Can You Trust Yourself?

People often lose trust in themselves because of a decision they made in the past.

They look back and think, I made a terrible choice.

Maybe they stayed in a relationship too long. Maybe they left too soon. Maybe they took a job they shouldn't have taken, trusted someone they shouldn't have trusted, said something they wish they hadn't said, or failed to do something they now wish they had done.

Whatever the circumstance, they remember the decision and attach a judgment to it.

I was wrong.

I made a mistake.

I should have known better.

And eventually:

I can't trust myself anymore.

This creates a peculiar problem. The person is afraid to make another decision because they no longer trust the person making the decision.

But there is something important they are overlooking.

You are not the same person who made that decision.

You may have the same name. You may have the same body and many of the same memories. But you are not the same person.

You have had experiences that person had not yet had. You know things that person did not know. You have learned things that person had not yet learned. You have changed.

And there is something else we often fail to recognize.

The choice you made was the only choice you could have made at that moment.

Not because it was necessarily the best choice.

Not because it was necessarily the wisest choice.

But because, given everything you knew, everything you believed, everything you felt, everything you wanted, and everything you were capable of seeing at that particular moment, that was the choice you made.

If you could have made a different choice with exactly the same awareness, knowledge, circumstances, and state of being, you would have.

But you couldn't.

You didn't have today's perspective yesterday.

So what exactly are you punishing yourself for?

Regret Can Become Self-Abuse

There is a difference between learning from the past and continuing to punish yourself for it.

Learning says:

I understand what happened. I understand what I might do differently now.

Regret says:

I should not have done that.

And when regret becomes habitual, it can become a form of self-abuse.

We replay the event.

We criticize ourselves.

We imagine alternate versions of the past.

We tell ourselves that we should have known.

And then we carry all of that into the present moment.

The event is over.

But we keep bringing it with us.

We take something that happened yesterday and make it part of today.

We haven't actually let go.

And perhaps the most damaging part is what we conclude from it:

Because I made a bad decision before, I cannot trust myself to make a good decision now.

But that conclusion doesn't follow.

The Universe Doesn't Keep Score

There is another piece to this that I find fascinating.

We tend to look at our lives as though the universe is keeping score.

This was good.

That was bad.

This was right.

That was wrong.

This worked out.

That was a disaster.

But the universe doesn't appear to organize our experiences this way.

We do.

The human mind—and particularly the ego—has a tremendous need to categorize experience.

Good.

Bad.

Success.

Failure.

Right.

Wrong.

Blessing.

Curse.

But life doesn't always cooperate with our categories.

Something we thought was terrible can eventually lead us somewhere we never would have gone otherwise.

A relationship ends, and years later we realize that its ending opened a door we could not see at the time.

A job disappears, and something entirely unexpected emerges from the space it created.

A painful experience changes us in ways we could never have anticipated.

And the opposite happens as well.

Something we were certain would make us happy doesn't.

Something we believed was the perfect opportunity turns out not to be.

Something we desperately wanted loses its appeal once we have it.

So when exactly are we supposed to keep score?

And how could we possibly keep an accurate score when we don't know what happens next?

What Does It Mean to Trust Yourself?

Perhaps self-trust has been misunderstood.

Self-trust does not mean believing that you will always make the perfect decision.

You won't.

It doesn't mean believing that every decision will produce the outcome you want.

It won't.

And it doesn't mean promising yourself that you will never make another mistake.

You will.

Self-trust means something much simpler.

I trust myself to make a choice based upon who I am, what I value, what I know, and what I believe at this moment.

That is enough.

Trust is not knowing what will happen.

Trust is knowing where you are coming from when you make the choice.

If a decision is consistent with your values and your moral code, then you have made the right choice for you at that moment.

That doesn't guarantee the outcome.

It doesn't mean everything will work out the way you want.

It simply means you did not abandon yourself in the process.

Fear Is Not a Decision-Making Strategy

There is another option, of course.

You can refuse to decide.

You can wait.

You can analyze.

You can ask everyone else what they think.

You can look endlessly into the past for evidence that you cannot trust yourself.

You can allow fear to make the decision for you.

But that is still a decision.

Inaction is a choice.

Allowing fear to determine what you do is a choice.

And sometimes making a decision that turns out badly is far healthier than spending your life afraid to make one.

Because you can learn from a choice.

You can adjust.

You can change direction.

You can make another choice.

But when fear becomes the decision-maker, you gradually begin to distrust not only your choices, but yourself.

There Is No Scorecard

Perhaps the freedom comes from realizing that there is no scorecard.

You cannot look back at your life and accurately divide it into good decisions and bad decisions.

You don't know enough.

You don't know what the consequences of today's decision will be tomorrow.

You don't know what today's disappointment will eventually teach you.

You don't know what today's success will eventually become.

Life keeps unfolding.

So perhaps the question isn't:

Did I make the right decision?

Perhaps the better question is:

Did I make the decision that was true to me at the time?

Did I act according to my values?

Did I listen to what I knew?

Did I honor what mattered to me?

Did I make the best choice I could with the awareness I had?

If the answer is yes, then perhaps there is nothing more you need from yourself.

You don't have to guarantee the outcome.

You don't have to predict the future.

And you don't have to punish yourself for the past.

You simply have to make the next choice.

Not perfectly.

Not fearlessly.

Just honestly.

And then trust yourself enough to meet whatever comes next.

© Michael Morris, M.A.