19 | When Self-Doubt Becomes Self-Trust
19 | When Self-Doubt Becomes Self-Trust
How do you want to feel in your home? The journey of creating your dream home and life starts with awareness. Self-trust is the anchor of our lives, and in today’s episode, I’ll share why I believe it’s the third and final cornerstone to an organized life.
There are three qualities of self-trust:
Trusting yourself to follow through or do what you plan to do.
Trusting yourself to problem solve.
Trusting that you can experience or handle any emotion.
Self-trust is built when you combine the other two cornerstones: powerful decision-making and resilience.
Trusting yourself ultimately comes from taking risks of any size and from learning from that particular situation. This path often involves inner discomfort, yet the reward is inner strength.
So join me as I share client examples and stories to illustrate what it looks like when self-doubt becomes self-trust. Remember, deep self-trust starts with having your own back. Learning to treat yourself with compassion and kindness is a lifelong journey. But I know you can do this. You’re more organized than you think.
MENTIONED:
17 | Decision Making Fundamentals
18 | Understanding Emotions and Clutter
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Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing an Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy, and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast, we'll go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household, and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.
Amelia: Welcome to Episode 19, “When Self-Doubt Becomes Self-Trust.” Hey y’all. I’d love to share another listener's review. Cat Alford writes, “This is not your average home organization podcast. Amelia uses her training as a life coach to go deeper and helps listeners navigate through life’s bigger questions – how do we want to live and how do we want to feel in our homes? Amelia is incredibly smart, and her voice is a combination of calm and strength that listeners will appreciate.” This review captures exactly what I’m aiming for…to help you consider a layer deeper. To look within and know that it’s possible to create the FEELING you want within your home and life. It starts with awareness, then feeling, then taking concrete intentional steps towards trusting that you know your own home and life best.
Self-trust is the anchor for our lives, and on today’s episode, I’ll share why I believe it’s the third and final cornerstone of an organized life. I define self-trust as having three components: trusting yourself to follow through or do what you plan to do, trusting yourself to problem solve, and trusting that you can experience or handle any emotion. It’s at the other end of the spectrum from self-doubt. In my experience, self-trust is built when you combine the other two cornerstone qualities of an organized life: powerful decision-making and emotional resilience. (And if you haven’t heard episodes 17 and 18, I recommend that you jump back and listen to those as they expand upon those two concepts.) Trusting yourself completely comes from taking risks of any size and from learning from that situation. Full transparency, the path to deeply trusting yourself often involves inner discomfort, yet the reward is inner strength. It can be deepened through active practice, AND it’s also a fortunate byproduct of those other two cornerstones I mentioned - regular decision-making and emotional awareness.
So, to give you a roadmap for today’s episode, I’ll touch briefly on self-doubt. Most of us are a little too familiar with self-doubt, so I’ll use it primarily as a way to contrast the three qualities of self-trust. Because this is the transformational inner work I help you with in my one-to-one coaching sessions, I’ll use client examples and stories to illustrate what it looks like when self-doubt becomes self-trust.
Let me begin by reminding you that self-doubt is absolutely common, especially when you’re beginning something new for the first time. Your brain always wants to keep you safe, and trying something new or taking a risk activates your internal self-doubt bells. Self-doubt becomes almost a blinder or obstacle to being able to see how the task or activity ahead is manageable. Your brain says to you, “there’s not a single shred of evidence that you’ll be able to [fill in your current challenge].” “You’re not organized. You’re never on time. You’re not qualified to say or do that. You better hold onto all of this because who knows what’s ahead.” The good news is your brain is often a very good liar. Those inner voices of self-doubt serve a purpose, and you have the power to circumvent them to build self-trust block by block within.
The first quality of self-trust is doing what you say you’re going to do. This is huge. Becoming a person who follows through on their commitment takes conscious effort. It may take a little willpower, but what it takes a lot of is emotional resilience and powerful decision-making. I have a client who, when she began coaching with me, believed that she was great at knowing what needed to be done on her to-do list AND believed that she wasn't optimizing her time because she wasn’t doing each of the tasks. Now note, everyone’s root cause reason for why they aren’t following through is different. In this case her self-doubt was stemming from the thought that she didn’t know how to organize her ideas and content effectively. She planned her calendar, yet when it came time to execute, she’d look at the list and freeze at where to begin.
One of the first exercises she and I went through was creating a visual map of all the areas of her life: personal, family/home, and business. Self-doubt will always tell you that you aren’t doing enough. However, when you lay your full life out onto paper and see how many areas that you’re handling at once, you develop a sense of compassion for what you’re trying to accomplish. Perhaps you’re not following through because there are unrealistic expectations for how much you can accomplish in one day. Perhaps you’re not doing what’s on your calendar because you’re expecting yourself to focus on a task for 3 hours when realistically your brain can’t attend to a project for longer than 35 or 45 minutes before needing a break. Perhaps you’re not following through on your commitments because some of them aren’t truly aligned with your overall priority for the week ahead – most of the tasks are extraneous with little reward.
She and I started with awareness about what was happening the night before her workday. She noticed how she was staying up later than usual and had fallen out of her planned evening routine. She was also telling herself that she needed to be at her desk earlier in the morning than her brain was ready for. When she checked in with what her brain and body needed, she found that a longer wind down and a longer morning prep time made her better prepared for her day. Building self-trust in one area can come from the smallest changes in another.
It comes from noticing when your actions are out of alignment with your purpose. It comes from noticing the subtle voices that say, “Let’s just go tidy up the kitchen before we sit down to work (or rest).” Or “I’ll start that closet project (or exercise routine) this weekend.” Again, your brain is an excellent liar, and prefers you stay in the land of self-doubt. You have to actively decide to do the “hard” thing on your calendar and expect that you won’t want to do the task when it comes time. It's one of the kindest gifts you can give yourself: to give yourself permission to not WANT to follow through or do what you say you’ll do. Then it’s not a surprise when it happens. The self-doubt voice that says “later” or “you’re not ready” was already there, now you’re acknowledging it and giving it room.
Activating self-trust in every micro-moment that your brain wants to KEEP you from being a person who follows through is about breathing in this discomfort and reminding yourself that starting today, doing it now, putting the item back where it belongs, decluttering half your closet, going to the gym even when it’s cold or early, or making the uncomfortable request at work results in self-trust. With my son, who’s an elite athlete, I talk about putting “value in the value bank.” Activating self-trust is being aware that you’re in self-doubt around the tasks on your schedule, getting curious about any hidden voices or obstacles, expecting resistance to doing the task, then feeling through the discomfort and resistance to take action. THIS is putting value in the value bank. It’s a drop of self-trust in the inner well of yourself that adds up. It’s how you become a person who follows through and does what you say you’ll do, even when it’s emotionally uncomfortable. My client now reminds herself in the evening exactly how her wind-down routine sets her up for success the next workday. She sets focus blocks on her calendar that make sense so that she’s aligning her brilliance with her body’s abilities. She trusts that she’ll get the priorities accomplished because she has a system for keeping track of information. She knows that pushing to get it all done is an unrealistic, sure-fire way to land herself back in the realm of self-doubt.
Element two of self-trust is believing that you have the inner tools and strength to solve any problem. And no, I don’t mean having all the answers to every single problem you encounter. It’s more like looking within and getting creative. It’s choosing to think that there are always options – or more than one way - to get out of a bind, to find an adequate substitute solution, to see the obstacle in your way from a different angle. The good news is this belief is also built one step, one challenge, one risk at a time. If envisioning multiple options isn’t easy for you, focus on finding just one other way you might handle what’s going on.
Oftentimes clients are holding onto more physical items than they want because they don’t know what to do with them. First off, it makes sense. If this is the first time you’ve owned a home and you have half used cans of paint stacked up in your garage, there’s no reason you’d know the best way to dispose of paint. If you have gorgeous antique jewelry that was passed down to you from several generations prior and you’ve never sold or sent items to auction before, there’s no reason you’d know what to do with it. So, the items sit. They sit in your house. They sit in a storage unit or a lock box. Yet, you know (if you’ve listened to either of the last two episodes) that these items are in the “waiting place.” They’ll remain an obstacle until you make a decision about what to do with them and confront any lingering emotions around asking for help or seeking guidance.
One of my clients inherited her parent’s home and every single item in it. She was overwhelmed and grieving. Her situation, which is not uncommon, required care and time. She knew that she didn’t want a majority of the belongings. But because emotions guide our actions (including decision making), she needed space to allow and process grief before actively solving the problem of her parents’ belongings. It was a challenge for her to see and believe that she had many options for clearing out the space because she wasn’t yet ready to trust that the problem had several straightforward solutions. That’s the beauty of what I offer. Our time together allowed my client to understand that she was in charge of the whole process: her emotional journey, the decision-making, and actively building her self-trust one obstacle at a time. You have the inner strength and creativity to solve any problem. It’s inside you waiting for you to step around self-doubt and trust that you (or another expert you locate) will be able to guide you forward.
To recap, before I touch on the third element of self-trust, the first quality is doing what you say you’re going to do. The second was believing that you have the tools to solve any problem. Resources abound around you, if you’re willing to look within and speak up and ask questions.
The third quality of deep self-trust starts with believing that you can handle any emotion. It’s all about having your own back NO MATTER WHAT. Self-trust is all about you, your lived experience, and your inner emotional experience. It has nothing to do with what others say or do or don’t do. You create your own emotions from how you think about any situation or interaction, and learning to yourself with compassion and kindness is a life-long journey for all of us. Because emotions are vibrations within our bodies, they can sometimes physically feel intense. AND you’ll live through them even humiliation, even grief, fear, or regret.
One of my clients consciously confronted one of her emotional fears through exposure and practice. Let me be clear: she chose this activity, understood her boundaries, and practiced awareness. She processed her emotions each time they came up, and now she trusts that she’s able to drive on the highway. In one of our sessions, she shared how driving on the highway, even for short periods, made her physically unwell. The emotions rushing through her body from fear were present whether she was the passenger or driver. I confirmed that there was no residual trauma at play, and she understood that with tiny bits of exposure to highway driving, she’d be able to allow what was happening internally and build her resilience to the emotions.
Having your own back with regards to your choices is a powerful quality. It means that you decide that you’re always doing what you think is best – always. It doesn’t mean that you’re never wrong or never say something ridiculous. Having your own back is all about noticing your emotional experience and taking care of yourself even when you make mistakes. Comforting yourself when emotions are tough. Giving yourself space to breathe in hurt or discomfort. Trusting that you can accept those emotions and move forward when the time is right.
For example, let’s say you’re finding it really hard to let go of a few of the high standards you have for your home. Every day you have a specific routine of vacuuming, wiping down bathroom counters, and restoring order to the kitchen. Your partner is used to seeing you do these things daily, and you assume they expect the tasks to be done. Yet, you’re tired. Maybe you’re pregnant. Maybe you’re going through another life transition. Maybe you just don’t want to vacuum daily anymore. The beauty is… the reason you want to change course doesn’t matter. Especially when you have your own back and trust that you can handle any emotion.
The first few days after you make the powerful decision to stop tidying up will be a challenge because the automatic voices in your head will urge you to continue the habit. Have your own back and stick to your decision. Talk to yourself and let your inner self know that everything is okay. You can handle the temporary discomfort and urge to do the task. Remind yourself it will ease with time. If your partner makes a mention that the task hasn’t been done, speak your truth. Have your own back. You’re more organized than you think, and having a touchy discussion builds your emotional resilience and in turn your self-trust. What you want matters, and you can trust that vacuuming once a week or even less is enough because that’s what you’ve decided the new standard will be.
I love working with clients on these three cornerstones of a clutter-free life: powerful decision-making, emotional resilience, and deep self-trust. I’ve seen it time and time again bolster women, in particular, to be more audacious, to be clearer on their priorities, less stressed, and step into feeling like the boss of their homes and lives. It’s a win for them and a win for everyone in their circle. If this type of inner work that results in permanent clutter control appeals to you, I invite you to book your consultation at apleasantsolution.com/booking.
Talk to y’all next week.
Outro: Hey, y'all, I'd be honored if you'd take three minutes to leave a review of this podcast. Your time is precious and by leaving a review, A Pleasant Solution will reach more listeners and lives. I'd also love to hear your feedback and share your review on a future episode. Talk to y'all soon and remember, you are more organized than you think.
