Life, as life does, has presented me with significant decision points this week. My personal decision-making process is best summed up as, I’m a waffler. Driven by a desire to maintain an inner peace, I don’t always trust that I’ll make the right call. But if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?
How we learn to trust
We come into the world helpless. Completely dependent upon our parents to keep us alive, to care for us. Without cognitively knowing why, or even that we’re doing it, we place our utmost trust in the two people who brought us into the world. Two people, who (speaking as a parent myself) know no more about keeping a baby alive than they did 24 hours before we were born. My own parents were young when I entered the world and instinct, informed by the model of their own parents, guided their caregiving. I’m still alive, so whatever they did worked.
As we gain our own personalities and sense of self, we continue to trust our parents, our elders. In fact, we’re taught to trust those in authority without question. I swallowed that pill effortlessly. Subconsciously, it may have been easier to defer decision making than to make the wrong one. You can keep the peace (yep…back to the Enneagram 9) when you’re compliant.
Gender Norms
I’ve lately been paying attention to the ways society conditions women to defer to men in decision making. To trust men without question. Particularly when it comes to financial decision making. In traditional marriages, women are taught to ‘let their husband lead.’ I confess that I was on that bandwagon, but how does it play out in real life? Differently, depending on the relationship. Suffice it to say, I jumped off on a sharp turn and dumped out my Kool-Aid.
What I’ve noticed is that women, myself included, don’t trust themselves to the same degree as men. Women gain consensus, men, speaking generally, believe in the validity of their experience as truth. Without conscious effort, these actions are a self-fulfilling prophecy for women because the more we defer, the less we trust our own decision making.
Breaking the mold
Without question, I know I continue to defer decision making. Arriving at my own conclusion, but first crowd surfing it to ensure I’m not alone in my thought process. Decisions by consensus. Oddly, it’s not a pattern I follow at work where I’m consulted in decision making daily and regularly make the call. My personal life does not fare as well. Getting to the bottom of that has been a quest.
Why is it that children, and for the sake of this post, girls, are not taught to trust themselves? To have confidence in their decisions and see them through, whether positive or not. Society continues, and to be fair, rightly so in certain circumstances, to have children defer decision making. We don’t talk them through learning to trust their own instinct and the confidence than ensues. And we’re not teaching our children that failing is not the end of the world and doing so doesn’t mean they can’t trust themselves.
As someone who has lived more than half my life with fear in the passenger seat, I’m an advocate for teaching children, especially girls, to trust themselves. To speak up and let their voices be heard. I’ve allowed the fear of making a mistake, of disappointing others inhabit my head and color my decisions. I’ve taking the safe path, which has been no path at all on occasion. Perhaps you’ve felt the same. Brené Brown sums up the feeling I’ve arrived at about this time in life:
Midlife is not a crisis. … Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: I’m not screwing around.
Brené speaks about midlife, but in the context of my subject today, trusting yourself, if I don’t start believing in myself now, when will I? When will you? For me, I’ve asked the question often enough that the still, small voice inside me has whispered “You can trust yourself.”
Trusting yourself
Trusting yourself doesn’t mean you have all the answers, it means you trust that you make decisions that are in your best interest. That you seek guidance when appropriate, that you have your own back. It’s a muscle we must build through practice and reprogramming our minds. It’s daring to believe in yourself. You’ll make mistakes, we all will, that’s normal. But when faced with the question of who you can trust, the answer is you. I believe in you, and I believe in me. Be brave friends. Lisa