Self-trust is often overlooked
yet it is the most powerful virtue we have.
In order to succeed in anything we must possess this ability.
Otherwise we are living through someone else.

Stress and Self-Trust

Self-image is your ego perception of yourself in comparison to other people. Self-esteem is your high opinion of your own value without comparing yourself to other people. A third type of perception about yourself is self-trust. Trust is a confident belief in someone's character, reliability, ability, and truthfulness. Self-trust is your own confidence in your own character, reliability, ability, and truthfulness. The connection between stress and self-trust concerns how much confidence you have in your own trustworthiness to respond to stressors in your life.

Two types of stressors test your trust in yourself. The first type of stressor concerns external threats and potential catastrophes. A Category 5 hurricane heads your way, or a powerful earthquake jolts your house so badly that you're afraid it's going to fall down on top of you, or an uncontrolled fire races toward your home. You can also feel stressed-out if you live with a dangerous, unpredictably violent person, or live in a hostile environment. Such stressors require more than a change of attitude or mindset.

The second type of stressor concerns responsibilities in your daily life, such as earning an income, doing housework and home maintenance, going to work, paying bills, buying food, fixing meals, doing laundry, taking care of children, driving on busy roads. If you feel stressed-out most of the time by these daily stressors, feeling stressed-out has become a way of life.

If you find yourself feeling stressed-out much of the time, ask yourself if your stress is a vote of no confidence in yourself. Do you trust that you can take care of yourself and those who depend on you?

What Are Your Stressors?

Do you trust that you can earn or create the money necessary to pay for what you want and need? Do you trust your character to be reliable, to tell the truth, to do the right thing? Do you have confidence that you can do whatever you need to do in the face of any stressor?

This list is only the beginning. You can list your own stressors. What or who demands more, expects more, needs more than you feel able to give? Stressed-out is a sense of helplessness, the sense of being squeezed and unable to do anything about it. Underneath it all, feeling stressed-out as a way of life demonstrates a fundamental lack of trust in your capacity to do what needs to be done.

Lack of self-trust plays the mantra in your head:

• I can't do this.
• I'm not smart enough.
• I don't know enough.
• I don't trust myself and my decisions.

The antidote to this kind of debilitating stress is self-trust. When you trust yourself, you trust you can deal with anything that comes your way. You have confidence in your abilities to make good choices and to carry out your plans. You have confidence in your own power, abilities, and capacities.

Consider the words of Suzanne Jones:

Self-trust is often overlooked yet it is the most powerful virtue we have. In order to succeed in anything we must possess this ability. Otherwise we are living through someone else.

Her second sentence is particularly insightful. She claims that if you don't trust yourself, you'll be living your life through someone else. Living through someone else is when you allow someone else to make your decisions for you, or even worse, when you're bullied into doing what you don't want to do, or prevented from doing what you do want to do. Self-trust grows when you believe that you have the capacity to make your own decisions and succeed at what you decide to do.

The most successful people in the world trust their own dreams and abilities. In the face of opposition or ridicule, they make their own choices and have confidence in their own capacity to do what needs to be done to accomplish their intentions.

[Original Post December 3, 2015]