Continuing our discussion from yesterday, we limit our beliefs because we don’t trust ourselves.  We don’t trust ourselves because we don’t keep our word to ourselves—and that word can be about anything.  We stop exercising or we stay at the draining job or we don’t meal prep or we don’t fill the car with gas after work or we don’t finish cleaning.  Keeping our word to ourselves means holding ourselves accountable to the decision we made.  When we are accountable and see things through we know we are capable of the task.  When we believe and know what we are capable of, anything becomes possible because we know we can develop the skills needed to do anything.  Trust in ourselves is key because we need to know that we can rely on our abilities.  When we can rely on our own ability, we feel safe enough to attempt something and know that even if it doesn’t work out that we will still be safe.  That it’s ok if it doesn’t work out because it isn’t life or death—we can try again.  “Failure” doesn’t mean the same thing it used to when we were fighting for survival.  Failure is literally an opportunity to try something different.

Learning to trust ourselves starts with honoring who we are and getting clear on what we want.  It’s too difficult to keep our word if we are doing things we don’t believe in or that aren’t aligned with who we are.  That isn’t to say there aren’t valuable lessons in doing things for the sake of helping people or learning a new skill just to keep sharp.  But when we operate from who we are, those decisions are clearer and make it easier to honor our word because it’s coming from the core.  It gets confusing because we are also trained to be nice and to do things for others that may not be good for us because we want those people to like us.  Then we create stories about why we can’t help when we should have simply said no in the first place.  People pleasing is dangerous, helping is valuable.  Don’t confuse the two.  If we want to create trust, help others, if we want to create resentment and learn to skulk away from life, continue to people please.  Either way, don’t allow the outside influence who we are at our core.

The goal of life is expansion—expansion of emotion, of space, of ideas and creativity, of experiences, of connection.  In order to step into that expansiveness, we need to trust that even in the unknown we are capable.  We need to know what we can do and we need to know that we WILL do it.  That all starts with clear decisions and follow through.  If we have a vision of who we are or of who we want to be, then we need to decide that is who we are and we need to operate as that person to move forward.  Do what we say we will do and life starts to change.  We create momentum and we see results and suddenly new avenues open up and we decide to follow that.  It’s all about mindset and committing to that vision we have and deciding to keep our word.  Knowing we are capable and showing ourselves we are capable are two different things.  Showing is about results, telling is about spinning.  Choose carefully.  Make the commitment and keep our word and watch life change.