Episode 114: Trust Yourself, Trust Others
Introduction
Hello there friends. Welcome back to the show. You’re listening to Live Free Creative with Miranda Anderson. That’s me. I’m your host. Every week, Thursday morning, I’m here to share a little bit of inspiration, some ideas, and maybe some motivation for you to live life a little more aligned with the way that you want it. To feel a little bit more creatively, a little bit more adventurously a little bit more intentionally. Today’s episode, 114 is all about trusting yourself and trusting others. I can’t wait to dive into this topic that feels applicable to right now and always in our lives. After a quick segment, I like to call, pause for a poem.
Segment: Pause for a Poem
The Past by Louise Glück
Small light in the sky appearing
suddenly between
two pine boughs, their fine needles
now etched onto the radiant surface
and above this
high, feathery heaven—
Smell the air. That is the smell of the white pine,
most intense when the wind blows through it
and the sound it makes equally strange,
like the sound of the wind in a movie—
Shadows moving. The ropes
making the sound they make. What you hear now
will be the sound of the nightingale, Chordata,
the male bird courting the female—
The ropes shift. The hammock
sways in the wind, tied
firmly between two pine trees.
Smell the air. That is the smell of the white pine.
It is my mother’s voice you hear
or is it only the sound the trees make
when the air passes through them
because what sound would it make,
passing through nothing?
I love the imagery of that one. I can just imagine myself (as I have done many times) laying on a hammock swaying in the wind, smelling all of the smells from being outdoors and listening to the birds call and imagining my memories, thinking of my future. Such a beautiful moment captured by Louise Glück, who is notable right now, especially. I chose one of her poems because she was just awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for the year 2020. So in congratulations, I was excited to share one of her beautiful poems and can’t wait to dive into more. She was new to me and I already love the words that she shares.
Brutal Honesty
Okay. Should we do another segment called brutal honesty? This, if I were to be brutally honest right now with you, my friends, it would be that I am so tired. I think I’ve had that sort of honest confession a couple of times over the last six months on the show for whatever reason, this particular moment, I just am really excited to go home and crawl in bed. Not withstanding my fatigue from the ongoing management of my beautiful family, my wonderful kids, education, all of the ins and outs that I adore about pursuing progress in our home and our yard and our life, I am thrilled to be able to share this episode with you.
The Tipping Point
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, the idea of trusting ourselves and trusting others. And I have to tell you the sort of, there’s always these ideas all bouncing around in my head at the same time. I have several different places that I keep notes on the types of shows that I want to share on the podcast topics. And sometimes I ask my audience and I get ideas from you all. And then usually there’s a few that I’m sort of narrowing down and taking notes on and thinking about researching. And then there’s usually some something in particular like the, the moment, the tipping point that solidifies something that I want to share or talk about.
The tipping point for this episode came a couple weeks ago, I was on a run and I was listening to a podcast episode. It was actually not a podcast episode. It was a private coaching feed. I am part of Jody Moore’s Be Bold coaching program. I was listening to a previously recorded live coaching session where Jody was talking through with a bunch of different participants, different things that were happening in their lives and places that they were feeling stuck or friction… with relationships, mostly.
Because what all of this comes down to all of the ways in our lives that we feel stuck, frustrated, angry, overwhelmed, stressed out– most of those things have to do with relationships either with someone else… I mean, when we think about relationships, we most often think of them as being with someone else. We also sometimes feel all of those same feelings because of the relationship we have with ourself. And that’s something that we don’t as often reflect on as a relationship.
We think of it as just us, just problems we have with ourselves. But we can also think about this as a relationship, the way that we interact with ourself, with our thoughts, the way that we handle our own mistakes, our misgivings, our worry, our interest, our stress. We can handle that from a place of depth where we are almost like a third party and can observe the way that we’re thinking, the way that we’re feeling, the way that we’re acting and then have that relationship with ourself.
I know that I’ve talked about that in other shows. When I talk about getting to know ourselves and spending time with ourselves, the way we would with a friend. And so this coaching call in particular person after person were coming to Jody with these friction points, these sticking points in their lives of relationships. And over and over throughout this one call for whatever reason, the theme kept coming back to “trust yourself and trust them”.
And in some cases, the people needed to just hear, “You know what you’re doing. You can go inside for the answers rather than looking outside yourself for the answers.” And it’s okay to make mistakes. Mistakes don’t mean that you shouldn’t try again. They just mean that you’re on the right path, actually, because you’re human and humans make mistakes.
There was also this component of “You can’t control what other people do or how they act or what they think. You can choose to trust them, to trust that they are making the decisions that are best for themselves.”
And these two ideas of trusting ourselves and trusting other started to just tumble around in my head. And I started collecting all of these other memories and experiences that I have personally with the idea of trusting myself and trusting others. Times that I’ve been great at it, and I feel really good about it. And times that I have not that I’ve made the decision to not trust myself and to not trust others and, and really all of the negative emotions that that tends to bring up and build.
The Goal For This Episode: Awareness
In this episode, my hope is to bring to your awareness the idea that might be new to you or something that you don’t always have front of mind: that you can at any time choose to trust yourself with the decisions that you need to make big and little. You can reclaim your ability to drive your life, to be in the driver’s seat. And also to know that the things that you choose for you and your family are the right decision for you.
I also want to touch on the inverse relationship to that, which is allowing everyone else in your life, everyone else in your community, everyone else on the planet, that same opportunity. Off shoring the responsibility for other people’s thoughts, choices, actions, beliefs, habits, trusting them to take care of that for themselves and focusing in on, on you and yourself.
I think this is an ongoing process. It’s something that we revisit that we remind ourselves that maybe we have practices and mantras and things that we use to help us to remember that we want to trust ourselves and that we want to trust others and that we are trustworthy.
Trusting ourselves and trusting others doesn’t mean that everything’s going to always happen perfectly or the way we think that it will. It just means that we assume control over what we can control and that we release perceived control over the things that we never could control in the first place, which includes everyone outside of ourselves.
Assume Nobility
So to get started, I want to share a phrase that I think illustrates this so well, this whole idea years ago. I don’t remember exactly when. I think Dave and I may have been listening to a conference on TV or something where one of the speakers mentioned the idea of “assuming nobility” in everyone around you.
For whatever reason, that phrase, the particular phrase “assume nobility” struck both Dave, my husband and myself. We looked at each other and we were like, “Wow! That’s a good phrase.”
I had heard this idea said in ways, like “give other people the benefit of the doubt” or “believe that other people can make good choices” or that, you know, “everyone is fighting a hard battle” or “You don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, so be kind.”
For whatever reason was really powerful: Assume Nobility.
I love that this phrase puts the power in my hands. I am the one who gets to assume nobility for others. Yes. And I’m going to use this for ourselves as well to assume nobility for myself.
What does assume nobility mean? I think that it means that we believe we choose to believe that other people are acting the best way they know how from their highest possible faculties at the moment.
I Am Trying My Best
Now, I know from personal experience that I often am trying my best. Like very often I’m trying my best. I would probably even go so far, if I give myself the grace that I deserve, to say that I’m always doing my best and that sometimes my best looks different than other times.
I’m doing my best when I get up, when my alarm goes off and I put my shoes on and I go on a run and I listened to a podcast and I come home and I eat a healthy breakfast. I smash homeschool. We do an awesome job and focus the whole time. I get the laundry folded. I get my work done. I connect with my kids. I connect with my husband. We have a great dinner.
Like those banner days, I’m doing my best, absolutely all day long.
And friends, when I snooze and snooze and snooze, and I don’t get out of bed and go on my run. And then I’m a little bit grumpy. And so I eat waffles with tons of syrup, for breakfast to sort of try to feel a little better and be cozy, you know, in the, in the morning? And I kind of say, who cares about homeschool? Or I say, let’s do it! And then I’m kinda mad at everyone because they’re not focused the way that I think that they should be.
Even that 180 of an experience can be me doing my best.
Maybe my best that morning is exactly the way that I’m showing up. Maybe my best, because I’m tired because I’m sad because I’m dealing with, you know, so many things like we all are all the time. Maybe our best is going to be different every day. If it’s that way for me, if I really do my best and my best just happens to look 100%, some days and 20%, some days, then I can do very easily relate to the idea that other people are probably also all doing their best all the time.
Other People Are Doing Their Best, Too
Some days, other people’s best looks pretty bad. It looks like they’re trying to hurt my feelings. It looks like they’re intentionally avoiding me. It looks like they’re pushing my buttons on purpose. And maybe, maybe that’s their very best because of all of the other things that they’re managing and carrying and dealing with as humans on the planet.
For a few minutes, I want to dive into trusting ourselves and then we’ll hop into trusting others. Again, I am not able to give you all of the right answers or a special formula to make all of this perfectly aligned and just easy and happen.
My goal in this podcast and sharing about these ideas is simply invite some reflection in your own life. Invite you to ask yourself the questions. How can I trust myself better? In what ways am I not leaning into my own intuition? And then on the other side, is it possible that those around me are doing their best? Is it possible that I can release my control over micromanaging everyone else’s lives because I can lend them this trust that they are going to make the decisions that they feel are best for themselves? Even if I don’t necessarily agree?
What power there is in that.
Trust Yourself
Okay. So let’s start with trusting myself. The older I get, the wiser I get. The older I get, the more I realized that my most important relationship is the one that I have with myself. My ability to trust myself.
I’m going to (as a woman of faith) say that that feels like a relationship that I also have with my creator, that as I go deep in side to ask questions about what is right for me, what is right for my family? What feels like the best possible life? That’s me going deep inside to where my body connects to my soul and my soul connects to the universe.
And I, in that place from that depth am able to tune in to my highest self, to myself that knows that most things don’t matter.
Most things are tangential to what does really matter most in that is loving myself, loving my family, loving those around me.
That’s really like, Oh man, you get all all the way down there. And you’re like, okay, well, it’s quite simple, actually.
The only thing that really matters is the way that I bring this compassion and this love out of myself and for myself.
We spend so much time and energy surveying the room for the correct answers. I don’t know if you are like me, that sometimes as you’re getting ready to make a choice, you might even Google.
Google knows the answer of what is right for you. In fact, in Glennon Doyle’s recent book Untamed, she actually talks about going to Google one night and typing in “Should I get a divorce?” something like that.
These, these big life questions, we are so trained to find out what everyone else thinks and to care deeply what everyone else thinks that we sometimes never even learn how to go inside for the answers, how to lean into our own inherent divinity, our own inherent understanding of ourselves.
No one else knows you better than you do. And I know sometimes we say that like, Oh, he knows me better than I know myself. If that’s true, it’s only because you aren’t paying attention to yourself. If someone else knows you better than you know yourself, you probably deserve a little bit more self-reflection you probably need to give yourself a little bit more time to get to know yourself.
We are the only ones that inhabit these shells of our own bodies that contain all of our own experiences, all of our own memories, all of our own perspectives, all of our own emotions, all of those hormones that create our existence, that the dopamine hit and the serotonin and oxytocin and all of the good and the bad emotions that rushed through our bodies. We are the only ones that feel them, the way that we feel them. We are the only ones that know what we know and beautifully, incredibly.
We are all unique. We are wired differently. We’re we’re of course so similar as humans and as individuals, we are authentically different. What you love, what matters to you, what feels good to you? What lights you up, what life you want to live when you project your future, the types of experiences and things, and people and relationships and travel and, and homes and belongings and all of those things that what comes out of you is going to be totally unique, totally different than what comes out of someone else and the motivation behind it.
The reasons the, The Why, the hope, the purpose, all of that is also so unique. The ups and the downs and the figuring things out and the not knowing, and then making a decision and realizing it was a mistake. And then going back and making it a different way. And then realizing that you learned something about yourself. All of that is part of the purpose part of the journey.
The Purpose Is The Process
Early on in the podcast years ago, two years ago, I started to say fairly often The Purpose Is The Process. All of the decisions that we make, all of the learning, the experimenting, the figuring it out.
We think that we’re supposed to know everything. We might not know the end right now, but we do certainly know, or at least we can try the next right step. Why don’t we lean in a little bit to what’s happening now and trust ourselves to move forward in the direction that just feels right.
Like a little nudge, a little nudge in one direction or another.
We Move Forward Step By Step
I was interviewed on a podcast recently (that I’ll share with you when it comes out.) I’m not sure exactly when it comes out, but the interviewer, my friend was so interesting. The questions that she asked about my professional journey and it had been a while since I went back and remembered that twists and turns and decision making and the experiences that really led me to where I am now. In 2007, when I started a blog, I had no clear vision.
It was not meant to be a business. So it was not meant to be anything except for kind of a fun hobby to hang out with some of my friends online because I didn’t live nearby them. And I didn’t know, I never, ever in a million years could have predicted exactly what would have come. I went one step at a time, one nudge, one, thought one, following a curiosity.
And I’m by no means at the end of this journey, I always have some little next step happening in the pursuit of progress for the purpose of enjoyment and, and development. Not because I think I’m not whole, or because I think I’m not successful. We can pursue progress for fun. We pursue progress and development because we, we are built to, to continually evolve and learn and grow. I think this matters much more in the big decisions, and it can also guide the small decisions.
In fact, in Live Free From Clutter, my guided intentional living course, the last couple of weeks, we talk a lot about how to set up a personal, intentional living plan or an intentional living guidelines that are personal. Therefore, ourselves, everyone comes out of the program with a totally unique set of sort of pillars so that they can eat more easily live a values driven life.
he everyday decisions about what to eat for lunch or where to shop or whether to shop or who to hang out with those types of things that feel like, “gosh, how do I even, like, how does that even matter that much when we go all the way back to like the only thing that matters is showing up with love?” Those little decisions can also be made from a place of trusting yourself and choosing to really understand your own personal values.
TRUST YOURSELF
So, number one, as I’ve just rambled on about this, I hope that you’re to feel that you already know yourself the best and that rather than always looking outside, I think it’s okay to gather information, to gather opinions, to gather ideas, but make your decisions by going inside and allow yourself a lot of grace and compassion that love showing up with love and compassion and, and benefit of the doubt. And assuming nobility, you do that for yourself, just like you do for others. You, in fact, you have to do that for yourself before you can do it for others.
You have to say, even on a bad day, I am doing the best that I can. And maybe if it’s a really bad day or really bad series of days, then you’re able to recognize my best sure is hurting a lot of people. And in order to trust myself, I might need to ask for some help. I might need to talk to a therapist. I might need to create more time to sleep so that I can do even better as my best, because you recognize that your best isn’t your favorite.
Guess what? You can make some choices that help facilitate trusting yourself, believing that you’re doing a good job, believing that you’re doing your best and giving yourself that grace.
Trust Others
Okay, let’s talk for just a few minutes about trusting others. I want to talk about trusting others to make the best possible decisions for themselves, trusting others, to know themselves, trusting that others are doing their best.
I’m not necessarily talking about breaking down boundaries and giving all of your passwords away or trusting others with secrets, or I’m not talking about trusting others to make the best decision possible for you. I’m talking about trusting others to make the best decision possible for them.
This feels a little bit like kind of a mind flip. We often have a really hard time when other people don’t do the things we think they should do or say the things we think they should say or behave in the way that we think they should behave. Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt frustrated and angry that someone else wasn’t just a little bit different, that they didn’t just make better decisions for you. That the way that they behaved or the way that they made decisions, didn’t take into account your wellbeing or your happiness or your satisfaction or your hunger or whatever the case may be.
I was reading in an article on psychology today, online that was talking about trust issues. And one of the things that mentioned is that you may have trust issues:
You view people with suspicion about their motives.
You assume the worst intentions by others.
That you make all of your interactions about you.
For example, you would say, “How could they do this to me?” rather than understanding that they might not even be taking you into account as they make their decisions, because not all of their decisions will be about you. Just as not all of your decisions are about other people.
Not Everything Is About You
Most of the time, we’re all acting in some type of self-interest. Whether, because we want to actually do the thing or because we want to be known or seen, or even think of ourselves as the type of person who does those sorts of things. When we go really deep into the way that we are choosing to act most of the time, it’s because that’s the way we want to act, right?
Why then would we assume that other people would be making all of their decisions based on how we want them to act rather than on how they want to act? How they want to show up the choices that that feel right for them?
I want to share a couple of examples that might help just, I don’t know, help you think about this, the way that I’ve been thinking about it.
That has really, Oh my gosh. It’s felt so freeing and so delightful to just say, “I’m so glad that other people are taking good care of themselves. Even if I don’t agree with the choices they make.”
I want to believe that they’re doing a good job for themselves. And even if I, they think, “Oh, those decisions might result in unhappiness.” Or if I chose some of the things other people are choosing, I wouldn’t like myself very much, I can still allow other people to make those decisions. I mean, I don’t allow it. I think that I’m allowing it, but they’re actually just making their own decisions based on their own understanding, their own circumstances and belief systems.
It’s really beautiful to trust them to do their best for themselves and to take myself out of the equation and how it affects me a little bit out of the equation.
I’m in no way, suggesting that people, break down your boundaries or that you invite people to do you harm. Of course not. I’m talking about the way that we sometimes judge people for doing things that really have nothing to do with us, because we think that they, they do.
My Dad, The Pilot
Let me give you a couple of examples. One of them is that a year when I was 14-years-old, my mom came home and told us that she was expecting her sixth child.
At this point I had a brother who was in college, my older sister was 16, I was 14, I had a brother who was 12, and then the youngest was nine. There were five of us. We were already a big family. And my mom said, “We’re having a baby.”
Now, that was its own thing. I was thrilled. My older sister was a little frustrated and a little confused. I mean, I don’t know what everyone else felt. I remember thinking, Oh, that’s kind of weird, but cool, great. Now what I want to share is that sometime during that pregnancy, my dad did to take up the hobby of flying. He decided to get his pilot’s license, a private pilot’s license. And also not only did he want to become a pilot, he also wanted to start building airplanes.
This felt kind of out of the blue and while it was really exciting, it was also a little bit weird. Like why is dad in the, in the middle of this pregnancy when we’re all sort of trying to figure out how life is going to look, why is he spending so much time flying airplanes? It had nothing to do with his business and nothing to do with anything really. It seemed very out of the blue. He just decided to become a private pilot and also to start building airplanes.
I remember sometimes feeling frustrated as a teenager that my dad was spending so much time on this hobby that had nothing to do with me. And I can’t even imagine how my mom might’ve felt. I mean, maybe she felt great. Maybe she was super excited about it.
I can only speak for my own personal emotions of having lots of times that I remember thinking, well, that’s kind of cool. And then lots of times that I remember thinking, well, why isn’t he home for dinner? Or why isn’t he, why is he going away for the weekend? When I had something that I wanted to do with him, or I wanted his help with something. And all of a sudden he was doing other things, he was doing this, this particular hobby. I wonder if any of you can relate.
If you have someone in your life that makes the decision to spend a lot of time, energy effort, maybe money, investment on something that they really love for no apparent reason. And you don’t really understand what’s going on or why. And all that you can feel is that, that hobby or that decision, that time and investment and energy that they’re spending is taking something away from you. Does anyone has ever been felt that way?
It’s so interesting too, to gain the perspective that that person might be making the very best decision for them. And it might not have a whole lot to do with you and rather than so, so think of it from the one way you think about how frustrated and annoyed you are, that this person is doing something that’s taking so much away from you. And on the other hand, when you have this perspective of, wow, they’re really leaning into their own intuition and following their own dreams and doing something that they love and that’s lighting them up.
And I have no idea why, but I can assume that this is something that they want to do. I can trust that they are doing the very best that they can for themselves. And that, that doesn’t have to take anything away from me. In fact, it can, I can use it as inspiration. I can admire it. I can use it as an example. I think it’s so inspiring to be able to, at any point, decide that you have something new, you want to learn and to go and learn it and to go and do it. And it’s okay that I don’t understand because I don’t have to, I don’t have to choose what other people do with their time and their energy.
I can trust that they’re, that they’re doing a really good job for themselves.
Now I have to just round that story out with a sharing that my dad has now been a private pilot for over 20 years, he has built multiple small aircraft. He absolutely loves aviation. He lives it and breathes it. His decision to pursue the hobby of aviation has been something that has enlivened and enriched his life for now two decades.
And I imagine it’s what he’s going to spend the majority of his retirement doing. He’s currently in the middle of building another airplane. I’m trying to count. I think this might be his fourth that he’s built and he doesn’t. He builds them. And then he sells them, like flies them for a while.
Some of them, he keeps, but he has one right now that he’s in the middle of, and I’ll get a random group text, like in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday that shows that the most recent progress of this part is done. Or we just finished soldering this, or we got all of the, the wiring done and he loves it. And I am able to now, and in the last, you know, 10 years just feel like this is so great for him. I’m so happy that he has something that he loves so much.
And I love to hear about it. And I love to see what he’s up to. And rather than feeling like it has anything to do with me or take anything away from me, it’s so fun for him. And that feels so much better.
Dave’s Transition Time
I want to share another couple examples of trusting others to make the best decisions for themselves and how relieving that can be. There was a time and still occasionally — I’m actively working on this. These are all things that are ongoing, right? We’re, we’re continually getting better at the pursuit of the, kind of our baseline way that we want to act, right. And the way that we want to feel. So I’m much better at this judgment. And I’m much better at trusting than I, than I was years ago.
I sometimes when Dave comes home from work, he will have a transition period where he’ll like, go upstairs and change his clothes and then just be gone for awhile.
And I’ve most, mostly have been home for the day. You know, the last couple of years I would be home and maybe working and the kids would be at school or something. But these days right now, like I’m at home, full on at home with the kids almost nonstop. And so when he gets home, I kind of want to pass the baton.
If not physically (like I don’t usually leave when he gets home) sometimes emotionally I’m ready to pass the baton. Or like a little bit responsibility wise, I’m ready to pass the baton.
And sometimes I have sort of wanted to micromanage what his transition time looked like. Like he gets home and he usually wants to change his clothes. Maybe have something to eat or have a drink of water. Maybe he wants to just lay down on the couch for awhile and like watch some news or watch some sports or catch up on Twitter. He has the same need for decompression and for sort of relaxing that I do that anyone does.
However, sometimes in the past, my inclination has been to feel frustrated that he didn’t jump in to what I thought he should be doing the way I thought he should be acting.
Which is maybe the unrealistic idea of dropping everything and taking over, making dinner and gathering up all the kids and making sure that they’re doing all the things they need to do so that I can go sit on the couch.
Now here’s the thing, friends. I can go sit on the couch.
I can go upstairs and take a rest. I can decide to not make dinner or that we’re having cereal or all of those decisions about how I act I am free to do at any time, the way that he’s acting doesn’t need to change the way that I choose to act yet. Sometimes I take a cue from, well, he’s going to be resting, that means I need to be on.
Rather than “Maybe we should both rest?” Maybe him coming home and saying, I’m going to take 20 minutes to just like vege and transition out of work mode. Maybe that’s a good time for me to say, “Okay, kids, you’re on your own for a little bit. I’m going to go vege with dad and we’re going to reconnect. And we’re both going to catch up on Twitter. And we’re both going to just relax together.”
Now, the thing that I’ve been working on and the way that I frame this is: believing in Dave. I believe that he is a fully developed, smart, intuitive, generous, and compassionate person who can make really good decisions. I trust that my sweet husband knows what’s best for himself, that he can make really good decisions for himself. And they might not always look like the decisions I would make from the outside when what I’m actually thinking about is myself, not him.
Does this make sense?
I think you’re probably relating to this idea that a lot of times when we want to change people, it’s because they’re not doing the things we wish they would do to affect our lives. Instead, they’re making the decisions that work really well for their lives. And there’s something really honorable and noble about that.
We can believe in other people’s ability to choose for themselves the way that they want to act the way they want to behave in the world. Especially if they’re adults, especially if there are spouses or partners or our friends or our coworkers, we can trust that those people are doing their very best with all of the understanding, all of the circumstances and all of the experience that they have. And I’m going to venture that most of the time, it’s going to be a little different than the way you think you would act if you were them considering yourself.
It has been really powerful for me to just acknowledge that I want to trust other people with their lives. That means that I don’t have to worry so much about what other people are doing all the time, how they’re acting, how their choices even affect me because their lives are not all about me. My life is about me.
Jody Moore also said this interesting thing the other day, that “resentment shows up when we aren’t meeting our own needs”. Resentment is what happens when we don’t meet our needs. Oftentimes we resent other people for not meeting our needs, but that’s not the way that this works. Resentment actually shows up when we aren’t meeting our needs.
When we have not trusted ourselves enough to say, I need some space. So I’m going to create that space. I need to sleep in today. So I’m going to sleep in today and I’m not going to martyr for the fact that someone else hasn’t provided me the opportunity. I have control over my decisions.
And I am the very best equipped person to meet my own needs. I want to share one more example. These are all personal examples. I haven’t asked my family members, so hopefully they’re okay with me sharing my thoughts and feelings about them on the show today.
I Want My Kids To Trust Themselves
So this one it has to do with one of my kids or just my children in general. I don’t have to make a specific example. I can think of lots of times, even just like this morning that my kids didn’t make the decision that I wanted them to make.
This could be that I asked one of my children, maybe 16 times to finish unloading the dishwasher, which is a common thing around our house. My kids know they, they unload and load the dishwasher. We have a chart, they can check it. It’s really easy. And most of the time, there’s not a whole lot of problems. You know, people just do it.
And for whatever reason today I was reminding and reminding and reminding, and I didn’t really get frustrated about it. I more just thought, “Oh, this is so interesting that he is very much doing what he wants to do rather than what I want him to do. And that’s okay.” You know, there are some boundaries and there are some consequences and, and all of those things are also okay, so you, you don’t load the dishwasher, then you don’t get to use the screen during learning screen time leader until it’s loaded.
So maybe you are going to spend a little bit more time, you know, bopping around the house when you really want to settle down and watch National Geographic. Instead, you’re going to be either loading the dishwasher or staring at the wall, but rather than being frustrated and upset and mad about it because of how it affects me, because I want, I want it to be done so that I can get over it. I want it to be done so we can move on. I want it to be done so that my day is easier.
Maybe it’s okay for my kids to make the choices that they’re going to make. And I get to manage myself around that. I can stay calm. I can stay in love and in peace, regardless of the choices that they’re making. And in fact, I want to believe that my kids are always going to make the right choices for them and guaranteed sometimes the choices that they think are right for them are not going to be the same as the choices that I think are right for them.
And while they’re young, while they are kids, this is definitely a formative time that we’re teaching them and we’re helping them learn principles and values.
More than anything, I want my kids to grow up, understanding what they love, who they are and how to trust themselves.
If all I do is tell them all the time what to do, and if they don’t do it, then I do it for them. And I make up for all the difference. Then instead of raising children who have learned how to believe in and trust themselves and make good decisions that aligned with their personal values and the people they are, I will simply create an another person who doesn’t know where to go for the answers that looks to everyone else to make them happy, or to make choices for them, or to make them feel that the way that they want to feel rather than knowing that all of that power exists inside of them.
I’m going to share a lot more about this in an upcoming episode, because I loved the book, The Self-Driven Child. I think there’s a lot in there to unpack that relates not only to the kids and, and gosh, how incredibly powerful it is to teach kids about their own power. Also, there’s so much in there for parents, for adults, and some of the things we are talking about today, this idea of releasing the need to control what everyone else does in order for you to feel better trusting that other people are going to make the best decisions that they can with what they have. And it might not be what you would choose, but that’s okay. You can trust them.
Anyway, Ernest Hemingway once said “The best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them.” I think that that’s a good place to close today.
Trust Yourself, Trust Others Conclusion
I hope that in reflecting on the topics of trusting yourself and trusting others today, that you have felt empowered in your ability to create your own experience by choosing what you can choose for you going inside for those answers to the questions and decisions that you have. And also by allowing and just embracing the idea that others are going to choose what’s best for them. And sometimes that will be for your benefit. And sometimes it won’t. Either way let’s celebrate, trusting other people and releasing the need that we might otherwise feel to make decisions for them or to make them choose differently. It’s so relieving. And so empowering to say, you’ve got this, you’ve got this, I’ve got this. And you’ve got this.
Okay, friends. If I were to sum up the entire episode in just 30 seconds, I would say: You are doing your very best and it’s really good. And some days it’s not so good, but it’s still your best. And it’s okay. And everyone around you is doing their very best. And some days it’s really good. And some days it’s terrible. And regardless it’s their very best. And it’s okay.
Let’s give ourselves a little bit more grace and compassion and trust ourselves, ask ourselves first before we ask anyone else, what’s right for us. And let’s give others so much compassion and love them and trust them to make good decisions, even when we don’t understand. And even when we think it might negatively affect us, believe that people are doing their best and they’re doing their best for them. That is something to be celebrated.
I am so grateful for you showing up here every week. I hope that these episodes uplift, inspire and help you on your journey to living a little bit more creative, adventurous, and intentional lifestyle. Would you do me a quick favor? Would you share this episode or any other of your favorite episodes on social media or text it to a friend? Your personal recommendation makes a huge impact. And I would love for as many people as possible to join us here. Have a great one. I’ll talk to you later. Bye. Bye.
