060: How to Trust Yourself Again

Have you ever found yourself second-guessing every decision, looking to everyone else for answers, or wondering why you've lost confidence in yourself?

What if the real issue isn't confidence at all?

What if it's self-trust?

In this episode of Limitless Living, Fredricka Davis explores why so many women stop trusting themselves and, more importantly, how to begin rebuilding that trust. Through personal stories of health challenges, difficult life decisions, and everyday moments of learning to listen to her own needs, Fredricka shares why self-trust is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

She explains the difference between confidence and self-trust, why our inner wisdom often speaks in whispers rather than shouts, and how years of people-pleasing, self-doubt, and constantly seeking outside opinions can disconnect us from our own inner knowing.

Whether you're navigating a career change, rebuilding your health, making an important life decision, or simply trying to reconnect with yourself, this episode will encourage you to begin listening to the quiet wisdom that's been there all along.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

•  Why confidence and self-trust are not the same thing 
•  How we gradually lose trust in ourselves 
•  Why your body often knows before your mind catches up 
•  The importance of honoring your intuition without ignoring wise counsel 
•  Five practical ways to begin rebuilding self-trust 
•  How keeping small promises to yourself strengthens confidence over time 
•  Why learning to hear your own voice is essential for creating your next chapter 
•  How the Limitless Reset Method helps women reconnect with themselves and create sustainable change 

Reflection Question

Where in your life have you been ignoring yourself, and what might change if you trusted that quiet inner voice just a little more?

This Week's Reset

Before asking someone else for advice this week, pause.

Spend five quiet minutes asking yourself:

•  What do I already know? 
•  What is my body trying to tell me? 
•  What decision feels most aligned with who I'm becoming? 

Then take one small action that honors your own wisdom.

Self-trust isn't rebuilt in one giant leap.

It's rebuilt one small promise at a time.

If today's episode encouraged you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs this reminder. To learn more about Fredricka's coaching, speaking, upcoming events, and the Limitless Reset Method, visit FrederickaDavis.com and join the free Limitless Living Community.

Until next time...

Be rooted. Be resilient. And be limitless.

Grab Your Free Reset Guide and more at www.fredrickadavis.com

Continue the conversation inside the here: Limitless Living community.

If this episode resonated with you, you can also send Fredricka a message through the Fan Mail link in the show notes. Your questions may be featured in a future episode.

And if you know someone who needs to hear this conversation, please share the episode with them.

Your reviews mean the world to Fredricka and help other women discover the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Welcome back. This is Identity, Passion, and Reinvention Saturday here at the Limitless Living podcast. And I'm Frederica Davis. I'm creator of the Limitless Reset Method. And every Saturday we get to explore what it really means to grow into the next version of yourself. Not by becoming somebody completely different either, but by really rediscovering who you've been all along. So today's episode is about one of the biggest struggles that so many of us face as women. And it's not about a lack of confidence, it's not a lack of intelligence either, or a lack of experience. It's really something much quieter than that. It's actually about learning how to trust yourself again. So have you ever noticed how easy it is to trust everyone else before you trust yourself? We trust experts, we trust Google, we trust AI, we trust social media and our friends and our family and what we read in a magazine and the next person's book and the podcast for this and so on and so on and so on. And sometimes we even trust strangers, and I mean complete strangers more than we trust our own instincts. Now, after enough years of doing this, something begins to happen. Your own voice starts to get quieter, and you stop recognizing it, and then you start second-guessing yourself. And we as women, we wonder if we're overreacting. Are we questioning too many things? We ask everyone else what they think before we even stop to ask ourselves. Now, if you have ever felt that way, even if you are a strong, high-achieving superwoman, I'm betting you felt that way, at least at some point. And you're not alone. So have I. Today I want to talk about how we begin rebuilding that trust with yourself, listening to yourself. I talked about this this week. And if you are listening to the episodes in sequence, you will have already heard a little mention of this uh earlier this week. But I shared a story about spending part of my weekend last weekend cleaning and organizing my bathroom and my bedroom. And I still have some more to do, and I've decided to redecorate it and all that fun stuff. So I know this doesn't sound particularly life changing, and it really wasn't. It was not glamorous, and there was no fancy organizing systems that got installed, and no Instagram worthy or magazine-worthy closets to view. You know, it was just several hours of sorting through some drawers, letting go of things I no longer needed, organizing what had been piling up, creating a little more space, a little more peace, a better flow so that I could be in better alignment in the mornings and more at peace in the evenings when I came back into this room. And here's what I didn't tell you. Every morning I was starting out with this low level of stress and an energy drain and this loop that had not been finished, and feeling like, oh, I really have to get to that. That's not a good way to start your day. That's not leading from your day, as I talked about earlier in the week. It's not any of that. But I'd have this drawer I'd open and I couldn't find something, or I'd go to find a necklace, or whatever it was that I wanted, and the bureau would be too cluttered, and the master bath needed a reorganizing. It just wasn't working anymore. You know how things like that they just get out of control when you're too busy and you just let them go too long. So at the end of the day, I would walk into the bedroom and feel a little more overwhelmed for the same exact reasons. And who wants to end your day like that? Now, it wasn't awful. I still went to bed. I still got a good night's sleep. And once I was asleep, it really didn't matter, right? It was not a crisis, it was not top of my list. It was just this quiet feeling that my environment was no longer supporting the life I wanted, the life I am creating, the person I am becoming. It was no longer me being in alignment with anything about living limitless when I felt limited every morning and every night trying to find things. I would have just pushed through, ignored my body, sacrificed my sleep, and called that productivity and felt like, oh yeah, I got a whole bunch of things done and I finally got that done. That's great. I'm a little tired, but I'll push through the day. I'll be fine, right? Have you ever done this? Can you relate? Or are you the person who would just keep ignoring it? Maybe you're that person too. I mean, I just kept ignoring it for too long until I got to this point where like, okay, I have to do something this weekend. And it'll be done in little bursts as I redecorate, reorganize, purge, and move on in a different way in life. Now, here's the thing. This time, though, I did something a little different. I listened. I paid attention to not only the quiet voice in my head that said, Oh, I've had it for this, you know, but I also paid attention to what my body needed and I needed mentally and physically in order to do this without hurting myself. I paid attention to my body's needs, my nervous system's needs. I listened and I looked at my calendar and I decided when I was going to do a little chunk. I protected my energy. This is how I do a lot of things now. And it's been a learning process all along the way. You know, it's one thing to block out time in your schedule and block out phone calls and emails and this and that and the other thing. You know, there's all kinds of time management ways to do things. But really truly protecting your energy is another thing. So I protected my energy. I intentionally carved out time to do this when my body could actually handle it. Because if you've heard or know anything about me, I've got autoimmune diseases. And if I overdo, it sends me into a bit of a tailspin. And I have to be very careful about what I do, how much I do, how fast I do it, how hard I do it, all these things. But my normal tendency years ago would have been to push through, which is half the reason I wound up being the way I am. Now, I listened, and that was making all the difference in the world, and was following my gut, understanding what it was that I needed and able to hear myself and my needs, acknowledge those and follow through with them. So that's my point here. So when I finished, it was yes, a bit cleaner master bath and bedroom, but it what really changed was again, I felt lighter, calmer, more focused, more peaceful. And it wasn't because everything was necessarily organized visually, that helped, but really it was because I trusted myself enough to believe that what I was feeling mattered in the beginning. Now let me back up with that. This is not about the visual aspect of that. That is the result. This is about, I actually really, before I ever did it, acknowledge the feelings I was having inside myself and recognized the discontent and the need for this, made it a priority, and then decided how to do it in the best way to serve my body, my mind, my needs. So that means listening. Stick with me here because as I was thinking about all this and looking back on it, what I really realized was that one of the greatest losses in our life isn't necessarily losing confidence, it's actually losing trust in ourselves. And though the two can go hand in hand, and if you are hearing yourself, you maintain that the ability to hear yourself, acknowledge yourself, and then trust yourself, that's where the magic can happen. So confidence and self-trust are not the same thing. So I know many of you listening to this are you're doers, you're getting the stuff done. You may not always feel like you're a high-achieving woman, but chances are you really are. And these words, confidence and self-trust, are not the same thing. Getting things done, feeling like you just rocked the day, doesn't always mean you feel quite right on the inside. Well, confidence says, I think I can. Self-trust says, I'll be okay no matter what happens. Confidence often grows because you've succeeded at something before. You've done something that was hard and now you're confident in that you did it, you did it well, you made it through. Self-trust grows because you've learned that you are able to show up for yourself even when life doesn't go according to plan. And that even if it doesn't go according to plan, you'll be okay. Confidence is external, but self-trust is deeply, deeply internal. Right. And when we stop trusting ourselves, everything becomes harder. So that means, and that means every decision, relationship, every conversation or opportunity or chapter in your life, your next chapter, if you don't trust yourself, it all becomes harder. I've had many, many times in my life where I've not listened to myself and where I have. So a few years ago, my health was in a very, very different place. Some of you have heard pieces of this story, and you know, I was work walking with a cane. Those of you know me, you you witnessed it. I was walking with a cane, I was in significant pain all the time. I was doing everything right, couldn't get any weight to drop, kept uh having pain, it kept getting worse, it was just miserable skin reactions. I mean, I have a long list. Now, I was in really significant pain. Doctors were telling me I'd likely need immunosuppressants and steroids for the rest of my life just to manage what was happening in my body forever. Now, hear me carefully as I say this. I listened to the doctors and I respected their expertise. I did. Medical professionals, they have medical professionals have knowledge that absolutely matters. That said, they don't have all the knowledge. They are as human as you and I are. And they are often not on top of the latest research. They are often completely uninformed and unaware of what nutritionally, holistically, physically, mentally, emotionally affects whatever they're diagnosing. And depending on what country you're in, listening to this, you know, the approach is likely to be drugs or surgery, and let's fix a symptom versus let's look at you on the whole and figure out what's happening. Okay. Now that said, again, doctors are valuable and I appreciate them immensely, but they are human. So I respected their expertise. I was thankful for the testing. I was thankful for the information and data I was able to acquire with their help. Medical professionals are important in our world. Okay. But I also listened to another expert. The woman who had spent more than 40 years studying health, wellness, nutrition, exercise physiology, body mechanics, massage therapy, stress, and the incredible ability of the body to heal. That woman who lived inside the woman who lived inside this body, me, I was not reject, I was not rejecting medicine. I was not pretending I knew everything. And I simple, but I now don't get me wrong here. I was not rejecting medicine at some point. I may or may not need that in the future. I don't know. But what I was rejecting was the idea that that was the only choice, and it should be the first choice without exhausting every other avenue to reverse or heal or put into remission what I have going on. Now, I was not going into the doctor's office pretending I I knew everything. I don't know everything. However, I'm capable. I can research. I'm more knowledgeable than many are. I wasn't pretending I knew everything. I simply believed there might be another path worth exploring, at least first. I didn't want to go directly into drugs, directly into uh surgery for the torn knee, for this, for that, for the other thing, because I have experience in this area. And I believed there was another path. I researched, I experimented on myself, I adjusted, and I learned and I started really paying extra attention. I listened to what my body was telling me. And then slowly I am no longer walking with a cane. I'm down over 40 pounds without dieting. All of these things are things I teach in the limitless reset method. These are all things I taught years ago in other programs in combination with what I learned in all my deep research. So I am able to hike. I'm traveling. I was able to go to the mountains of the rainforest and be a facilitator at a retreat. I could not have done that three years ago. I am teaching and building businesses and focusing, and I have energy that's off the charts, out of 10, um, almost every day. Almost every day. I'm living a very different life than the one I was told was likely ahead of me. That experience taught me something that I think is just so important to never, ever, ever forget. And that's that sometimes trusting yourself isn't about believing you have all the answers, but it is about believing you can find them. And nobody knows you as well as you do if you're willing to listen. And then if you're willing to trust. Now, one of the things I teach inside the limitless reset method is that your body is constantly communicating with you. The problem isn't that your body stopped talking, the problem is that we've gotten so used to overriding it. We get tired, but we keep pushing, like I would have done in the years past to get something done. I would have done it at the end of a really, really, really long day and pushed through and been like, oh yeah, I'm a superhero, I'm super mom. All my friends are laughing if they're listening to this. Because they know. And I will share at my peak when I was running a business, a single mom, taking care of my mom in her 90s. There was not much more pushing I could possibly do, but yet somehow I did every single day, which is likely a piece of what led me to the breakdown later. So I share all these things with you because it's not just me. I am witnessing things like this with my clients. I'm witnessing this with people who go through my reset program. And the problem is that we get so used to overriding ourselves and our the way that we feel when we're tired, we just keep, you know, or when we're overwhelmed, we keep saying yes or anxious. We ignore our anxiousness. Instead of slowing down, instead of looking at, wait a minute, why am I feeling a little more anxiety and not realizing that wait a minute, I'm drinking energy drinks, or wait a minute, my mindset has changed, or I'm watching too much of this, or I'm feeding my brain too much of that, or whatever, I'm not getting enough sleep. Instead of doing all those things, we just keep pushing through and we ignore it. We feel peace about one decision, and yet we feel tension about another. And then we convince ourselves that those signals, they don't matter. We're stronger than that. We can keep going. And over time, we stop hearing ourselves altogether. That's one of the reasons real transformation is not just about changing your habits. It's also one of the reasons why so often we try these programs to change this habit or manage our time better or whatever, and then they don't stick. Maybe it works for a little while, but it doesn't genuinely stick because we have not reconnected with ourselves. We have not been able to cultivate that skill of hearing our own wisdom again and trusting what we feel and hear. So, one of the hardest lessons I've learned about trusting myself actually did not come from my health. It came from a relationship. Years ago, I was standing in front of a mirror on my wedding day. This is before my husband. Now, this is not about criticizing that relationship or rewriting history. I genuinely did love him at the time. He was a good man in many ways. And I don't regret the lessons that I learned ultimately. But I remember standing there looking at myself in the mirror, and there was this quiet feeling inside me that something wasn't right. It just wasn't quite right. And we were actually supposed to get married in a hot air balloon, and a hurricane came through, and the balloon never went up. And that feeling in me was actually not because of that. It would have been easy to blame all those unusual circumstances, but that wasn't it. It maybe there were signs. What was really happening deep down was something in me was not settled. There was, there wasn't necessarily a dramatic red flag that I could point to. It was really just a feeling. There wasn't some terrible secret that had been uncovered, at least not yet. There was simply a quiet knowing something in me that I just could not explain. And instead of listening to that quiet voice, I talked myself right out of it. And the voice said, This is not who you're supposed to marry. That's what the voice said to me. But I talked, but I talked myself right out of it. I told myself I'd come too far, I couldn't disappoint everyone. We checked all the boxes. And surely it was just nervousness, you know, wedding day jitters, okay. Now I can say, have you ever done that? I hope you have not. I really hope you have not. But have you ever talked yourself out of what your heart, your body, or your intuition is trying to tell you? Sometimes we do that because we're afraid. Sometimes we don't want to hurt someone else. And sometimes it's because we're worried about what people will think. And sometimes it's because we have forgotten how to trust ourselves, or maybe we haven't even learned it yet. I've learned over the years that our deepest wisdom rarely shouts, it usually whispers. And I will tell you that marriage, of course, did not last. And I'm married to a wonderful man now, but uh that marriage. didn't last because he became abusive. And for any of you out there listening, I want you to know there's life after that. Number one. And more importantly, your gut knows. Your gut knows things. It this is your deepest wisdom. And and it usually is pretty quiet. It's not always shouting at you. Rarely is it shouting at you. It's usually whispering. But when we ignore those whisperers for too long, over and over and over, eventually we kind of stop hearing them. They're still there. It might feel like they aren't even there anymore, but really it's that you've fallen out of being able to listen to them and recognize them. So why do we stop trusting ourselves? I don't really think anyone wakes up one morning and decides they're no longer going to trust themselves. I think it's it's more gradual. It happens more gradually. Maybe somebody in your life criticized your decisions enough times you started believing they knew better than you did. Maybe you grew up trying to keep everyone else happy. Or maybe you had enough times in your life when it just knocked you down, and now you're afraid of making another mistake. Or you've been through a divorce, or illness, job loss, disappointment. I mean, the list could go on and on. And somewhere along the way, you started believing that everyone else probably has better answers than you do. But here's what I want you to hear today: making mistakes is not evidence that you can't trust yourself. It's evidence that you're human. And it's evidence that you need to learn to recognize what your body and your mind and your heart and your soul are really telling you. So every wise person I know has made painful decisions. I mean, so many painful decisions. If you talk to anyone, whether they are a business person or not, they have had failures, poor decisions, mistakes, mistrusted moments, all sorts of things. The difference isn't that they never got anything wrong. The difference is that they learned they could recover from it. Now that's what self-trust, now that's what self-trust really is. It's not believing you will never fail. It's believing you'll be okay even if you fail. So, five ways I've got for you today to begin to rebuild your self-trust. Number one is listen before life gets loud. Most of us wait until we're burned out, or until our health forces us to stop, or a relationship is already falling apart, or we're completely overwhelmed. And I can tell you, I've been there. But your body doesn't usually begin with a crisis, it begins with the whispers. It's the headache that you just keep pushing through instead of giving yourself enough water. Or it's the brain fog that you just keep pushing through with coffee or an energy drink instead of giving yourself enough rest that ultimately turns into another health problem. A little more fatigue, a little more frustration, a little less joy. It's the tension in your shoulders. It's the quiet feeling that says, this just isn't working anymore. You need to pay attention to those whispers. They're often invitations. This is how we want to look at things. They're not interruptions, they're invitations for you to see something is happening that needs your attention. Now, number two, keep the promises you make to yourself. This one has become incredibly important to me. So, okay, so number two, keep the promises you make to yourself. So I'm a big believer that you keep the promises you make uh unless there's a really darn good reason that you can't. And I don't care if it's to other people or to yourself, but today we're talking about to yourself. And these are the ones we often break the easiest. And they're so important. Uh, if you tell yourself you're going to take a walk, take the walk. If I tell myself I need a day to rest or reset, I make room for it. If I know my body needs sleep, I stop treating sleep as optional. Every time we continually break promises to ourselves, we weaken trust. Integrity isn't just about being honest with other people. It's about someone, it's about becoming someone you believe. It's about you trusting you, living in integrity, becoming the person you're meant to be, keeping your promises to yourself. Number three, respect your body and what it is telling you. Your body gathers information long before your mind ever catches up. Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt uneasy? Let me give you some examples. Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt uneasy or met someone and instantly felt just totally at peace and connected? Have you ever accepted an opportunity or a job or something that just looked perfect on paper, but left you feeling anxious every time you thought about it? Pay attention. Not every feeling should control your decisions. I'm not saying that, but every feeling deserves your curiosity. Ask yourself, what is my body trying to tell me? It will know before your mind catches up. So inside the limitless reset method, we spend a lot of time helping women reconnect with all of those signals instead of constantly overriding them. Because here's the thing: your body isn't your enemy. I know sometimes it might feel like that, because believe me, mine has days like that, though they are few and far between now because I'm working with it and listening to it. But when I was at my worst, oh my gosh, I thought it was the enemy. It's one of your greatest sources of wisdom. Your body is not the enemy, though. It's one of your greatest sources of wisdom. And number four, stop outsourcing every decision. Please hear me in this. Experts matter, doctors matter, coaches matter, mentors matter. I'm a coach and a mentor, and I still want you to listen to you and not just everything I tell you. I've learned from incredible people throughout my entire life. But no expert wakes up in my life, in my body, in my mind. No coach lives your life. They're not walking in your shoes. Ideally, they should they ideally they should have walked at least a few steps in shoes like yours at some point, but genuinely, nobody can live your life. No mentor carries your personal values exactly. Gather wisdom from mentors instead. Gather knowledge, gather expertise, gather inspiration and ideas from coaches and experts and doctors, but ask questions. Stay teachable. Don't disappear in the process. Be curious. Desire an understanding and make your own decisions because somewhere in every important decision, you have your own voice, whether you've been listening to it or not. And your voice has a seat at the table. Now, number five, collect evidence that you can trust yourself. This one will change everything for you. We have a tendency to remember every decision that we regret, right? As human beings, we tend to focus on the negative more than the positive. It's just the way we are. So all those things, all those decisions that we consider, all those decisions we consider mistakes or moments we regret, and we focus on them, and then we tend to forget all the ones we made really well. We have a tendency to remember every decision we regret, every mistake we made, whatever the negatives were. And then we forget all the ones that we made well. What about the decisions that went right? Start collecting evidence. Write it down. Like just sit there and think to yourself, geez, what went right? Keep a little journal with what went right. You can do this every day, and it can be something simple like hey, I got the master bathroom cleaned. What went right? Whatever it is. I listened to my body today, I kept my boundary, I trusted my instincts, I had a difficult conversation, or I prioritized uh resetting the bedroom, or I chose peace instead of people pleasing. I said no when I would have normally said yes because I really wanted to say no. Those are all good examples. Every one of those moments becomes another piece of evidence that says, hey, I can do this. I can trust myself. Self-trust isn't rebuilt overnight, it's rebuilt one decision at a time. So this week, I don't want you to make any huge life decision. I simply want you to ask yourself one question. Where have I been ignoring myself? Now, maybe this is going to be your health. Maybe it's going to be in your schedule or your relationships, your house, your work, your dreams. Maybe it's simply the quiet voice that's been saying to you, you need to slow down, or it's time to let that go, or you really have outgrown this. Or whatever it is, just don't dismiss it. Sit with it, pray about it, journal about it, talk it through with someone you trust if you need to. But before you ask everyone else what they think, and before you air it on social media, I'll add that, spend a little time listening to yourself. You might be surprised by how much wisdom is already right inside of you. So I want to leave you with this thought. Maybe the next chapter of your life doesn't begin with someone finally giving you permission or pointing you in the right direction or telling you what should be next for you. But maybe it begins the moment you start believing the quiet voice that lives inside of you again. That voice that says, rest, begin, try something, wait, speak up, let go, try again. Or this matters. Because literally, underneath all the noise, underneath everyone else's opinions, underneath the fear, and underneath the fear of getting it wrong, you probably already know far more than you've been giving yourself credit for. Your job isn't to become someone completely different. Your job is to come home to yourself, to become someone you can trust again. Thank you so much for spending part of your Saturday with me. If this episode encouraged you, I'd love for you to share it with someone who may be struggling to trust themselves right now. And if you'd like more resources, coaching, speaking, to join our free limitless living community, visit me at fredericadavis.com. And until next time, until next week, be rooted, be resilient, and be limitless.