How to Regain Self-Trust

Reader Q&A, Part 1

Photo by Colin redwood on Unsplash

Reader Question:

How do you regain self-trust if your discernment has frequently led you to decisions that had bad outcomes?

I’m going to answer this question in two parts. This week, we’ll talk about some of the practical things that can be done to help regain self-trust; next week we’ll talk about a lightbulb moment insight I had about what really makes a good decision, and how that understanding helped move the needle on my confidence re-building in a big way. (If this topic interests you, you might want to join as a paid subscriber - only £5/month right now.)

Gosh, this is a question really close to my heart because I spent years wrestling with it. I had been trying to do the right thing! I was so sure in that “you just know” kind of way that people mysteriously talk about. I had that confidence! I just knew! And, I was wrong. So very wrong.

How am I now confident in making decisions? 

Well, there are a lot of ways to answer this question, and none of those answers can fully encompass the healing work of the Holy Spirit, nor capture the years of angst and fear that I lived through in trying to re-establish my confidence. I trusted God, but I sure didn’t trust myself or my ability to listen well, and it took a long time and a lot of experience to get back to stable ground. 

Think of learning to trust yourself like learning to walk again after a debilitating accident: there’s no one thing that is the thing. Instead, healing involves a plethora of things: giving your body time; gently helping to establish brain-muscle connections; often painful exercises; grit and determination and mindset shifts; many tears; good nutrition; useful medications; and lots of support from others. 

So, when you trust God, but don’t trust yourself because of the bad outcomes of your previous decisions, what do you do?

Pray

Start with prayer, always. Be really honest with God about all the ways you think you messed up (or didn’t mess up); your frustration at all the terrible things that happened (or the good things that didn’t happen); your anger at other people, at circumstances, and maybe even at Him, for letting things happen as they did.

Prayer is conversation with God, and if the Psalms teach us anything, it’s that God can handle the full range of human emotion. He’s not afraid of it, and He is not overwhelmed or annoyed by you.

Pray outloud, pray in your heart, pray with your journal or your art brush or your guitar strings or your running shoes, but do pray, and pray honestly. Pray regularly. Pray conversationally: ask God what was going on. He might be silent, but that silence isn’t the cold shoulder. It’s an invitation to more.