Self-trust is a topic many of us don’t think much about when trying to get back an ex. We’re do focused on “what to do” and not paying much attention to “who is doing the what”.
But if you are ever going to succeed in getting back your ex, you must think of self-trust because if you don’t trust yourself, how do you expect your ex to trust you?
So let’s talk about self-trust.
Self trust — the ability to take action based on your belief in yourself.
When we trust ourselves, we act with confidence, move forward purposefully, take risks many people will not take, and push ourselves beyond the point at which many others give up. We trust that we can handle any situation, foreseen and unseen, and still come out the other side safe and intact — even stronger .
When you do not trust yourself on the other hand, you question your own judgement, second-guess yourself and expect yourself to mess up or do something that will hurt you — again.
Because self-trust does not rely on us figuring it all out before we act or knowing what to expect before it happens, one can even say that self-trust is believing and acting on our intuition. But as later discussed, it’s more than intuition alone, it’s also acting on what is reasonable and practical.
Many of us have this self-trust in many areas of our lives, but when it comes to relationships, especially a relationship with someone we care so much about, we don’t trust our own judgement, we don’t trust our ability to make the right choices for ourselves, and we don’t trust ourselves to act in our own best interest.
I can always tell someone lacks self-trust when they begin asking for advice with “I want… but I don’t want ….”. For example, “I want to contact him, but I don’t want to come across as pushy”, or “I want to tell her I love her, but I don’t want to drive her away etc”. What I hear is, “I don’t trust myself not to do what I fear I will do”.
The worst part of all this…. you don’t even know how you truly feel any more. You don’t know if you should try to get your ex back — or just forget it. One day you strongly feel one way, and the next you strongly feel the other way. It’s like two people inside of you fighting each other — and you don’t like both of them.
As mentioned above, if you trust yourself, how do you expect your ex to trust you?
To begin to see any significant progress towards getting back your ex, you must start with trusting not only what you are doing, but also in yourself.
So how does one develop this self-trust thing?
Unfortunately, there is no easy or quick technique to get it. You can’t just say “I trust myself” and off you go acting with confidence, taking bold risks and believing that what your doing is exactly the right thing to do. There are however some things that you can do to start building self-trust.
1. Keep an open mind (literally)
The problem with most over- analyzers is that they begin with a hypothesis and then look for evidence to support it. For example, he’s a commitment phobe or she’s doesn’t know that she wants. They lock onto that and over-analyze it to death. It’s not only mentally exhausting, it’s limiting.
You know more than you know you know, and you are capable of more than you think you can do.
2. Accept and embrace your humanity
You are human and that means you’ll make mistakes. Some of those mistakes will cause you pain and hurt, but most will facilitate your growth and make you stronger.
3. Train your mind to shut up sometimes
Shutting down the mental chatter allows you to connect with your intuition, inner voice, gut feeling, soul or whatever you want to call it. There are many exercises for quietening mind-chatter in books and on the internet.
4. Get out of your comfort zone
Take bold but reasonable risks. You might say or do the wrong thing, but you might also say or do the right thing. You’ll never know until you actually do it.
5. Let go the need to control the outcome
Things might or might not turn out the way you want or hoped, but whatever happens, it’s not going to kill you — even if it feels like it might.
6. Listen to your own intuition more
No one knows your situation better than you do, and no one cares about your relationship as much as you do. So while it’s okay to ask friends, relatives, experts etc for “what they think”, the final decision should be from within you.
7. Show up (authentically) every single time
Putting yourself out there can be difficult because of the possibility of hurt. But trying so hard to hide who you really are is even harder. Let’s be honest, either way, the chances of getting hurt are 50/50. So why not get hurt being yourself than get hurt trying to be someone else?
8. Remind yourself of your past successes
Don’t just dwell on your past “failures”, look at some of the decisions you’ve made all on your own, and turned out pretty good decisions. That’s evidence that you are capable of saying or doing the “right” thing.
9. Carefully choose what goes into your head
Break away from your fear-based script, fear-mongering and fear-gripped company, and surround yourself with people who believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself.
10. Challenge your beliefs about relationships
Your beliefs are such an important part of your mental chatter. If it’s not making sense, if it goes against what is actually happening, and if it sounds so out there (wiser and more experienced people role-their eyes), it’s time to do a belief-update!
11. Learn to accept and even embrace uncertainty
In relationship with another human being, there is no such thing as absolute certainty, so don’t even try to obtain it. You can have a “best guess”, and that’s as close as you can get to sureness.
12. Take action
It’s absolutely important and necessary that you think before you act. But you will never find out if your thoughts, ideas, strategies etc actually work sitting and just thinking (over-analyzing). You have to take action to find out the possible.
13. Create opportunities to test your self-trust
Don’t run away from difficult decision or situations, and especially don’t run away from your ex. Self-trust is not one of those “skills” you park your bags and go into the mountains for a 10-day me-time retreat, and emerge from there dripping with self-trust. The more you are in your ex’s life/presence, the more opportunities you have to practice feelings safe to express your feeling and do things with your ex.
14. Believe in the impossible
This one is my personal favourite. With love, you just never know. In fact you never know anything at all. Even I the “love doctor” still get the “love-reality check” when I think “it’s just not going to happen”, and it does!
In other words, it’s not all about what you know (have over-analyzed), what you say or what do that makes it happen. Some things happen even without your input.
Take risks, step out of your comfort zone, do things you have never done before, make mistakes, get hurt, learn from your mistakes and do it all over again because… no matter happens, it won’t be the end of the world.
Thank you! This was a really great article. It opened a whole new understanding of myself. Now at least I know where to start in the repair of myself.
Thank you so much for this article. It was like reading my own feelings!