You Need to Build Self Trust

When the world is telling who you are, how do you decide for yourself?

Why build self-trust?

Because it changes everything. Your decisions get faster, cleaner. Your confidence becomes less performative and more embodied. You spend less time overthinking and more time moving in alignment. Self-trust lowers cognitive load, reduces emotional friction, and creates a feedback loop where the more you honor your inner cues, the more life begins to open in response.

But if you're anything like me, it’s not always easy.

Most of us were raised to second-guess ourselves. Overtly or subtly, we were taught that our internal signals—our hunger, our preferences, our boundaries—couldn’t be trusted. Sometimes for control. Sometimes out of fear. Sometimes just because our environments couldn’t hold the truth of who we were.

Even if you’ve “done the work,” even if you know better—your body might still tense up with doubt or guilt the moment you try to follow through on what’s right for you.

You get caught between what you know and what you feel safe enough to act on. And mindset alone won’t bridge that gap.

What many people don’t realize is that self-trust isn’t just a mindset shift. It’s a nervous system skill.

You have an internal sensory system called interoception - your body’s ability to detect its own internal state. It’s what helps you notice when you’re hungry, tired, tense, calm, or overstimulated. It’s foundational to emotional regulation, instinct, and decision-making.

Some call it a gut feeling. Others call it intuition. Whatever you call it, the truth is that you were born with a compass. You just may have lost the signal.

If you’ve been doing all the “right” things but still feel off, this is why.

Here’s what’s actually happening under the hood:

Your organs and tissues send signals up to your brain through nerves, especially the vagus nerve, one of the main highways of your nervous system.

Your brain listens to those signals and adjusts your body in response:

• Calming your heart rate

• Shifting your breathing

• Balancing hormones

• Regulating your mood

• Managing energy and attention

This process is how your body maintains homeostasis and behavioral flexibility.

When interoception is working well, you can feel what’s happening in your body, and you are able to quickly adjust. You’re more emotionally resilient, more in tune with your needs, and better able to navigate stress.

But when it's disrupted, your body’s signals get scrambled. You might miss important cues—or misread them. You might feel overwhelmed, anxious, disconnected, or reactive without knowing why. It's the autopilot feeling that so many high-achievers know all too well. Over time, this disconnect can fuel chronic stress, burnout, emotional dysregulation, and even physical symptoms with no clear medical explanation.

Simply put: Interoception is the bridge between what your body feels and how your nervous system responds. When that bridge is strong, self-trust becomes possible. When that bridge is broken, self-trust feels like guesswork.

Most of us are completely numb. We ignore our hunger signals until we're starving. We delay rest until we collapse. We scroll through violence and stimulation until we’re numb. We use productivity as a proxy for worth and treat fatigue as a moral failing.

These are not personal failures. Its cultural. In so many cases you're rewarded for "pushing through", and can even be tempted into wearing your lack of connection with yourself like a badge of honor. Or you might simply feel unsafe to connect with your needs because of your environment or past conditioning.

That’s why this work matters. Because rebuilding self-trust, at its core, is how we restore the conversation between your body and your brain.

It's a relationship, one that can be repaired with care and practice. It starts by ending small, consistent signals to your nervous system that tell it: "I'm here, I'm listening and I'm not going to ignore you anymore".

Here's a simple process you can start, step by step:

Step 1: Breathe and Ground

Regulation comes before revelation.

You can’t hear your body clearly when your nervous system is overloaded. There's simply too much noise.

Try one of these:

• Box Breath: Inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4.

• Physiological Sigh: Two quick inhales, one slow exhale.

Then orient yourself to your environment using the 5-4-3-2-1 method:

• 5 things you can see

• 4 things you can touch

• 3 things you can hear

• 2 things you can smell

• 1 thing you can taste

This brings you back to your body and anchored to the present moment (the only moment that actually exists).

Step 2: Ask Your Body What It Needs

This might feel silly at first. Do it anyway.

“What do you need right now?”

Don’t demand a perfect answer. Just listen.

You might feel a pull towards:

Water.

Stillness.

Stretching.

Laughter.

Silence.

Food.

Space.

Respond to it gently. Even if you can’t meet every need perfectly, do what you can. This is how you tell your body that you are paying attention at last.

Step 3: Practice with Small Decisions

Self-trust doesn’t start with major life decisions, but rather, in the tiny moments throughout the day.

Start with low-stakes questions:

• Should I stay home or go out?

• Do I want something sweet or salty?

• Which route feels better—this street or that one?

• Do I want to call someone, or be alone right now?

Ask. Then notice what yes feels like. What no feels like.

You may not know at first. That’s okay. Make your best guess, watch for the feedback and adjust.

The goal is to build signal fidelity, learning to recognize your body’s cues and respond to them with clarity.

Step 4: Repeat. Let it Compound.

Self-trust is a muscle. Reps matter.

Every time you respond to your internal cue—especially a small one—you strengthen the neural pathways of agency, safety, and responsiveness.

You teach your system:

“I don’t have to betray myself to belong.”

“I don’t have to override my body to succeed.”

“I can trust myself to take care of me.”

This processes, repeated consistently over time, will reshape the response algorithms in your body. And it becomes easier and easier over time.

But it's not linear. You will have moments when you fall back into old habits. But each time you return to your body, your listening sharpens.

What starts as a whisper becomes a clear voice.

But Isn’t This Too Simple?

Yes and no.

The process is simple, but the complexity lies it the practice.

You’re rewiring long-held survival patterns. You’re moving through fear, guilt, grief, and confusion. You’re undoing years of survival adaptations, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and dysregulation.

But this process is where it begins. Not with major overhauls, but with small, repeated signals of safety, curiosity, and care.

Let it be low-stakes:

• Choose your dinner based on how it feels, not how it looks on paper.

• Say no to something that feels off—even if it’s just a group chat or social plan.

• Let your body lead your morning routine one day this week.

• Drink water the moment you notice thirst.

• Close your eyes when your screen feels like too much.

Each one is a micro-trust loop. Each one is a vote for self-respect and a moment of re-alignment with yourself.

You don’t need to have it all figured out.

You just need to start listening and keep listening, even when the voice is faint, even when the answer isn’t clear.

Why Do All This Work?

Yes, it can be a little confronting and slow. But if you know you're meant to make an impact, on your work, your families, your legacy, the world - this work cannot be skipped. It's foundational.

How else will you realize your mission if your body doesn't trust you to lead it?

Self-trust is the fuel that sustains your ambition without burnout. It keeps you in alignment when things get hard. It clears your mental bandwidth, sharpens your focus, and fortifies your decisions. It becomes the internal infrastructure that allows you to act with courage, consistency, and clarity.

This is also how cycles break. This is how trauma patterns lose their grip. This is how the next generation learns that inner wisdom matters.

Your self-trust becomes a living legacy - one your children, your teams, your partners, and your community can feel.

This is how fulfillment begins: not by pushing harder, but by coming home to yourself.

The life you’re building needs all of you in it: clear, resourced, and deeply rooted in your own trust.