Sometimes I wonder how much I actually trust myself. My own wisdom. I have days where I question myself, flip flop my decisions. But I think if I were to be still, my inner voice would lead me. Truthfully, I’ve been working on being more in touch with that inner voice. Paying attention to what comes up, what I’m hearing, sensing, feeling. Acting on it has been a little slower, until recently.
Last week my husband and I had a trip planned for my upcoming BIG birthday. He was indulging me with tickets to see Celine Dion. Now, I had a friend say “you either like her…or you don’t.” I do. She doesn’t. You might not. That’s ok because when Celine hits those big, dramatic, building notes, I’m all in. My poor kids had to listen to Celine ALL the time in the car when they were young. They could do a mean sing along if the moment presented itself, but also did not hold back in mocking me.
Right now, the only place Celine is playing is Las Vegas. And we were scheduled to fly out this past Monday morning. On Sunday, I was anxious all day. No known reason. We had a great day celebrating our grand-daughter’s 3rd birthday. It was an afternoon of relaxing and hanging out with family and friends. But I had anxiety. Any of you who have anxiety know that sometimes you don’t know why, it’s just there and Sunday was one of those days.
Monday morning, we woke up early to get ready for our trip and heard the news of the horrific tragedy that unfolded in Las Vegas the prior evening. It was awful and sad…blocks away from where we were headed to celebrate. A trip we’d planned and paid for months ago.
And this is where trusting myself came in. I really don’t like losing money. But in that moment my gut was telling me not to go on the trip. I was reminded of the anxiety the day before – and could see it was intuition, God whispering to me. So I asked the question, “if money weren’t an issue, what would we do?” And we stayed home.
For so many reasons, I knew that was the right decision. Primarily, it did not feel right to go there with the intent to celebrate when so many had lost their lives, senselessly. The tragedy made me incredibly sad. And yet, even thought I knew it was the right decision, I second guessed myself for the better part of the day, even after cancelling the flights and hotel. That’s when the competing voices in my head came up. The ones that get in the way of trusting myself.
Those voices are certainly not mine, but represent the doubts about myself that carry forward from the past. The ones that remind me of all the decisions I’ve made that were, shall we say, less that optimal. We all have them. What I now know is that our ability to trust ourselves is related to identifying exactly what comes up for us in those moments. We all have those things we think are true and right that have evolved in our minds over time (whether they are actually true), but that hold us back from making decisions in the present. Those are the things that scream at us in our minds. But you can choose to ignore them. And I did.
And we all can, and should. Choose to look at what’s in front of us today. The facts of the situation we’re currently faced with. Not the voices in our head telling us that we can’t, or shouldn’t, or even worse, that we’re not good enough, not worthy. Those voices aren’t true. They’re not our friends. We CAN trust ourselves and our own inner wisdom.
I would be remiss if I didn’t end with a moment about the tragedy in Las Vegas. It was incredibly sad and we should have systems and rules in place to prevent it. It’s a time when each of us needs to dig down inside ourselves and be brave enough to voice our true concerns about how this happened. But right now, in this moment, we can use that voice to pray. Pray for the victims, their families, the witnesses, and all the first responders. My heart goes out to all of them.