If you regularly don’t follow through on your word or intentions either to yourself or others, then this causes a lack of self-trust.
It sounds obvious, but in my experience, I don’t think the people who do let themselves down on a regular basis realise the negative impact it’s having on their mental health and their overall life.
Lack of self-trust can be devastating to your self-worth.
If you constantly let yourself down or don’t keep your word (to yourself or others), that lack of self-trust will extend to what you feel you’re capable of and even to who you are as a person.
Plus, behind the surface level stress, there will be a lot of suppressed shame that will likely manifest in unhealthy coping mechanisms and mental health issues.
Do you feel a lack of self-trust?
Maybe you find that you’re always running late, missing deadlines or perhaps you often set goals or make promises to yourself or others that you then don’t keep?
If so, here are five tools that can help you start to build the muscle of self-trust:
- Commit to one small thing that you do every single morning asap after waking. It could be as simple as drinking a glass of water, getting up at a certain time, or a practise like journaling, stretching, meditating, exercising, deep breathing, a cold shower etc.
Choose something that is relatively easy to do, and it should also be something that is good for you.
Committing to one action every day and doing it first thing, means you’ll start the day feeling motivated and like you’ve already achieved something. This mentally and hormonally motivates you to do more of the same, therefore setting the tone for the rest of the day.
- Schedule your days, weeks and months in advance. I can’t emphasise this one enough. Many people simply work from a running to-do list that has no real system to it.
However, when you plan the upcoming day and/or week out in advance, you’re able to plan your priorities and set aside specific time frames to work through each task on your to-do list. It also makes it much easier to set boundaries with yourself and others, because it’s very clear whether or not you have the time or capacity to do something.
Planning in advance creates a more proactive state, which is a far less stressful way to live as opposed to living in reactivity where you deal with things in the moment as they happen.
- Think of your words as a contract. Imagine that there would be serious implications if you didn’t honour your word – perhaps a hefty fine!
This is a great experiment to try for a day – you should find you are far more choosy about what you say and what you commit to!
- Check you’re not miscalculating the time & energy needed to complete something. I’ve found it’s very common for people to underestimate how long a task will take.
There are two elements to fixing this: Firstly, if you plan out your time, as per point number 2, you should be far less like to over-commit yourself.
Secondly, build in buffer time: if you think something will take you an hour, set aside an hour and fifteen minutes. This works well for tasks and when calculating the time needed to travel somewhere – it’s always better to finish something or arrive somewhere early!
- Lastly, for those who are perfectionists: You can decide in advance how much effort you want to give to something.
I like to use school grades or percentages for this – for example, you decide you’re going to complete a piece of work to your grade C level or to your 70% rather than your absolute A+ / 100% best. This then also helps you decide how much time you’re going to give to something or the other way round – when you only have a certain amount of time to give to something you decide you’re going to do it to a certain standard.
You’ll find much of what you’re doing doesn’t require your 100% effort. Planning your time in advance helps you to see this, whereas if you move from one task to the next without planning how much time or effort you want to give to it, you will likely find yourself spending far too much time on things.
If you resonated with today’s blog post, do try these techniques. A consistent planning routine is such a game-changer and the practice of considering your words as a contract is a powerful exercise to try!
Oftentimes, however, further support and accountability is the best way to work on more long-standing issues such as a lack of self-trust, especially when trying to resolve habits like procrastination, lateness, perfectionism and lack of follow through. If you feel you might need some support and you’re interested to find out more, book a consultation with me here.
Kate x
