to be empowering to you once you understand what I'm getting at. So let me paint this picture. Pretend that it's this morning and your alarm went off, or it's tomorrow morning and your alarm goes off. So maybe that is insert whatever time is important to you here. Does your alarm go off at 6, 7, 5, 8, whatever it is? Assuming you set an alarm. If you don't, just go with it anyway. So the alarm goes off, and the reason the alarm is going off is because last night you made a decision that you were going to get up early and do something before the chaos of your day. So what is that thing? Insert important thing here. That could be working on a project, having breakfast with someone you love, doing um your workout at the gym, whatever it is, but you purposely made a decision to set an alarm to get this done. The alarm goes off, and in that moment, you have a choice. Now, the choice is not just about whether or not you're going to get up out of bed. The choice is actually a vote. It is a vote for or against the person you're trying to become. You hear me? It is a vote for or against the person you are trying to become. We have been talking on this podcast about becoming who we need to be, right? Who before how. Everybody wants to know how to do something. Doesn't matter. I can give you all the how. You have to become the who first. So when you think about who you need to be, are your choices votes for that person or against that person? Every single time you hit snooze on an alarm or you go against a commitment that you have made to yourself, every single time you are casting a vote, and those votes add up. They compound, they become your identity. So there was a time in my life where I really, really believed what a lot of people believe, and that is that these decisions exist in isolation. Like I could say, ah, whatever, I'm just gonna skip the gym today, it's not a big deal, or oh, I will respond to that email tomorrow instead of right now. And sure, individually, these are not a big deal. But your brain is keeping score. And every single time you tell yourself that you're going to do something and then you don't do it, you're actually going against yourself. So imagine that you have this bank of self-trust, right? So there's like this little vault inside your brain filled with self-trust. The only reason that self-trust is in there to begin with is because we have been making deposits to that account over time. Just like a bank account, you can only make so many withdrawals without becoming overdrawn. So we need to keep putting those deposits. And every time we go against ourselves, we're making these tiny withdrawals. And guess what? When we do not have the self-trust that we need in the bank, that's when things can get really messy and we stop believing our own plans. So have you ever set a goal for yourself and immediately there's a this weird voice in the back of your head that's like, yeah, but are you really gonna do that? Um, hello, where the heck did that come from? Well, it came from that bank of self-trust, not having enough deposits in there to think that you're going to follow through. So, one of the things I can tell you is that I am really, really blessed. I get to work with incredible people. So when I work with a client, they come to me with, oh my God, just like total visionaries, right? They have amazing strategies, solid plans, incredible visions. And somewhere along the way, they stopped trusting themselves to execute. And it certainly is not because they're not capable. They're brilliant people, but they've made too many promises to themselves that have been broken, and now they don't trust themselves. So most of the time, we don't even realize that this is happening. And what happens here in the moment is that you think you have a problem with like motivation or discipline or time management, but what you actually have is a problem with self-trust. And that's a totally different problem to solve. So the reason that so many people get stuck here is because things aren't happening, right? That you're not getting the traction that you think you should have. So you think it's a discipline problem or a time management problem. Well, okay, if I have a time management problem, what am I going to do? Figure out how to manage my time better, right? So I that's easy. I'm going to take a course, I'm going to read a book, I'm going to watch a podcast, something about time management and implement those things. And then wonder why things aren't working. Why is it still not happening? So I'm kind of caught in this cycle where I think I'm fixing the problem, but I'm not focused on the right thing because none of it is focused on me solving the problem of not having enough self-trust. So let's talk about the bright side of this because I love when there's a silver lining. And here's the silver lining in this. When you do choose the hard thing in the moment, it does get easier. You know this already. And it sounds so simple, almost too simple for it to be such a game changer, but it really is. When you do the thing that you say you're going to do, especially when you don't feel like it, you are making a deposit into that self-trust account. Those deposits are going to compound, right? Over and over and over. So the first time that you get up when the alarm goes off, when you really don't want to, it's really hard. Especially imagine it's like snowing outside or cold and rainy and you're in this big, beautiful, cozy bed. Every single part of your body, right? It's screaming. I want to just stay still, I want to stay put. The second time you do it, it might still be hard to do, but your body is screaming a little less loudly. By the tenth time, you will start notice, noticing that something is shifting. You start to expect yourself to follow through. So when the alarm goes off, you're not negotiating against no one. You're not negotiating against the clock anymore. Now, if you're really tired, you're negotiating against yourself because you know that you should be getting up. You feel like you should be getting up. You are becoming the person who does get up. So that by the, I don't know, 30th, 40th, 50th time, it is now who you are. You are the person who gets up at X time. It's not a battle anymore, it's an identity. Does this mean it will always be easy to wake up in the morning? No. Hello, my alarm goes off at five o'clock every single day. I spoke last week, right, about the miracle morning. I am implementing that. I am doing it before I go to my class at the gym, at um, my Pilates class. So that alarm goes off at five o'clock every day. It's not easy to get up, but it's also not a battle because I have proven to myself that I can trust myself to do it. And I have done it enough times that I it is who I am. So it I can feel the betrayal against the person that should be getting up when that alarm goes off. So it does not feel good to me to betray that person. I hope that makes sense if I'm saying it the right way. So this is what I mean when I say that choosing the hard thing makes it easier. Because you're no longer just completing a task, right? So why is it easier for me now to get up at five o'clock in the morning when the first time I did it, I could have come up with 7,000 excuses about why it was not that important for me to do. But by doing it over and over and over again, I actually helped build like new neural pathways in my brain. I'm strengthening the muscle. I'm it's muscle memory. I am becoming someone new. And the best part about this is that it transfers into everything else in your life. You ever hear the uh phrase, how you do one thing is how you do everything? Well, that is absolutely true. And it works for the positive as much as it works for the negative. You know, when we hear people talking about that, a lot of times we think about it in the negative sense, like, oh, they never follow through with anything, so that's how they're gonna be with everything. Okay, well, what about the person who follows through with everything? Do we think about that with them? Sure we do. Who are you gonna go to if you really need somebody you can rely on? I bet the person that pops into your head right now, you know you can rely on them because they have proven to you over and over and over again that they can be trusted and that they can be relied on. So when you build self-trust in one area, it is going to bleed into everything else in your life. So the person who keeps the promise to wake up when the alarm goes off to get out of bed starts keeping promises that they've made about other things also. They start trusting themselves to do some of the really hard things that we've spoken about on here, right? So hard conversations, hard boundaries to set, hard decisions when it comes to things like raising our prices, launching new offers. But those things we start to trust ourselves on more because we have taken the time to make the right choices in those little moments that we thought didn't matter. And the reason that becomes easier is because now you have built up evidence, you've built up proof, you've shown yourself over and over again that when you say you're going to do something, you actually do it. So are we talking about being perfect? Hell no, because God knows I am not a perfect person. I am not talking about never missing a day, I'm not talking about never changing your mind. Sometimes the right choice is going to be something that's good, that feels good in the moment, right? Like rest. Rest can be a great choice sometimes when it comes to your business. Sometimes the strategic thing to do is pivot. That is the right choice. So what I'm talking about now is I want you to think about choosing intentionally versus choosing to avoid something. Does that make sense? Our choices, if you think about your choices in the moment, are you choosing something because you're trying to avoid something else, or are you choosing something that intentionally brings you closer to something you're working on? There's a very big difference here, right? What's the difference between I'm gonna skip my morning routine today because I'm recovering from being sick and I need rest? That doesn't send up any red flags for me. How about I'm gonna skip my morning routine because I just don't feel like it and I'm gonna start it up again tomorrow? Well, that's a red flag. Do you see the difference? The choice is the same in those two days, but the circumstances dictate whether or not it's going to build trust or take trust away. One of them is a conscious and strategic decision. The other one is just avoidance. And your brain knows the difference. You're a smart person. Your brain absolutely knows the difference. So, how do we rebuild this, right? Because I have a pretty good idea that a lot of you are listening to this and thinking, okay, well, I've pretty much already broken trust with myself about a gazillion times. So what do I do now? Well, first of all, welcome to humanity. We've all done this, every single one of us is human. And the second thing is that we can rebuild. And I'm gonna give you a really practical way to start. So I want you to start small, and I don't mean just small, I want you to start like stupidly small, embarrassingly small. So small that failure is pretty much impossible. So we don't rebuild trust by making big sweeping commitments. We real rebuild it in small moments by keeping small promises and keeping them over and over and over again. So if you have been telling yourself that you are going to do something for an hour every day, and you actually haven't done it at all in three months, don't recommit to the hour. Commit to a small part of it. So let's relate this to um, let's say reading, right? A lot of people that I speak to, they're like, oh, I really want to get back to reading. I have to make more time for reading. So if you've been saying, I'm gonna read an hour every day, but you haven't picked up a book in three months, do not recommit to the hour. Commit to reading one page. Can you do that? If it's a physical commitment, if you've been committing to go to the gym for an hour every day and you haven't gone to the gym in three months, forget about the hour. Commit to putting your workout clothes on. How about let's just stop right there. Put your workout clothes on your body and that's it. Just put them on. If you've been telling yourself that you're going to get up early and instead you've been hitting the snooze button for weeks, maybe don't set the alarm for 5 a.m. I don't know. Crazy. What time do you normally get up? I'm gonna just go out on a limb and make up a scenario and say that you get up at 8 o'clock every day. So if that's what time you wake up, I don't want you to think that you are going to set an alarm now for 5 a.m. and it's going to work. How about you set the alarm for 7 50 and you just get up 10 minutes earlier than you do normally? This is how we make really small yet really significant changes. If you've been telling yourself that you're going to work on your business every week and you haven't done it in months, maybe just commit to opening up the document where your notes are. Just open the document. That's it. Tiny commitments, we ignore them because they seem pointless, but they're really not pointless. They're very strategic. Every time you keep even the smallest promise to yourself, you are making a deposit in that bank. You are rebuilding the account. You're proving to yourself that yes, oh my goodness, I can be trusted. And then you'll start to build up momentum. And once you've got some evidence that you follow through, you can build on it. You can make a bigger commitment and you can trust yourself more. But honestly, if you're here and you're someone who has been just breaking trust with yourself over and over and over again, you do have to earn that trust back. It's not going to happen overnight. But this little exercise, tiny little commitments that are easy, think of the easiest thing you can commit to in the next seven days and just make that commitment. Like I said, set the alarm for 10 minutes earlier. Read one page in a book, put your workout clothes on. I didn't even ask you to go to the gym, right? I mean, we can't make it any easier. But you have to give yourself proof that you're going to say yes and commit to your word. Okay, so this is gonna bring me to a different part of this conversation. And it's something that comes up in my conversations where we talk about people who operate like an employee and people who operate like a CEO. So employees really wait to feel motivated. They negotiate with themselves about whether or not they're going to do the work. Do they feel like doing the work? Their mood dictates their action. And a CEO, a CEO, whether you are a CEO of your company or a CEO of your household, you are a CEO. And a CEO makes decisions and honors them. And it's not because they're superhuman, it's not because they're never tired, it's not because they're never overwhelmed. It is because they understand that their word to themselves matters. So this is part of that CEO identity shift. And remember, you do not have to be running a six, seven-figure company to be a CEO. If there are people in your households that rely on you to make sure that things run smoothly, you are the CEO of that house. So it's not about tactics, it's about who you are being, who you are becoming. When you step into that CEO identity, you start to see every single decision very differently. You understand that how you do one thing is how you do everything. So the way you treat the small commitments is the way you're going to treat the big ones. The way you honor your word when no one is watching, right? No one's watching you get up 10 minutes earlier. But if you honor that word, that is how you're going to show up when it matters most. You cannot have big wins. You cannot scale on a big um basis if you have a foundation of broken self-trust. You can't build something sustainable if there's nothing solid underneath it. You have to believe in yourself. And the strategy doesn't matter if you don't trust yourself to execute it. You know, I mean, that's what people pay me for is strategy. So I work with my clients, I help them strategize what they need to do next to bring their company forward, to get the goals, to get the financial wins, all the things that they're trying to bring forward. What's the strategy that they need? I can give them all the strategy in the world. If they don't trust themselves to actually see that through, what difference does it make? So I need to work with them on the self-trust, on the nervous system, on the CEO identity, all of it at the same time. The plan doesn't matter if you if you already go into the plan, half expecting yourself to abandon the plan. So this is really precisely why I spend so much time with my clients on this stuff. It's not all systems and frameworks. We do that, and that's where I mean the magic happens. But how do we rebuild the foundation of self-trust? Because without that, everything else is built literally on sand. It's all going to crumble. So, what do I want you to take away from today? Every decision means something, right? Every choice you make to do the thing, to not do the thing, keep the promise, break the promise, wake up, stay asleep, whatever. To choose the hard thing now or to avoid it, what is it? It is a vote. It is a vote for who you are becoming. Do you want to become the person you need to become? Yes? Well, guess what? There's some hard shit that you need to go through in order for that to happen. Sorry, I can't sugarcoat that. It just is what it is. And you get to decide this. You get to decide what you're voting for. If you've been in the pattern of breaking promises to yourself, not too late, we're gonna start small, right? Start today, right now, today, make one tiny commitment and keep it. Then make another one and another one. It could be the same thing over and over. I don't care. But for the next seven days, please, please make a commitment to yourself that you can keep and do it over and over and over again. This is going to rebuild the trust. It's going to prove to yourself that when you say something, you mean it. Right? How many times would you let someone else in your life get away with not doing what they committed to doing? How many times would someone close to you have to not follow through on their word for you to be like, well, I can't trust them to do anything? Yeah. The relationship with yourself is just as important, if not more. Right? So you want to keep proving this to yourself. I want you to understand that how you do these small things is 100% how you're going to do everything. So this week, pay attention. Notice the moments when you're tempted to negotiate with yourself, when you're about to break a commitment. And in those moments, ask yourself, what am I voting for? Who am I becoming? Who before how, right? Think about all the things that you're trying to figure out how to do. You will never figure that out if you don't become the person who does those things naturally. So who are you voting for? What are you voting for? Who are you becoming? And then make your choices according to that. Okay? That's what I got for you today. If this resonated, would love to hear your feedback. Let me know. Send me a DM, send me an email, whatever works. Would love for you to share this with a friend that you think would benefit from hearing about it. Uh, take a screenshot, put it on your social media, shout me out, and um, yeah, I will be back next week with more to come. So until then, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, have a great week, and I will see you next time. Thanks so much.