5 SUBTLE WAYS WOMEN ARE SELF-SABOTAGING

I’m here for some straight talking today, folks. I want you to imagine that we are sitting over coffee together and you are in need of a particular kind of pep talk - the one where you need a sisterly word in your ear about how much you are sabotaging and protecting yourself and holding yourself back. That’s the tone I want to take here - so if you’re up for it - pull up that chair. Get your americano ready and let’s get down to it.

In all the work I’ve done with women of all ages and backgrounds over the last decade, there have been some emerging themes of self-sabotage that I have seen with my own eyes; some particular ways that I see brilliant women like you and I tripping ourselves up repeatedly over and over again.

Firstly, I want to lovingly say that this is the stuff of being human. These ways that we minimise ourselves, hand over power, get swept up and let fear lead the way – these things do not make you faulty – they make you human. The first step to being able to move beyond them into a truer sense of who you are is owning them; acknowledging that this stuff is real for you - that it actually is something that you might need to consider. That’s a biggie. So I want you to hear this with an open mind, willing to see where it is that you might recognise yourself - being honest with yourself but also knowing that you also dont need to shame yourself either..

So let’s jump in. There are five ways that I have repeatedly seen women sabotaging their own fulfilment and desires and holding back the progress of their own growth:

1) Assuming there is not enough room for you.

Somewhere along the way, we have been fed the lie that when we see someone else doing something we would love to do that it automatically disqualifies us from doing it. Somewhere along the way we have picked up the message that there is not enough room for our version of the same thing. Somewhere along the way we have decided that if someone else is doing it, they now have the monopoly and they must be doing it better. In addition to that, we often fold in the double whammy lie that if we do decide to do something similar that people will think we are copying, we’ll be unlikable, talked about and thought of as a fraud or second rate. So we shut the idea down immediately, tuck in back in our safe zone, we retreat and let resentment and jealousy wash over us.

When we think like this, we are operating out of a scarcity mindset. This is the mindset that says that there is not enough space for us all to move around and be ourselves. This is the mindset that has us moving through the world believing that everything is a race, that competition is rife and that spaces for creativity, fulfilment and innovation are limited.

What we need are women who are willing to see past these lies, who give themselves permission to learn, try and grow and create environments for others to do the same. When we assume there is a limited amount of room for women to do the things that they are drawn to, we make the world smaller for ALL women when in reality, we have an unlimited amount of space to expand and stretch as we need to.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Acknowledge your own desires. Write them down and then tell a trusted friend. Do some light research on the thing. Practice your craft or your offering. Arrange to meet up with someone who triggers jealousy or scarcity in you. Reach out to them and tell them how brilliantly they are doing.

2) Recruiting other women to your pain.

The second way I see women self-sabotaging (and this is a biggie) is by recruiting other people to our pain. We’ve all been there on one side or the other. Wounded people tend to want to rally other people to their cause. If we have been wronged by another woman, misunderstood or failed – the temptation is to bring our people along for the ride. We want solidarity in our pain, to have an ally. Real alliance does not look like taking down the sisterhood because of our own fears or pain.

A few months ago I was faced with this. Someone I love had been hurt by another woman and they were in pain. They were so consumed with their own discomfort over it that they wanted me to join them. They really tried to get me in there in the pit with them. There was even a moment when they couldn’t see past themselves and tried to give me my own (personal) reason to join them in their annoyance, but I could see what was happening and I was able to call it out.

My friend responded so bravely and quickly realised what she was doing. We talked it out so she felt understood and seen without adding more pain to the mix.

Don’t look for solidarity in bringing other women down. Stop trying to find someone to dislike the same people as you. One of the most powerful ways that patriarchy can thrive in our world today is when women turn on each other and recruit each other to sides. We can disagree, we can find fault, we can be hurt and hurt back, but let’s not try to grab each other in from the sidelines to join in our pain. This is the kind of sabotage that ripples out and breeds insecurity like a disease.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Give other women the benefit of the doubt when you hear things about them. Deal with your own pain. Redirect conversations that would tempt you to get involved in petty talk or that try to drag you into mutual disdain for someone. Challenge negative talk. Be obnoxiously supportive of other women.

 3) We are not taking ourselves seriously.

Another subtle way I can see women self-sabotaging is by seriously underestimating themselves. I can see clearly where this comes from: if we take ourselves seriously, invest in things, put ourselves out there and it doesn’t work out – then we have egg on our face and everyone will know. If we stay in the shallow, never invest fully, never talk about our offerings with any intensity or authority then we stay safe. No one can shame us.  

The thing about not taking ourselves seriously is that we never move from that place. There is nowhere to go from here. We are stuck. And that stuck-ness will eventually spill out into resentment, frustration, grief and heartache. We will never realise our fuller potential. We will never fail and learn. We will never find the true fulfilment that comes from giving things our best shot and growing along the way.

If you are not investing in your own betterment, if you are shying away from opportunities that will bring discomfort, if you are downplaying what you do or hiding it away from the world – fulfilment is going to be a really hard reach for you. There is rarely any comfort to be found in growth. Take yourself seriously. Take your own growth and fulfillment seriously and watch how you evolve.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Invest in yourself; even something small. Take a course, join a facebook group, book into a workshop, tell people about your products or services. Eliminate minimising language from how you talk about what you do: “my little business” or “just my side-hustle”. 

4) Making our minds up about what other people will pay for, engage with or buy.

We are SO good at assuming we know what people are thinking. We are EXCELLENT at making up whole scenarios and thought processes about how we will be perceived, what other people’s buying habits are, their budgets, their interests, aren’t we?

Some of us are so quick to write off our own ideas, sabotaging them before they get out of the gate that we have never let our ideas out into the air to breathe so they stay within us, choking us up. Let me tell you, there is a whole WORLD out there of people who need to hear what you have to say, who may need to hear things from your perspective to find healing, who may need to engage with your product to find a solution to their problems.

The ever-expanding ways that people are able to consume or connect with things in the world today means that we just cannot write off who might be interested in what we have to offer. If there is something burning in your soul that you feel drawn to put out into the world, you owe it to yourself to set it free. We cannot control who buys it or who can afford it or if it will sell – we simply have to be true to the thing that we are being called to do.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Do your research! Ask your target market about the things you are considering offering. Use social media to build community and offer value to the people in your orbit. GET SOME INFORMATION! Stay curious and open to possibilities. Stay true to your pricing. Don’t look around at what other people are charging for things (they could have major issues around this stuff as well!) – figure out what you want to offer, how much it costs you to make or produce and what you want to be paid and then ASK FOR IT!  

Finally… 

5) Being consumed by perfectionism.

Oh my goodness, I get this one. I totally do. I am a recovering perfectionist that relapses all the tiem. It is hard work. It has cost me a lot to be consumed with perfection and striving.

Let me give you a little example: A few years ago I finally decided to turn some of my favourite coaching resources into a download PDF  to sell on my website. I spent ages going through the content, compiling it and converting it into a PDF. I agonised over fonts and settings and colours. Finally I let it out into the world and a bunch of people bought it! I made some money from it!

Then I went through it again recently and you know what – there’s a whole paragraph missing on one of the pages. A whole freaking paragraph, just sitting there, half written.

Four years ago this would have crippled me and kept me up at night – hopelessly obsessed that people would think I was a fraud, that I was unprofessional, that I wasn’t to be trusted (the drama of my inner critic is obscene). Four years ago me would have taken it down from my website right away and had it redone and made a big public apology to all my readers and resent it to them again.

This time, I just cringed and then laughed. Of course there was a mistake in it! It was 80 pages long and I’m not a professional editor. It’s one tiny paragraph and it doesn’t take anything away from the overall goodness of the book. It’s still on my website, still for sale, in all it’s imperfect glory. 

If you are waiting around for the perfect website, perfect branding, perfect whatever before even dipping your toe in the waters of the thing you want to do then can I please encourage you to stop that and just start. This perfectionism is a guise for hiding. This need to get everything just ‘so’ before you present it to the world is wasting your precious life minutes and is just fear showing up in a different outfit.

SOME WAYS WE CAN COUNTERACT THIS:

Set yourself deadlines for doing things and STICK TO THEM! No more pushing back timings because of polishing things endlessly. If something feels too big and you’re really not ready, find a smaller way to get it out there in the time being. Go for good enough when you can. Don’t be a slave to an algorithm. Try and inject some spontaneity into your day. Look back and reflect on how far you have come. Make a point to celebrate small milestones. Remember your own humanity and the humanity of others. Give yourself a freaking break.

The Pyramid of Resilience Building for Business Owners & Teams

I’ve been working on some new stuff lately - some resources and training I’ve been putting together on building resilience for some work I’m doing with some companies and teams and I thought it might be helpful to share this here with you, so you can see how it might make sense for you and your work, your teams, your business.

It’s no surprise to me that I’m hearing more conversations about resilience lately, and having people come to me to support their work or their teams in understanding and building resilience. In times of rapid change and so much uncertainty, we need to get to grips with what it means to be resilient more than ever. We need to learn the tools and practices that can support us to manage ourselves through disappointment, tragedy, chaos and flux. 

What I want to use this space to share about is what I’m calling the pyramid of resilience building. The structure that needs to be in place for sustainable growth, development, fulfillment and capacity. Because resilience isn’t the end outcome of what we’re looking for when we talk about it, is we. I’m struck that when people come to me wanting to look at resilience, they’re often actually talking about a greater capacity to stay in alignment with their values, to grow as people, feel more fulfilled and have a better capacity to do the work they love and live life meaningfully and present.. That’s the goal of resilience, so we need to talk about what the pathway is to it.

I’m probably going to do this over a series of two or three episodes but today I want to break down the pyramid so you can see clearly what is most important to be in place in order for resilience to have the room to grow.

If you can imagine a pyramid structure, the bottom foundation in building resilience would be emotional or internal safety. And that’s what we’re going to cover today. 

The next layer up would be self and co-regulation 

The next layer would be resilience and then the top of the pyramid is sustained growth, fulfillment and capacity. 

So let’s dig into the first thing, the very foundation of resilience building - emotional or internal safety. 

Internal, emotional safety is so intrinsic to our ability to be able to handle pressure and stress and not have it swallow us up because if we don’t feel emotionally safe in our environment, with the people we are with, with the expectations we are being held to - the foundation is shaky from the start.

If we don’t have the tools to understand how to find emotional safety, the pyramid towards resilience is not off to a great start.

What I mean by internal, emotional safety is a strong knowledge of self - of our triggers, of the things that fire off our nervous system into fight flight freeze and fawn AND the emotional safety that comes from our environment - from people that feel safe to us, who actively promote our emotional safety and that of others’. So I want to ask you to reflect right here - maybe you want to grab a journal and pause this episode and jot some stuff down… 

WHAT DOES INTERNAL OR EMOTIONAL SAFETY FEEL LIKE FOR YOU?

Think about times where you have felt emotional safety and trust.

Take a moment to experience what that feels like in your body.

Who are you around when you experience emotional safety?

How does the structure or conditions of your work impact your feelings of internal safety?

And adversely - 

What are the triggers or threats that often make you feel emotionally or internally unsafe. We can easily name them in the physical world but what comes up for us when it comes to emotional or psychological threats?

The reason this is so important is because when we are emotionally safe, feeling like we are able to be and respond in a more rational capacity, we are more able to regulate ourselves when difficulty comes. Someone who is exposed to environments or people who don’t feel emotionally or internally safe or someone who isn’t able to understand their own inner triggers and self-doubt  is more likely to have a nervous system that is activated and be out of their window of tolerance - struggling to regulate or respond rationally. Let me share with you a quote about windows of tolerance from Linda Graham, psychotherapist, consultant, trainer on the neuroscience of resilience. She says this:

"The Autonomic Nervous System is central to resilience because it keeps us in a 'window of tolerance. The window of tolerance is a zone where our nervous system is relaxed, calm, alert, engaged. When we are in our window of tolerance, which we hope is most of the time, we feel centered and balanced. Everything is humming along in equilibrium. When we are in our window of tolerance, we can perceive-process-respond to life events with a kind of wise equanimity. We can cope. We can be resilient"

- Linda Graham

So how can we establish a sense of emotional or internal safety as a bedrock for building resilience. My advice is this:

• Self-awareness - understanding the situations, people, conditions that threaten your emotional safety. This is key - the external sources that can contribute to not feeling emotionally safe. And also what is key is noticing and coming to more deeply know how the voice of your own inner protector and how it shows up when you feel vulnerable or you are approaching something emotionally risky. Keeping a close ear to hear when that voice is raised within us rather than our sense of intuition or our inner wisdom.

• Boundaries with others - being clear about your expectations and gathering clarity from others about theirs. Having difficult conversations when you need to instead of settling for ambiguity and feigned comfort. Knowing what lines you aren’t willing to cross, or that you won’t allow others to cross. Being loyal to your needs and the conditions that enable you to feel emotionally safe and making sure that you follow through with those boundaries.

• Curiosity and compassion over shame and blame - shame and blame in most contexts will add fuel to the fire of feeling emotionally unsafe. If we are able to slow ourselves down to welcome curiosity and compassion to the things we feel are difficult or feel emotionally risky, we can gently diffuse those feelings. Not bypass them - we aren’t in the business of pretending we dont feel how we feel, but approaching our feelings with curiosity (i.e. hmm, I’m finding myself really nervous about this conversation I have to have with my boss even though they’re usually really lovely, I wonder what it is about it that I’m worried about” Or “this deadline is feeling really stressful right now - I wonder if this is something I can push back or ask for more support with so that I can approach it more rationally” instead of catastrophising or spiralling into self doubt.) and then dollopping on some compassion instead of blame (i.e. “The last time I had to have a tricky conversation it didn’t go well, it makes perfect sense that this would have me feeling nervous. I know I can do this and be ok and it’s fair that I feel worried about the outcome” or “there’s a lot to get done here and I need to make sure I’m not running myself into the ground. I deserve to feel able to complete this project in a way that isn’t so frantic.” 

• A strong sense of values alignment - being aligned more deeply to our values is going to help steer us in our decision making and give us the satisfaction of integrity that can help us feel emotionally safe. 

Ultimately emotional safety requires our willingness to be able to recognise what feels unsafe, decipher if that risk feels protective in a way that is going to move us towards our goals or keep us from them, come back to our window of tolerance so that we can respond and react to whatever is happening from a place of courage, calm, clarity and curiosity. 

If we are unable to recognise our emotional safety triggers and always feel like we are operating outside of our window of tolerance, we will find difficult situations more and more hard to manage. Our nervous systems won't ever have a proper opportunity to reset and retreat.

It’s up to us to do the work to determine what this aspect of building resilience requires from us. Maybe it’s a keener sense of boundaries. Maybe it’s a deeper understanding of the protective voice that holds us back, maybe being more clear about our values and getting into more alignment with what we believe and do.

This is really important work and a crucial baseline in the trajectory of building resilience. If you are finding yourself or your team struggling to deal with set backs, feedback or disappointment - start here. Start prioritising what emotional or internal safety looks like for you or your team. 

What can you do to help yourself or your people recognise what it feels like to be internally safe so they can turn towards that in times of difficulty or stress. 

As always, I’m here - willing to chat more - you can email me hello@melwiggins.com and if there’s anything I can do to go further with this and support you or your team in resilience building, know that I’d love to do that and you can contact me for more details of what that could look like. I have training workshops and packages for teams and leaders that I’d love to share with you. And if you’re a female business owner keen to develop some of these tools to support the building of your business and you as the business owner, we do all of this in my four month brand builder programme which is open right now and you are welcome to check that out here.

MINDTRASH, OTHER PEOPLE'S OPINIONS AND THE PLAGUE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

You’ve probably heard me mention that this time last year I sent out a survey for female business owners and had a really amazing response to it. I think over 70 women in business gave me feedback on some of the biggest challenges they were facing in their work, what they would love to do more of, what they wish they could do differently etc and it was really revealing for me as a coach to hear those responses. It has actually shaped so much of the work that I do here on this platform, the content I create, and that was the intention - to find out what was troubling female business owners and see if there were ways I could support them for free. 

I asked this question towards the end of the survey - it was this “What is the biggest mind-trash thinking you come up against in your business that you’d love to work through?” So I want to talk about some of the responses here. Here. Mostly because one response came up an unprecedented amount of times.

Number one mindtrash that came up in my 2022 survey was about other people. Answers reveals were things like: Other people are better than me, what will other people think if I do x y and x, I don’t think what I have is of value compared to other people in my industry. Other people other people other people. 

First of all - if this many women in business are saying the same thing - something about this must be very natural. This is our protective nature - the nature that we all have within that wants to remain safe in the pack, to know that we are not at risk of being abandoned or rejected. It’s only normal that when it comes to putting our bravest, most honest work out there that we find it excruciating because we know how exposing it is, how naturally there is judgment that happens (because we all judge or have opinions). Our sense of this perks up when we are doing work that feels deeply personal, so of course our brains want to try and mitigate that risk and help us feel safe again. But no amount of me or anyone else saying “you can’t be concerned with other peoples opinions’ or ‘stay in your lane’ advice is going to soothe us out of that. So I want to offer an alternative frame, rather than asking you to bypass your worries or self-consciousness about other people. 

Those are real feelings, AND those feelings need worked through - because they can be thieves. And when we don’t address it, what this kind of thinking can do is rob us. Here are a couple things that our self-consciousness and hyper awareness of other peoples opinions can steal from us:

• Robs us of the joy of learning and trying. Being overly concerned with other people can really stunt us of the opportunity to give things a go and all the rich learning and joy that can come from that creative process. It can prevent us from the deep lessons and learning curves we will certainly experience when we begin to give things a go, try things out and step into more stretchier territory. It’s a real shame that this happens because it’s the most beautiful (and sometimes scary) place to be - in that centre of trying, creating, seeing if things work, if they resonate. When we are consumed by other peoples hypothetical opinions, we give over that opportunity to grow into our skin.

• Another way we lose when we are consumed by our own self-consciousness and fears about what other people are doing and if they might be doing it better is that we end up shrinking down and playing small. We talk ourselves out of things that come our way that could be good for us, we maybe show up and share about our work but we water things down and keep our head just slightly peeping up above the parapet in case we are too noticed or too visible. This kind of shrunk down version of ourselves is an injustice to us and our gifts and to the people who might really love and enjoy them or be served and helped by them.

If the plague of self-consciousness or the fear of other peoples opinions are running rampant and stealing these things from you - I want you to remember these three things:

Other people aren’t thinking about you as much as you think they are. They really aren’t. If 70% of my survey answers have anything to reveal, it’s that we are all concerned about other peoples opinions and how we measure up and that indicates to me that we are spending more time worried about that threat than it could possibly be true. We are all consumed with our own insceurities and self consciousness to be spending time reeling over our own opinions of someone elses work. If this is true, then maybe we can release that thought and remember that actually, people are kinder and more generous of spirit than we often give them credit for. It’s more likely that someone is looking at your work in admiration right now. It’s more likely that someone is aspiring to the kind of offering that you’re bringing. It’s more likely that someone is watching you show up and having warm thoughts towards you because they know how much it takes to be brave and put yourself out there. What if the opposite was true and you operated from the more generous lens of “everyone is wishing me well out here” or “people are focused on their own thing, I can focus on mine too”. What if that were truth and instead of letting this rob us, we allow it to fuel us. 

The second thing is this: if you’re always loyal to everyone else's hypothetical opinions, how can you be loyal to yourself? If your posture is to be churning over every scenario of what you think people assume about you, what you think people are saying, what you think people want from you - how much space are you really leaving for yourself? For your desires, your creativity, your intuition about what is next, your opinions on your work, your gut sense about what you might like to create or try next? When we are overly consumed by the hypothetical needs or opinions of others, we squash any sense of autonomy over our own creative process. It creates a tension and a division in our loyalty. 

And finally, just to play devils advocate for a second, stay with me - so what if other people do talk, are air-quotes better, do think a certain thing about you? What does it really mean about you? Is it true? Only you really know.

Similarly, what if everyone is praising you, running to your work, eating up everything you do. What does that mean about you? Is it true? Only you really know or get to decide. 

If we over-fixate on the opinions of others - whether they are positive or critical, we are going to be blown by the wind every day, making decisions based on those things. Someone said they like this - we double down. Someone seemed critical or questioning of this thing we made, we shove it to the back - don’t let it see the light of day again. We make things mean more than they are - when at the core, your work is sacred and the only person it should really matter to is you. It should matter if you’re proud of your effort. If you are connected to it. If you are enjoying the process of creating it. If you are committed to it. If it feels valuable to you and how you want to show up in the world and in your work. Once this type of loyalty is embedded in you, you can realise that your main job is to do that - to show up for yourself, be led by your intuition, desires and ease and allow whoever is compelled by this loyal version of you and your work to be drawn in by it when they are ready. And they will. A steady presence, someone who is unapologetically doing their truest work and opening an invitation to join them is always compelling.

The work isn’t to override these feelings of ‘what will other people think’ what if im not as good as other people etc. It’s to notice them, cultivate some compassion for the natural reasons that it occurs and then make a decision to be loyal to yourself as you move through them. 

I hope this brings you a bit of comfort for when other peoples opinions or self-counsciousness arises within you on your creative or business building journey.

What's your Method of Hiding? Part 3: Paralysis

If you’ve missed part 1 on perfectionism and part 2 on procrastination, feel free to head back to the previous two blog posts to read those.

But for now let’s talk about paralysis. Because it has a bit of a different edge to procrastination and perfectionism.

Paralysis may be showing up in your life as real avoidance of decision making and action. It may be showing up in your life as feeling overwhelmed and it may show up in your life by allowing other people to make decisions for you and give you direction.

This form of hiding is super hard because when we are paralysed, we don’t make decisions well and so often it’s a very early hurdle that comes before the faffing and fear of procrastination and the hard work of perfection. Either we run from decision-making altogether, or we have too many options and let people decide for us.

Maybe we feel scared to commit to decisions because we know there are so many unknown factors ahead of our decisions or actions and we really want to know how things are going to work out.

Paralysis in our work or life is often about needing to know the right step and if we don’t we go into freeze mode, bypassing our autonomy and usually letting things fall where they fall.

Of course, with indecision and fear and overwhelming options and opinions from others and society’s expectations, we become anxious. We’re afraid to do something wrong and what that might mean for us.

Paralysis isn’t just freezing though – it manifests into other states - feeling lost, confused, dizzy, tired, frustrated, angry, jealous, disappointed, dissatisfied, sad, lonely, or afraid of the future.

When we are in paralysis we sit back and let things happen, or we refuse to take action out of fear. We often blame other things to rationalise our paralysis.

I believe the underbelly of paralysis and indeed the antecdote to it is actually building healthy self-trust.

If paralysis is about fear of doing the wrong thing or being overwhelmed, it seems like we might need to look at what level of trust we really have in our own capacity to make choices, to try, to experiment and have our own backs. Sometimes paralysis can have us falsely believing that our inaction, our shinking and hiding is us keeping control. And paralysis only offers a false sense of control, because we only try to control what we don’t trust.

Glennon Doyle talks a lot about this in her book Untamed. She says: “We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise: She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose one’s self completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince women to control themselves.”

So if the cure for paralysis is self-trust, how do we do that, how do we cultivate that in a healthy and meaningful way so it’s not just another one of those words that we’re supposed to know what to do with but is actually a bit ambiguous in tangibility?

I feel like the core of self-trust is not actually about trusting yourself to know all the answers, or believing that you will always do the right things. That’s simply not possible or fair for us to expect of ourselves. That layers on all kinds of other stuff that can lead to shame.

The core of self trust for me is about having the conviction or focus that you will be kind and respectful to yourself regardless of the outcome of your efforts.

Self-trust is about believing in the integrity of yourself. When we look at examples of people who are self-trusting, we find that they are curious learners, willing to build their understanding of self and of opinions and experiences through action and seeing what works and what doesn’t for them. They have healthy interdependent relationships, not hyper in their dependency of others and their feedback. They speak with authority that comes from a deep place within but is not arrogant or dismissive.

Self-trust is about taking the posture of having your own back, being compassionate and not being self-punitive when you make mistakes. Because of course if we punish ourselves for making mistakes, our brains start to wire up to tell us we can’t be trusted.

It seems to me that self-trust starts to erode more quickly as we move into adult life – but it’s been chipped away at long before that. We spend most of our childhood and adolescence learning about ourselves through the lens of other peoples praise or criticism, through school and academics and extra curriculars – creating a dependency on that feedback to help us move forward. You’re good at this, keep going. Youre not good, try harder or stop. So when we reach adulthood, no wonder we begin to freeze up when those built in places of feedback are removed and we have to take action on our own. We haven’t been taught to trust our OWN instincts, our OWN desires our OWN roadmap – it’s all been dependent on other people, hinged on their perceptions of us. So we meander or wander and often end up desperately fixated on approval or some semblance of validation from others in order to take action for ourselves.

We can move away from our people pleasing and paralysis by rebuilding our self-trust and deciding to at the very least to commit to being on our own side. Not to win, not to succeed, not to guarantee results with ourselves, but to have our own backs. To be loyal to our desires and dreams.

Often paralysis stems from being on the arguing side of our needs and desires, trying to convince ourselves that we can’t or don’t deserve them. Self trust requires us to be on our own side, rallying for ourselves like we would a really solid, trusting friend.

We won’t do it perfectly, this self-trust thing. We won’t ever not let ourselves down and shrink and play small, forgetting about ourselves; but we can keep making that commitment to be on our own side.

I hope, if you are stuck in paralysis right now, that you feel some comfort from this, knowing that you can walk yourself back to trust, to being on your own side, even when it’s hard.