Ep. 16 Understanding Self-Trust: Creating a Foundation of Integrity and Values

Have you ever felt lost after a major life change, unsure if you could trust yourself again? 

Join me, Katie Lynn, as I delve into the profound journey of creating self-trust in this enlightening episode of Beyond. 

Reflecting on my own tumultuous period following a divorce in 2013, I uncover how identity shifts can challenge our self-perception and lead us to question our inner trust. 

With over two decades in psychology and human behavior, I share how you can reconnect with your core values and develop a deeper sense of self-trust, beyond the superficial advice of just keeping promises to yourself.

I explore what it truly means to trust oneself by drawing parallels with how we build trust in others—through understanding values, morals, and integrity. This episode is packed with relatable experiences and thoughtful reflections that aim to inspire you to embrace the many versions of yourself that emerge throughout life. 

Whether you're navigating an identity crisis or simply looking to strengthen your self-confidence, this conversation offers valuable insights to help you build a solid foundation of self-trust. Tune in, and let's transform the way you view yourself and your journey.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello, my friend, and welcome to Beyond the personal growth podcast for the people who are healing beyond their conditioning and beyond the cycles that played out before them. My name is Katie Lynn and, with 20 years of experience in the field of psychology and human behavior, I am bringing my natural curiosity, expertise and personal life experiences here for discussions that are guaranteed to be informative, inspiring and entertaining. I'm glad you're here. Let's get started. Today I wanted to dive into the topic of self-trust. This is one of the things that many, if not all, of my female clients come to me, and the verbiage they use is I want to develop more self-trust. I want to be able to trust myself. One of the things that stands out for me when I hear this is in the mainstream social media feeds, personal development world is naturally and kind of reflexively like if you want to trust yourself, then keep your promises to yourself, right, follow through. If you say you're going to do something, then do something, and I think there's a lot of validity to that and there's a lot of importance to that and significance. However, that is self-discipline. That is not self-trust. Self-trust is really about trust, right, it's trust at the most basic level for yourself and for context, I really want to encourage you as you think about self-trust, as you explore self-trust as a character trait that you either feel like you have or you don't have, or you are ready to develop more of. Think about it first within the context of other people. What makes you trust other people, how do you develop trust with others and when? We can think about it from that perspective? The people that I trust the most are the people who I know the most, and I don't just know them. I align with their values. I know who they are as a person from a values perspective, from a morals perspective, from an integrity perspective, and that informs my level of trust with and for them.

Speaker 1: 2:32

So when it comes to self-trust and when I hear a woman say I want to develop that self-trust, sometimes I think she's reaching for perfectionism, like I want to know that I will be able to get it right. And self-trust does not guarantee rightness or achievement or success. Self-trust is really rooted in do you know who you are? Do you know what your values are? Do you know what your morals are? Do you know what your level of integrity is? Do you know how you speak to yourself? Do you know how you interact with certain worldly circumstances. Certain worldly circumstances that's really what I hear a woman say when she says I need self-trust, and the reason I know this is because, as women, we go through so many different identity iterations and you'll hear me say this again and again but as a woman, you're going to be so many different versions of you within this one lifetime that the reinvention is just another level of learning about you and learning who you are now, and this gets amplified when we walk through circumstances that bump us up against our identities and create an identity shift.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So the most potent example I can think of within the context of my own life is back in 2013,. I went through a divorce and I can now look back right. 11 years later, I can look back and go oh my gosh, I see it so clearly. However, in the moment, it was so chaotic and the world was upside down for me and I wasn't sure which way was left and which way was right. I remember coming out of that divorce and really thinking to myself I can't trust myself anymore. I can't trust myself, and what I was really communicating to myself, but didn't know how to say consciously, was that I didn't know myself anymore. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that I did not know myself anymore, because I had just gotten married two years prior and then, seven months after that, I had a baby, and then, seven months after that, I bought a home.

Speaker 1: 4:57

And just before all of those three milestones, I just left an athletic career in college, went into a master's program, graduated from the master's program right, it's like life-changing event after life-changing event within six months of each other that will have you not knowing who you are. That will have you changing your perception of yourself, your perception of the world, your ways of being, how you think, how you relate to yourself and other people and your careers. I mean, I literally in that moment was like a puddle and I can look back and I would go back and tell my 20 something year old self Katie, it's okay, you just went through significant transformation. And it's okay if you don't know who you are, because you are brand new to you. And that's the message I really want to convey here in this solo episode is, if you hear yourself saying I want to be able to trust myself, I'd love to invite you to consider that what you're really asking for is to get to know this version of you, because if you have started a business, or if you have graduated from an educational program, or if you have moved recently, or if you have gotten pregnant or gotten married or had a baby or promoted in your company, whatever it is, if you have gone through a significant milestone, including turning 28 or turning 35 or turning 50, perimenopause, menopause, like as women, can you see how many? This is just off the top of my head and each one will ask you to get to know yourself more, depending on how smoothly that transition goes, which, in my case, this transition in my twenties was not smooth at all. It was like Mr Toad's wild ride. It was chaos.

Speaker 1: 6:58

What I realized is you get to learn yourself, and not just learn yourself, but you get to design yourself. And that's really what I didn't know at that time. I didn't know one. How many iterations of myself I would be in this lifetime. That's wild. Number two I thought I needed to be something for other people. That's not true. Number three is I didn't know.

Speaker 1: 7:22

It was up to me and my relationship with my higher power to actually design myself, and that's where my real, true, true, true power was, was to step in and say these are the natural qualities that I have, these are the natural characteristics that I have, this is who God made me to be. And I'm going to step in and I'm going to refine myself and I'm going to fortify myself and I'm going to be in full on ownership that this is who I am. These are my strengths, these are my weaknesses. They will evolve. I will get stronger in some of my weak areas, I will get weaker in some of my strong areas and I will be in full on ownership of every ounce of it to the best of my ability. And when I work with a coach or with a professional and I dive in and I learn more about myself, I will be open to reflection and I will be open to refinement.

Speaker 1: 8:13

But self-trust is not about keeping your commitments. That's self-discipline. Self-trust is about do I know who I am? And if you're wondering how you start with this, I want you to consider the person in your life that you trust the most. Is it a family member? Is it a best friend? Is it a coworker? Is it a boss? Is it a mentor? I'd like you to picture that person and I'd like you to make a list of all the reasons why you trust them, and I'd like you to also make a list of all the instances in which they have shown you and demonstrated to you that they are trustworthy. And from those two lists that you just made, I'd like you to list the values that pop out. What are their values? And then I want you to take a look at yourself and ask yourself those same questions why do you trust yourself? How have you demonstrated that you're trustworthy and what are your values?

Speaker 1: 9:07

And if you're having a hard time answering these three questions for yourself, then consider it an invitation to get to know you better and take a curious approach to examining yourself, examining your thoughts, examining your behaviors and the actions that you take every day, examining the actions that you don't take, examining the thoughts that and the actions that you take every day, examining the actions that you don't take, examining the thoughts that inform the actions that you don't take, and start to get curious about who am I and am I a trustworthy person? And if I am wonderful, I can step into self-trust. If I'm not, what do I need to work on? Do I need to get more clear about my values? Do I need to get more clear about my integrity and what I say yes to and what I say no to. That's where self-trust begins. You're already disciplined to something, you're already committed to something, and what I like to tell my clients is you're only ever, always disciplined, you're only ever, always committed. You just might not be disciplined and committed to the things that you really want to be disciplined and committed to, because that's a whole other conversation. So self-trust is not about discipline. Self-trust is not about commitment. Self-trust is about knowing how you will move in any given circumstance, because you know what your values are, you know what your morals are, you know that you are a person of integrity and you know that you will uphold your standards to the best of your ability, no matter what, and if you don't, you will work to repair or readjust the situation.

Speaker 1: 10:45

I hope this was helpful. I love you so much. Have a gorgeous week. As we complete this episode, I would love to know your insights, takeaways and feedback. You can message me on Instagram at katielinrojano, or send them via email to katie at katielinrojanocom. Any products or digital downloads I mentioned can be found via the link in my Instagram bio. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to share it with at least one friend and leave a five-star review so we can get these impactful dialogues into the lives of even more people. Until next time, friends, let's go beyond.