We talk about trust in our relationships all the time and for good reason. Trust is a fundamental component of rock star relationships. When it’s there we have a sense of security and safety at home that lets us venture out into the world with confidence. When trust is shattered it makes us question everything. “If I can’t be okay here, how can I be okay anywhere?”

We should be talking about trusting ourselves just as much. Trust in yourself can provide security when others fail you. Because they will fail you, sometimes. More on that later.

We come into the world dependent on others. If our parent types were mostly good; there more often than not; and we could mostly count on them we get a good relational base inside of us. We go from parent types to middle school friends. They solidify our relational insides and then we wander into the young adult world hopefully more or less ready to connect with others as we continue to discover who we really are. That’s the job of a lifetime.

Trusting ourselves means seeing us as fundamentally good. It means believing our own experiences especially when they’re hard. To trust ourselves we need a mostly well-functioning emotional system. That means we know what our feelings are what they’re trying to tell us. Then that we act accordingly. 

Trusting ourselves means that we are competent and capable problem solvers and that we believe in ourselves to get a job done in whatever way works.