Welcome, everyone. I'm Kim Christiansen, and this is the Peaceful Productivity Podcast, where I share strategies to help you get the most out of your time and feel better in the process.
Welcome back to the Peaceful Productivity Podcast, where I help you unlock your full potential, achieve your goals, and feel better in the process. Today, we have an important topic to dive into. It is developing the skill of self trust. Building self trust is essential for entrepreneurs and business professionals because building a business requires confidence, decisiveness, and the ability to take calculated risks.
In the fast paced and ever changing business world, now changing more than ever, being able to trust your judgment and your instincts is so important. Self trust empowers you to make decisions without constantly seeking validation from others, which leads to more efficient and effective choices.
Also, self trust fosters resilience. The entrepreneurial and business landscape is filled with challenges, setbacks, and failures. When you trust yourself, You develop that inner strength that's required to bounce back from these obstacles, not only bounce back, but actually learn from them and keep moving forward. As I move through my business, I find that to be the most important skill is to not just Recover from the setbacks, but also to look back and learn from them objectively and fuel my progress and keep moving forward.
So this resilience is essential for overcoming adversity and sustaining long term success. Moreover, self trust enables you to take calculated risks. Entrepreneurship often involves stepping into the unknown. Embracing uncertainty and making bold moves. When you trust yourself, you're more likely to have the confidence to take risks, seize the opportunities when they come about, and be decisive, exploring new avenues for growth and innovation, not seeking the comfort of the comfort zone.
Self trust fosters authenticity and credibility. So important in business. In the business world, building relationships and establishing trust with clients, partners, and stakeholders is critical. When you trust yourself, you project an authentic and confident image, which in turn enhances your credibility and attracts others to working with you.
Another significant benefit of self trust is improved self management, entrepreneurship, and business professionals. We often face demanding schedules, high levels of stress, and multiple responsibilities. We're wearing so many different hats. When you trust yourself, you have a stronger sense of self discipline, focus, and the ability to look ahead, to manage your time and your priorities effectively.
Lastly, self trust nurtures well being and fulfillment.
Whether you're in entrepreneurship or an employment situation, it can be demanding and it can be all consuming. However, when you trust yourself, you create a healthy work life balance. You prioritize self care. You make your decisions from a place of self care and you ensure that your actions line up with your values and your purpose.
This approach to success then promotes overall wellbeing and a sense of fulfillment in your professional journey. So building self trust is essential for entrepreneurs and business professionals. It empowers you to make confident decisions, fosters resilience, enables risk taking, enhances your leadership effectiveness, cultivates authenticity and credibility, improves self management, fuels personal growth, and nurtures your well being. By investing in self trust, you set up a solid foundation for success and fulfillment in your entrepreneurial and professional pursuits. Without self trust, these essential qualities may be compromised. How do you know when you could benefit from developing the skill of self trust?
Well, what I've noticed for myself and others is that when you're lacking that skill of trusting yourself, you may find yourself second guessing your decisions. When you second guess your decisions, you're spending a lot of time sort of analyzing analysis, paralysis almost, and you can miss out on opportunities. You can delay in taking action and overall there might be slower progress in building your business. Without self trust, you might struggle to set and pursue ambitious goals because the fear of failure or a lack of belief in your own capabilities can lead you to playing safe, playing small, setting small, safe, mediocre goals that don't really challenge or push you to grow.
This can ultimately hinder your business's potential as well and limit your longterm success. Another consequence of lacking self trust is difficulty in overcoming obstacles and setbacks. You might start to doubt your ability to navigate obstacles effectively. This can impact your overall level of resilience, and it makes it harder to bounce back from failures and adapt to those changing circumstances.
So, as a result, your business may struggle to overcome hurdles and sustain growth. Without self trust, it can be challenging to trust others, which then makes it harder to build relationships and partnerships. It makes it really difficult to reach out for help or delegate. Trust is the foundation of strong business connections.
And if you don't trust yourself, others might find it difficult to trust you as well. Building a network of supporters, collaborators. And customers becomes more challenging when your own self trust is lacking. Furthermore, a lack of self trust can hinder your ability to make confident and strategic decisions. You might find yourself relying heavily on others opinions. You might find yourself signing up for another certification and really hesitating to take ownership of your own choices. This can lead to fragmented decision making, which again, slows down progress and potentially compromises the success of your business.
Lastly, without self trust, you may struggle to persevere during tough times. Building a business often involves facing uncertainty, it involves rejection, and it involves setbacks. Without a strong belief in yourself and your abilities, it becomes more challenging to maintain motivation and keep pushing forward in the face of adversity.
So, first of all, what is self trust? Let's start by just defining it. The way that I look at self trust is it's the belief in our ability to make sound decisions and then follow through on them. Self trust empowers us to rely on our instincts and judgment when faced with uncertainty. To take action, even when the results aren't guaranteed, and then to support ourselves through that process and through the results of that decision.
Without self trust, we might be still making decisions, but we might not be supporting ourselves through the results of those decisions. In fact, we might actually be beating up on ourselves for those decisions that don't play out the way that we expected them to. So, that's what can lead us to be less inclined to make another decision in the future is because we didn't necessarily have our own backs when the results of the decision didn't play out the way that we expected them to.
The way this can sound is something like in our own brains saying, you know, I knew I shouldn't have done that, or I never can get this right, or this isn't working, or why did I even bother? All of that type of self talk is really our way of, beating up on ourselves for the results of a decision that didn't go the way we expected.
And then when we're beating up on ourselves for our decisions, of course that then triggers that cycle where we start to be less inclined to make decisions. We start second guessing ourselves, etc, etc. So, how do we start going about building the skill of self trust? Well, I think the first thing to remember is that self trust is something that can be developed and strengthened over time. It's interesting. I think some of us believe that self trust is something that we either have or we don't have. I like to believe that self trust is like a muscle and it gets stronger the more we exercise it. When I remind myself of this, Then I'm more inclined to take some calculated risks and look for opportunities to practice self trust.
It reminds me of the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, where she talks about when we believe that we're either born with traits or that we don't have them, then that results in a fixed mindset where we're less likely to pursue growth opportunities because in the back of our minds, we're thinking there's really no point.
Whereas, when we adopt more of a growth mindset, where we believe that these things can be developed over time, then we're more willing to put ourselves out there and to experiment a little bit. When we're building any skill, whether it's playing an instrument, learning a new language, mastering a sport, trial and error is an integral part of that process.
And the same holds true for building self trust. Like any skill, building self trust involves a learning curve. It begins with acknowledging your current level and understanding that growth takes time. It's essential to embrace the learning process and be patient with yourself, give yourself grace as you navigate through this trial and error.
Building self trust requires a lot of experimentation. You can try lots of different techniques, approaches, and strategies, and I'm going to offer some to you today in this podcast. And ultimately, trial and error, experimenting, that's what's going to help you to find what works best for you. You will learn what motivates you, what helps you to bounce back from setbacks, and what helps you to foster that positive self belief.
You will also get the opportunity to develop the skill of learning from mistakes. Mistakes are a valuable learning opportunity. They provide us feedback on what went wrong and how to improve. And it goes the same for self trust, it requires acknowledging and learning from your mistakes instead of beating yourself up.
Each setback, each misstep allows you to reflect, gain insights, and adjust your approach, ultimately strengthening your self trust. And just like building any other skill, persistence. And in building self trust is vital. It requires perseverance. You must persistently work on reframing limiting beliefs, setting realistic goals, and taking steps towards your dreams.
By persisting through challenges and setbacks, you can cultivate resilience and reinforce your self trust. So, in summary, building self trust is like building any other skill. It involves embracing the learning curve, experimenting with different approaches, learning from mistakes, and persisting through challenges and seeking guidance.
Like any other skill, it requires time and effort, so being patient through that process of trial and error, and even having some fun with it, too. I think when we talk about subjects like self trust, it can feel so serious and heavy, when in fact, it's about taking joy in the process of building any new skill. Whether it's the skill of building a business, building the self trust muscle or anything. It's not just getting through it to get through it. It's finding the fun in the process as well. Okay, let's dive in and talk about how we can cultivate this valuable trait of self trust. I like to break it down into four steps that we can take.
So the first one is around setting expectations. The second one is follow through. The third one is making mistakes. And the fourth one is evaluation and reflection. So the first strategy for developing self trust is to set realistic expectations. When you set achievable goals and deadlines, you create opportunities for success and building confidence in your abilities.
This does require you to recognize those accomplishments along the way. So often what I see ourselves doing is we get so focused on the next milestone that we forget to give ourselves credit and recognition for the things that we have done. We start focusing on what we haven't done and forget to focus and give ourselves credit for what we have done.
Something that can help in this regard. Is to start small and then gradually increase the difficulty of the tasks over time. Don't forget to celebrate your victories along the way. Each small win that you celebrate and recognize reinforces your trust in yourself. It's such a key step that's often overlooked in the process of building self trust.
The next strategy is to keep promises to yourself. I often see us slipping into this mindset where we treat the commitments that we make to others as a higher priority than those commitments that we make to ourselves. So the idea here is to treat those commitments that you make to yourself as seriously as a meeting with somebody else.
Consistently following through on your commitments helps you to build integrity and strengthen that self trust muscle. Again, starting with small manageable goals and then holding yourself accountable to them will help you to develop a track record of reliability and earn your own trust over time. Now, this doesn't happen overnight.
What I'm inclined to do is I'll set up a schedule for myself for the next day. And then when it goes sideways, I throw it all out. Having these expectations that I should have managed to do it all in a single 24 hour period. So again, start small and give yourself grace when things don't always go as expected. Another powerful technique to foster self trust is to embrace self compassion. Treating yourself with kindness and understanding, especially during the challenging times, makes all of the difference. Remember, everyone makes mistakes and faces setbacks. So, instead of dwelling on the failures, focus on the learning and the growth.
By being gentle with yourself, you'll foster resilience and you'll maintain trust. You'll be more inclined to put yourself out there the next time and you'll start to become more confident in your ability to overcome obstacles. The next strategy revolves around self awareness. It can be so important to understand your strengths, your weaknesses, and your values because those are key to making decisions that are aligned with your authentic self.
Regularly reflecting on your experiences and emotions, seeking to understand what drives your actions can help you to make more conscious and intentional decisions. And ultimately, that's what time management is all about. It's about developing that relationship with yourself so that when you are making decisions, they are conscious and they are intentional.
I want to spend a little bit of extra time on this podcast on something that I find really helpful in terms of planning, executing, and following through on my plans, and that is anticipating obstacles. What I like to do is I like to not only create a plan with small, manageable steps in it, but I like to also identify any potential obstacles in advance.
I'll give you a few examples. What I know about myself is that when I create a plan for myself, when the time comes to actually execute on that plan, what my brain will offer me is some variation of the thought, I don't have time. Another obstacle that I often run up against is telling myself that I don't have everything I need to get started.
For example, I had planned to go for a run and I don't have the gear I need to go for the run. That's another example of an obstacle thought that my brain offers me. Other examples of obstacles are interruptions. Or, perhaps, circumstances change, the market changes, there's an economic downturn. Other examples of obstacles are telling myself that it's a waste of time, it's not worth it. Also, making mistakes. and beating up on myself for those mistakes. These are all examples of obstacles that I can anticipate in advance. And when I anticipate them, I can also create a little bit of a contingency plan for how I want to deal with those obstacles. So in the example where I might be telling myself that I don't have enough time, what I like to do is I like to create my plan from a place of sufficiency.
I give myself sufficient time and space and breaks, and I don't expect myself to go from meeting to meeting, to task to task. I actually create the overall plan from a place of sufficiency and self care rather than from that taskmaster type of perspective. And when I do that, then I don't run up against this thought that I don't have enough time, or when it does come up, I remind myself that I've given myself enough time and what that allows for is it allows me to take more ownership over my decisions, but it also, it puts me in a place of empowerment. Because it helps me to remember that I'm ultimately in charge of the decisions around my schedule. I get to decide what I'm going to do and what kind of breaks in schedule that I'm going to give myself.
We can so often fall into this space of feeling at the whim of our schedule, feeling at the effect of our boss or our customer. that we lose sight of the fact that ultimately we still have the decision. We have the power over what we are going to do and what we're not going to do. So anticipating obstacles in advance equips me to feel like I have the tools to deal with those obstacles if and when they arrive in the moment.
It ultimately helps me to be a little bit more proactive. And a little bit more responsive rather than reacting from whatever emotion might come up in the moment. I could do a whole another podcast episode on making mistakes and actually, in fact, I think I will. So suffice it to say that for the purposes of this podcast, I like to reframe mistakes as learning opportunities.
I think we know this in theory, in concept. However, in practice, when a mistake actually happens, we can lose sight of the fact that there are things to be gained from the mistake because we're so focused on how we're feeling in that moment, whether it be embarrassment or guilt or even shame. If you need any help with this at all, I invite you to check out my website, financialwellnesscoach.ca for free coaching opportunities. The beautiful thing about a business coach is that I can provide you with an objective perspective. I have a thought model that I use in my coaching practice that allows us to differentiate what we're thinking and feeling from the actual facts of the situation and then using and channeling those thoughts and feelings to fuel productive action to help us to move forward.
And a way that's effective for our business and helps us to get the results that we're looking for in a more accelerated format than just through trial and error alone. A business coach can help you to create a solid plan of action. They can serve as an accountability partner. They can provide ongoing support and motivation.
And ultimately a business coach can have a profound impact on your ability to develop the skill of self trust because they can support you in creating the plan, following the plan, and recognizing your milestones along the way. They challenge limiting beliefs, limiting beliefs that we might actually be holding in our blind spots.
We might not even be recognizing that we have these limiting beliefs until they're identified in conversation with our business coach. So a business coach can help streamline your efforts. I noticed when I hired my first business coach, things that had taken me so long to figure out on my own started taking me half the time, which was so important, not just because the business coach had expertise, but also because I had a sounding board.
Someone to offer an alternative perspective and help me to make decisions that started to move me forward in a more effective way. Rather than spinning around, testing and trialing things that take so much longer just on your own. Building and having a support network around you, especially through the early stages of entrepreneurship, can make all of the difference in terms of giving you the capacity and space and self belief to work on self trust.
So what I'll leave you with today is the reminder that building self trust is a gradual process. It requires patience and consistent effort, but as you develop this essential trait, you'll start to experience increased productivity, increased confidence, and a sense of empowerment. Thanks everyone for tuning in and I hope you have an amazing week.
Take care. Speaking of self trust, there's one last thing that I have to share with you and that is a special webinar that I am offering this Thursday, June 15th at 9:00 am. Pacific time on the topic of time mastery for entrepreneurs. As I mentioned earlier, time management. And time mastery is all about creating that relationship with ourselves.
And so if you're interested in putting some of the things that we talked about in this podcast episode today into practice, please join me for this webinar. I'll go over the five step process to actually put it into practice. If you want more information or registration, please go to my website, financialwellnesscoach.ca. Are you looking for a coach who will help you increase your business profit while protecting your time and your well being? If so, I'll invite you to check out my website, financialwellnesscoach.ca.