The trust issues

Trust can be defined as the firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of something or someone.

Trusting yourself (your body, your judgement, your choices, your intuition…) brings serenity and ease. I believe, if you chose to trust yourself, you have to let go of the repeated questioning and ruminating. And that can be scary, but oh so liberating.

In order to trust we have to dare to let go of security and embrace the chance of getting disappointed. I think, it’s impossible to feel the ease of trust without committing to, maybe even embracing the chance of different and unforeseeable outcomes of your choices.

There are multiple dimensions of trusting yourself. But there are two elements, I want to dive deeper into, the one of trusting your body and the one of trusting your intuition/choices.

1. Trust your body

Whenever I've gotten / felt a minor injury / pain / discomfort somewhere in my body, I’ve gone straight into panic-mode. In these situations I've caught myself thinking "well Evelina, this is it, now you won't ever recover. You’ll live a miserable life or even die". That happened countless times, my mind started spinning (and did not stop so easily) and I drained myself of all my energy by worrying. It was an automatic reaction, that I thankfully got aware of. I came to the conclusion for myself, that this pattern of thinking / reacting might be rooted in the loss of my mother, that died of cancer when I was very young. With the loss of my mother to this sickness, I somehow lost the trust in my own body and especially its ability to heal. And I know I'm certainly not alone with this lack of trust.

I think getting aware of a pattern like that is the first step forward again. From there I could figure out, what you can consciously do in order to change it. How to “counteract it”, not allowing it to consume you in a negative way.

Yoga and especially my asana practice (physical part of yoga) has helped me A LOT to build more trust in my body: By moving my body consciously, connecting movement and breath, strengthening my body and generally being more gentle and patient with it.

As mentioned, being aware of this particular thinking pattern, allows me to actively counteract my minds panicky thoughts in situations where my body seems to permanently "fail me". In these situations I remind myself on the one hand of my body's strength and on the other hand of the countless times I recovered, proving the strength of my body and trusting that it will all be OK.

2. Trust your (life) choices/intuition

I remember a conversation with a friend about why we sometimes choose to rather rely on other peoples advices more than to ultimately listen to ourselves, when it comes down to make certain decisions. Maybe because then we can supposedly blame someone else, if the decision was "wrong" in hindsight? Maybe we care too much, what other people think about our decisions and how we choose to live?

I don’t know why we do that. And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with taking advice from others - on the contrary. I think it’s important to get all the support/help you need. But when it comes down to certain life choices, I think ultimately, it's up to yourself to make the best decision. It’s you, that has the full overview of how a decision will impact your life, how it will make you feel and it’s only you, that knows what you really want.

So I’m here to encourage you to trust your intuition – remember, you are the ultimate expert on what is best for you.