One of the biggest obstacles to having the life you want and deserve is your lack of self-trust. Call it intuition, your gut, or confidence, but the ability to deeply trust your own decisions, feelings and beliefs is the key to living a full and authentic life.

Self-doubt is corrosive to your happiness and fulfillment. It will eat away at your dreams and fantasies until you find yourself paralyzed and unable to get what you really desire.

Self-doubt can be both insidious and sudden. The loss can happen incrementally over the life span as you learn how to have this relationship with yourself through interactions with others, or it can be ripped out of you by deception and betrayal.

It only takes a few disheartening experiences or critical remarks for you to develop the inability to trust your own thoughts, feelings, capability and voice.

You may have been taught that in order to trust others you have to trust yourself. While this is true, that’s not how your story of self-trust began. As a baby you had to fully trust others to keep you alive. Then you developed trust in yourself (or not) as you grew to realize that you actually have the ability to influence your environment. That level of self-trust was completely dependent on how much you could trust others.

Self-trust takes shape when you feel or “intuit” something about yourself, others or the world. Then the next natural step is to receive validation from the external environment as to whether you’re knowledge or experience is accurate. If you’re challenged in your thinking or feeling, you will do one of two things:

1. Question yourself
2. Question the other

When you were small the natural inclination would have been to question yourself because you were dealing with people that were (supposed to be) wiser and stronger.

In a healthy and adaptive environment you would have been challenged, but also validated for having your own thoughts and ideas even if they were wrong. In a toxic environment you would have been made to feel “stupid”, “wrong” or even “crazy”, which in turn would make you doubt your own ability to “know” on both a practical and intuitive level.

In the adult world your self trust will become challenged when you have been blatantly lied to or betrayed. This is particularly true when the deceiving party won’t admit to their dishonesty leaving you wondering about what you “know”. It’s the ultimate maddening dilemma of “what’s real?”

Establishing or rebuilding self-trust, like most other personal development skills is a practice. It requires risking being wrong, imperfect, and flawed. In order to (re)build trust in yourself you have to be willing to make mistakes and trust that it will all work out.

Self-trust also comes from challenging what you don’t believe. If you question something, or if your intuition is not aligned with what you’re being told, you need to inquire. Shrinking away and not using your voice to get answers is a tell tale sign of eroded self-trust. “They must be right” or “I don’t’ want to be difficult” are not acceptable responses.

Overall, listen to yourself and trust what you hear. Start asking the one person you can believe in for the most important answers…you.

 You learn more about someone at the end of a relationship than you do in the beginning. 

What is my intention for being in this relationship right now?

Can I speak openly and honestly about both my positive and negative feelings or do I hide them or suppress them?

Can I easily make a repair and forgive after I’ve been hurt or do I go silent and hold a grudge?

Am I able to take in a different perspective on something even if I think I’m right or is it essential that my partner ultimately agree with me?

Am I willing to listen non-defensively when I feel hurt and angry?

Do I understand what I need to feel loved in a relationship and do I realize that my partner might feel love in a different way than I do?

Can I honor and trust my intuition when something feels off or uncomfortable or do I override my self-trust to make my partner feel comfortable?

Do I put myself first in the relationship?

Do I show my partner the same courtesy I would show others?

Do I expect a return on all of my investments or can I give without expectation of receiving a similar or equal gesture?

Am I capable of nurturing and taking care of myself without feeling guilty or selfish?

Are my expectations of my partner realistic or are they based on my own standards of what I expect of myself?

Do I feel like I have unresolved issues that might get in the way of this relationship and its health?

Who are my relationship role models and are they positive or negative?

Am I content being alone and doing things by myself?

Do I make the time to give my relationship the time and attention it needs to thrive and grow?

Am I complete without my partner?

How well do I tolerate being alone or doing things alone?

Do I feel responsible for my partner’s happiness?

Do I know what’s most important to my partner in our relationship?

Happiness is the new self-help drug.

We all want it, strive for it, and feel depressed when we don’t feel it. I know I have watched happiness slip through my fingers time and again leaving me feeling frustrated and ineffective for not being able to sustain it.

Not unlike love, happiness eludes and changes form as soon as we think we’ve got a sense of what it is.

As you know from most of my previous writing or through working with me that I am highly focused and passionate about generating a sense of meaning in life as opposed to happiness.

I have found both personally and professionally that happiness is not sustainable, and that the suffering that comes from the search for happiness outweighs the pleasure it offers when found.

While I appreciate the extensive research being done on the topic of happiness in the field of psychology, it can sometimes feel like happiness has become the dangling carrot in the maze of self-fulfillment.

In your own life you have probably come to believe that if you aren’t happy then your unhappy. This is a dangerous form of black and white thinking that leaves you wondering why you can’t get on the happiness train that everyone else seems to be on.

What you are calling unhappy may either be dissatisfaction with current circumstances, or more shockingly contentment.

The bar of what we expect to feel on a day to day basis has risen so high that we don’t even know what it feels like to just be satisfied with what we have.

Here are some of the ways I suggest you begin to relate to your own happiness:

Pursue happiness as an ongoing goal, but focus on the things that bring you meaning along with the happiness.

When you do have moments or periods of happiness, don’t cling to it. Observe it and note it like you would any other state of feeling that passes through.

Avoid attaching any particular situation or event to your happiness. Happiness with condition is even more elusive than happiness as a permanent state of being.

Connect your happiness with your heart. Think of it as energy that flows between you and the world.

Your happiness is not a measure of your self-worth. It has been connected to a greater sense of wellbeing, but being happy doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone else

One of the most important reminders about happiness that you will want to hang on to is that no one can MAKE you happy.

You may feel happier when you are with certain people, but this is more a result of the connection and meaning you are experiencing.

When you attach your happiness to others in this way you end up blaming others or the world for your unhappiness.

Think of happiness as your fair weather friend. Drop expectation, and be grateful when she visits so you can enjoy her company before she disappears once again.

If you’re not dependent on happiness, you won’t feel lost without it, and you’ll come to realize that what you have been experiencing as “unhappiness” is actually life.