How to Start Building Self-Trust in 7 Easy Steps

Learn to keep your promises to yourself or live a life of self-sabotage (trust me, I know). Building self-trust isn’t hard, but it will require some work. However, you’re 100% worth the work.

We tend to keep our word with our friends, family, spouses, and even our co-workers. We even feel bad when we don’t follow through or have to go back on our word. It almost stings and, for some of us, makes us downright ill and anxious.

Falling back on our promise to others can make us feel small, but breaking promises to ourselves feels normal. We hold more value in others than we do in ourselves. And that often leads to dreams that never make it off the shelf.

What if that doesn’t have to be a vicious cycle of watching yourself start and stop goals? Because the truth is, the more you start and stop, the less you trust yourself. It would be the same if a friend were lukewarm in their commitment towards you; it’s no different when it’s yourself.

How to start building self-trust

Step 1: Meet yourself where you are

Beating yourself up about your failures or shortcomings is not allowed over here. You don’t build trust in yourself by tearing yourself apart. This is the time to acknowledge that this version of you carried you to this very point. You need to realize that you are much stronger than you think.

Meet yourself with grace, love, and kindness. This is not the time to open up old wounds, but to start healing and move forward. Think of yourself as a friend, how would you approach a friend who felt like they messed up? Would you humiliate them, degrade them, make them feel worse? No, you wouldn’t because that would cause them to lose trust in you. The same idea applies to you when it comes to building self-trust.

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Step 2: Start small

Whenever someone breaks your trust, you have them prove over time that they can be trusted again. Building trust is a lot like building with Legos. You need a foundation, and the foundation starts with smaller anchor pieces. Small actions lead to big changes.

When you can learn to trust that you can handle the smaller tasks, the larger tasks don’t seem as daunting. Building self-trust requires patience as you take small (but calculated) steps that prove to your subconscious that you can do hard things. These small promises may not seem like a big deal, but they will compound over time.

Step 3: Do it whether you feel like it or not

You have met yourself with grace, and you have started keeping small promises to yourself. You’re starting to gain momentum, and life feels like it’s changing. And now, it’s day 25, and you have no motivation to keep going. All of a sudden, you don’t feel like getting out of bed at 5 am, taking a walk, or building your dream career.

This is the part you won’t like as much, but you’re going to have to make yourself do it anyway. Please keep in mind that if you are sick (or a loved one is sick) or extremely burned out, it’s okay to take time off. It is encouraged that you don’t run yourself into the ground. Building self-trust is not about building on fumes.

However, if you are relying solely on motivation, you are setting yourself up for failure. Motivation is nothing more than a feeling or emotion. Doing it whether you feel like it or not is building discipline, and discipline builds trust in yourself. Mel Robbins wrote a book called The 5 Second Rule. This book is about how a 5-second rule “launched” (her words) her into action.

The rule is that you countdown 5,4,3,2,1 and spring into action before your brain can talk you out of whatever it doesn’t feel like doing. Mel says this simple hack changed her life in the simplest way possible. Maybe it can do the same for you (pssst, I actually loved this hack).

Step 4: Track your progress

You need a habit tracker or a journal to record your daily habits. A habit tracker will serve as a daily reminder of not only the promises you want to keep yourself, but also as proof that you can keep them. They can also give you a hit of dopamine, “the feel-good hormone,” to want to keep going.

Tracking your progress also allows you to pivot and make changes if needed. A key lesson in building self-trust is also trusting your intuition when something is no longer serving you. Not every goal, promise, or habit is meant to be kept, and knowing when to let go is often scarier than just saying yes or continuing to keep saying yes.

Step 5: Become consistent

Building self-trust through discipline is how you build consistency. Consistency is showing up every single time, and showing up builds trust. And having tangible proof of showing up allows you to start to believe in yourself. See how we are getting there?

Becoming consistent is where routine building comes into play. Humans need some type of structure; how rigid or how fluid is up to you and your personality. Routines feel safe and predictable, but also allow consistency to thrive. Working on your business every day at 5 am builds trust that you will build the business of your dreams.

Consistently showing up for yourself are moments that you are keeping your promises to yourself. Meal planning every Sunday is a promise to have healthy meals for the week. Having healthy meals for the week fuels you for the Zumba classes that you promised yourself to take.

Consistency looks different depending on the person, overall goal, and circumstances. However, building self-trust stems from small and consistent efforts to keep your word to yourself.

Step 6: Let go of perfection

Nothing will ever be perfect. In fact, your need for it to be perfect is causing you to just not do it at all. Done is better than nothing, as you can always fix or edit it. You can not fix something from nothing.

Push forward instead of constantly starting over, your need to have it perfect will erode your self-confidence and eventually your self-trust. Perfection leads to paralysis, which leads to procrastination and broken promises. Your consistent efforts to keep your promises outweigh the “perfect” day you had once, vs showing up and giving the bare minimum each day. K

Step 7: Celebrate small wins

If you do nothing else, celebrate all your wins. Small, medium, and large wins should all be celebrated. Did you get out of bed on time? Throw a party! You receive a big bonus and raise, or you made sure you stayed alive for the day, each win should be celebrated. You took the first step in starting your LLC and registered. Take yourself out for dinner.

How can you build trust in yourself for the big wins if you don’t acknowledge the small wins that got you there? Everything you have ever done in life has started with small, actionable steps. Even when you were a baby, and you learn to roll, crawl, and take your first step, there was a celebration. Let’s get back to that.

Building self-trust isn’t hard, but it requires consistency, discipline, and grace. Showing up for yourself like you show up for others will give you a superpower that many people don’t possess. You can have the life you have always dreamed of; you just have to trust in yourself.

Part of trusting yourself is trusting yourself to make smart business decisions. When you book a consultation with DragonFly Advisory, you can trust that we have your best interests in mind. Your business is our business.