Trust Yourself
I recently met up with friends for trivia night at one of the local breweries. One of the questions was about the artist, Prince (or the artist formerly known as Prince). The question mentioned his first movie, Purple Rain and asked what the follow-up movie was. We were all stumped. Then an image of a bridge popped into my head. I mentioned it and kept thinking about it. All of a sudden Graffiti Bridge came to mind. I was never a huge Prince fan so I am not sure how I even knew this. Somehow, it just felt like the right answer. And it was!
There are times throughout our lives in which we just know something, we just feel it. We can’t explain it. We don’t know how the answer arrived, but we trust it. And that’s how I felt last night with the answer to the question. Somehow I just knew and chose to trust myself, which can be difficult for us humans.
To trust your intuition is to trust yourself. You will not always get it right—and that is okay—but you are likely to get it right more often when you believe in and trust yourself. No one else can weigh in on what your intuition is telling you, how your gut is feeling, or what is right for you. That is solely on you. The more you trust yourself, the easier it gets. You will second-guess yourself less and stop outsourcing your decision-making to others.
When you second-guess yourself and allow that pesky doubt to creep in, you feel uncertain, stressed, anxious, and even defeated. You believe you are incapable of making good decisions and you look for the answers externally. This is outsourcing your power to choose what is right for you, for your life. Do not give away your power!
Think of this as another muscle to exercise. The more you trust your intuition and that gut feeling, the more confident you become in your own decision-making. This can be scary as it means the responsibility is on you. But guess what? It always has been. It is YOUR life.
I have felt my intuition creep up on me in numerous ways. A few years ago, when I was meeting a date for the first time in public, something felt off. When I caught sight of him from a distance, my stomach had a weird, knotted feeling. He saw me, so I couldn’t just walk away. But after about 30 minutes of walking around and talking, I told him I needed to head home. He wanted to walk me to my car and I said I was fine as I wasn’t parked far. (He was a sheriff and I didn’t want him to see my license plate number.) Wouldn’t you know he sent me a snarky text? Nothing about being around him felt right.
On the flip side, I have also ignored it out of fear. In my long-term relationship of nearly 11 years, I can recall standing outside of my ex’s place after he had embarrassed me by saying something rude in front of his family (I don’t recall the words). I had a feeling within me that I needed to leave the relationship. I ignored that feeling, allowing doubt and fear to win, because of how connected to the family I was and the years I had invested in the relationship. Fast forward to a few years later and the relationship finally ended due to him cheating on me. It really was over before it was over, but neither of us had the guts to end it. Had I listened years prior, had I been honest with how unhappy I was and how alone I felt in the relationship, had I loved myself enough to leave, it would’ve been over sooner. But valuable lessons were learned.
Lean in to your intuition. Believe you know what is right for you, even if you get it wrong sometimes. No one is perfect. Trust that gut instinct. Listen when a decision excites you, or feels heavy. Learn to trust yourself. It is an important part of your self-love.
LYF 💖
REFLECTION: What is a recent example of when you listened to your inner voice, trusted it, and you are glad you did? What is a recent example of when you ignored your inner voice, doubted yourself, and learned a lesson from the experience?