You Gotta Trust You
It was a busy day and I had been going full-steam for a while. A part of me was asking for a break. I stared at my markers and then quickly, redirected my eyes back at the screen while a list of unanswered emails and other tasks demanded my attention.
I felt the pull again, this time to get up and walk around for a bit. “Nope,” I told myself, “Stay focused.” I pushed through for hours longer until, I crashed, tired and burnt to a crisp.
This used to be my story. It was perpetuated by me telling myself one thing that felt really true:
“If I stop, I won’t start again.”
What lies below such a simple statement is the complicated matter of trusting oneself.
As creatives and artists, our self-trust has been eroded for many reasons. Somewhere along the line, we learned that our non-linear way of thinking and doing doesn’t fit into our schools and workplaces. We learned that our ideas are “not practical” and how we want to spend our time is “not valuable.” We learned to prioritize what is easily demonstrated as “practical” and “valuable” and leave our passions to the leftover moments, if there are some.
In other words, we have lost trust in our innate way of being and doing things in the world.
A while ago, I decided I wanted to trust myself and my way of doing things. I decided it was time to rewrite my story. Now it goes more like this:
It was a busy day and I had been going full-steam for a while. A part of me was asking for a break. I stared at my markers and grabbed my little sketchbook. I let myself enjoy drawing and coloring for awhile as I felt my body relax and my mind wander to interesting new places. I felt reconnected to myself and my inspiration and felt a new wave of energy when I returned to the tasks on my screen.
It was a process to rewrite that story and, although I have made a lot of progress, I’m still in that process. I find it requires four P’s:
Pause: When you feel yourself wanting to do something other than what you think you “should” be doing, simply pause for a moment and check-in to see what is really true for you. Every time you do this, you tell yourself that you can listen to yourself!
Play and Practice: Take a few risks. Start off small and simple. For me, that looked like letting myself doodle for 5 minutes. Every time I doodled and returned to my other work afterwards, I told myself that I can trust myself to nurture myself with both work and play.
Patience: Undoing old stories about ourselves takes time. The beginning is often the hardest part, and then you start to see your self-trust build on itself exponentially. When you are patient with yourself, you tell yourself that you believe in your ability to change and do what is best for you!
☆★ Creative Challenge ★☆ Identify an aspect of your life that could use more self-trust and doodle what it could look like if you learned to trust yourself more. What will help you to practice self-trust?