The Real Reason You Can't Trust Yourself Anymore (It's Not Indecision)

When was the last time you made a decision, even a small one, and immediately started second-guessing it? Not because the decision was actually bad, just out of habit, like some part of you assumed you must have gotten it wrong. If that's a familiar feeling, I want you to hear this clearly. That is not indecisiveness. That is the aftermath of something very specific, and today we're going to name it. Welcome back, everyone. This is Kathleen Flanagan, and I'm your host. Over the last two weeks, we've talked about why rest feels dangerous and saying nothing or saying no feels like danger. Today we're going even deeper into why you might not even trust your own read on things anymore. And what I want to do is share when I decided to override something, when I had a gut feeling that told me not to do it, and I chose to do it anyways. And this was many years ago, and I was starting a divorce, or was in the beginning stages of a divorce, and I was also in size seminars. And there was a woman who lived not far from me, and she was a very needy kind of person, is how I will describe her. And what happened is it was some time it was snowing, I just remember that, and she had asked to borrow my car, and my first instinct was, I don't think so. I didn't trust her, I had a bad feeling, I knew how the car operated in snow, and I knew she wouldn't listen to me, and I just had a bad feeling. That was all I remember, and she just continued to wah. I mean, she just went on and on and on, where she just like pretty much beat it out of me is how it felt. And I finally hit a point where I couldn't stand to listen to it anymore, and I just wanted her out of my house, so I said, okay, and I knew I was going to regret it. So I told her, do not gun the gas pedal in the snow, because the car will spin out. Well, guess what that girl did, she wasn't even what, not even a mile from my house, and my car was in a ditch. She calls me, tells me what went on, and I'm trying to be calm, and I didn't feel calm. And I was very upset, and the car really was in the ditch, she bent the frame, and I wasn't going to help her anymore, that was the bottom line. She crying, and she's telling me she's going to take care of it. She didn't, she lied, and she vanished. She just disappeared off the face of the earth. So I had to pay to get the car out of the ditch. I had to have it looked at. The only damage was that the frame was bent. Nothing else was major, didn't, I mean, you could tell it was bent. And I was just angry, and her whole attitude, the way she had talked was, well, you have two vehicles, it's like, yeah, once my husband's one's mind, how do I go to work, because he's not going to drive me. And it was, that was the attitude, that was how it felt. And I remember just being so angry at myself that I knew better. I don't know why I didn't stand up for myself. I was angry at myself for what I had done. And it made me feel really bad. Like, I wasn't worthy to say no to me, to her, for me. And the other thing was, is that she had so little regard for me, that she didn't care what she had done. She could cry and her eyes out, but she vanished. She didn't pay for anything. Her phone disconnected everything. So, you know, there was a lot of deep soul searching that I had to look at at that point of when do I think I deserve to be heard, and when do I deserve to be respected. And I did a lot of soul searching during that period of time, because there was such an upheaval going on inside my life at that point. And I know sometimes we call this indecisiveness. And we tell ourselves that we're bad at making decisions, or that we're too in our heads. But I want to offer a different lens today. This isn't a flaw in your decision making. It's the direct, learnable result of your spent quietly overriding your own signals to keep other people comfortable. So here's what happens. Every time you felt something was off and said nothing. Every time you got your gut said no, and you did this thing anyways to avoid the conflict. Disappointment or being seen is difficult. Every one of those moments was small. No single one of them felt like a big betrayal of yourself. But stacked up over the years, they taught you something very specific. Your own read on things isn't reliable enough to act on. Not because it's actually unreliable, but because acting on it historically costs you something. And this is the part I really want you to sit with. Self-trust isn't a personality trait some people have and others don't. It's a body of evidence. Every time you follow your instinct and it turns out fine, you deposit a small amount of trust in the account. Every time you override it to keep the peace, you make a withdrawal. You spent years making far more withdrawals than deposits, usually because keeping the peace felt safer. Of course, the account feels empty now. That's not a character flaw. That's just math. So I want to talk about I had a client. And the one thing that she was from my observation was she was a people pleaser. And she lived in the past and she couldn't come back with doing something for herself without getting permission from everybody. Because she was so insecure about her own decisions that she chose to get everybody else's opinion before she made a decision because she wouldn't want to look bad or wrong or whatever. And she was looking at going out with a guy and she's in her 50s. So I want to preface that these programs run this strong at any age. It doesn't matter what the age is. And I asked her, well, why wouldn't you want to go out if you have an interest? Well, my daughter's at home and all this. And I said, and how old is your daughter? She said, she's like 18, 19, 20 years old somewhere in there. And I said, and that makes a difference. Why? Well, I don't know what she would think. I said, it doesn't matter. She's an adult. You don't have to bring the man home to your house if you feel that uncomfortable. And I said, so does it really matter? I would think she might be happy for you. But see, what she was doing at the time was she was looking at her daughter was still a little kid. And she actually said, well, you know, I've been alone without a husband or a partner or anything for years. And I said, so what? She's still an adult. Do what you want to do. Just go ahead and enjoy your date. If it doesn't work out, that's okay. At least you gave it a try instead of using this flag armor thing that you're using to not make the decision to go out and enjoy yourself. So what she did is she went out on the date. She had a good time. She liked it and is like, well, do you want to go on another date? And she's like, yeah, I might just be interested. I mean, we had a lot of fun and that type of thing. And I'm like, well, then that's a really powerful go for it. I said, because what we do is we just need to take baby steps. It wasn't a big decision, but you know, sometimes just going out on a date is huge. My business partner was the same way. He saw a woman in a grocery store. I actually thought she was the cooler, cooler than anything and wanted to talk to her. And he said, well, just open your mouth. Just say hi and see what unfolds. And as a result of that, he ended up dating her. But see, we allow our paradigms. We allow our nervous systems. We allow all these indecisions that we've done that we don't trust ourselves enough to move forward. And it's like, just take one little baby step. If you're just saying hi is nothing. But when a program is running like that is huge. So that's why I brought that up was because it doesn't matter what our age is. And we stop ourselves before we ever make the change because we're so, we don't trust ourselves enough. We have made so many so-called bad decisions, but they weren't bad decisions. Once we understand the reason why we made those decisions that we were trying to protect ourselves, makes a big difference. So if we tie this back to that self-trust becomes the evidence, you know, as we make a small step and the boogeyman didn't come out from underneath the bed and destroy me, or the world didn't swallow me up because I said no. Those are the beginning building blocks. So as we start rebuilding our self-trust, it doesn't start with the big decisions. It doesn't start with the career change or relationship question or a major life pivot. We're trying to trust ourselves on the biggest decision of our life. We don't want to do that because when the account has been empty for years, it's setting yourself up to fail. Self-trust gets rebuilt the same way it got depleted in small, repeatable moments. Proving to yourself over and over in low-stakes situations that your instinct can be followed and the sky doesn't fall. So this week, I want you to pick one small decision. What to eat, when to leave somewhere, whether to answer that message right now or later, and follow your first instinct without checking it against anyone else's opinion. Not the biggest decision on your plate, the smallest one you can find. Notice what it feels like to let your own answer be enough. Even just once. So to bring this all together, the self-doubt you're carrying is improved that your instincts are bad. It's evidence of every time you overrode yourself to keep someone else comfortable. And the way back isn't a simple leap of faith. It's small, repeated proof deposit by deposit that you can be trusted with your own life again. That self-doubt isn't a flaw. It's evidence of every time you overrode yourself to keep the peace. And if you're ready to hear yourself, again, join me for she's tired of being strong, which will be a free webinar that I will be announcing a date very soon. And this is so important. And I just really want to reiterate that even in my own life, I've had to take the baby steps because these are baby steps for you. Doing something different is going to cause a lot of screaming in your head of, I'm not feeling safe, or why are you doing this? You know better. And you have to minimize the self-talk and just say, okay, whatever you say, and do it anyways. Because in order for you to regain your own self-power, your own self-worth, your own self-love is you got to go through the fire. And the fire is what you've been, your mind tells you over and over and over again. But the promise that I can give you when you do this, as small as it is, whatever it is, you take that one small step. There's something that sparks inside of you. There's something that starts to lighten up. You kind of put your shoulders back a little bit. You put your chest out a little bit. You kind of smile a little bit more. There's a little bit of a dance going on in your footsteps. And who knew? And that's how I felt about it. When I started doing that, I was like, who knew that this was possible? Who knew that I was sabotaging myself? And what I was doing and how I was living? Because how many times do I say, our unconscious part of our mind runs our life? Until we can see what's in there, we don't change. But when you do something different, or you step out of your own box, or your own self-limiting belief, I promise you the ego's going to scream, the mind's going to scream, the fear's going to come up and rip you in the neck. I promise you, that will happen. But all you do is you just breathe through it and say, okay, and if you're so gripping and gripped in fear, just set an appointment. Say, I will have this conversation Friday at 3 o'clock and move forward. Because I promise you at Friday at 3 o'clock, fear's not going to show up and have the discussion with you, but you move forward. I used to have to do that to myself all the time. Fear would just be gripping me right here in the throat and I would be like, okay, we're going to have a conversation Friday at 3 o'clock. And it would say, okay, and I would keep moving. And Friday would come and fear didn't show up. And I felt better. And I don't have to do that to myself anymore, but I can't tell you it probably was at least a good year or two before I didn't have to do that anymore. Then the next thing starts to unfold. Once you get through most of the fear and you know how to handle that, then you start doing something a little bit more that's way out of your comfort zone. Things start showing up. But see, when I got rid of the fear, I started to be able to manage other things differently. I started to be like, well, I'm feeling happy, so I'm not going to jeopardize my happiness. So when I had the water loss in this house, I wasn't, I was like, I can't deal with it. I put my head in the stand. I own that. But I was still happy and I was going to deal with it on my terms and on my time. And I did. I didn't understand yet what was going on inside my nervous system. I did not understand that I was still living through a lot of things from childhood trauma. I didn't know that yet. I know that now. But see, it took my father's death for me to see that. So this year and a half that he's been dead, it's a night and day difference for me. I mean, me wanting to put on a webinar. Are you frigging kidding me? That is like, oh my God. I would die before I would do that. Now I'm excited. All I have to do is to date. But see, I'm launching my third book for best-selling campaign starting tomorrow on my third book. I just changed the cover. And believe me, that cover, guess what came up for me? Oh my God, people are going to see me. Because instead of it being the beautiful purples and blues and blacks and whites where she's awakening, it's yellow and orange, like a sunrise. And the first one I saw was like, ooh, I don't think so. So that stuff still happens to me because it's like, well, they're going to see me. And it's like, yeah, but you know that the reason you want to do this is because you're in the light. Well, see, my book, I loved my old book cover except for about a month or two ago is like, it's too dark. It's not awakened. It's too dark. Well, that's because I'm awakening. I've awakened to where I can bring that much light into me. But see, this was many, many years of moving forward since 2017 is when I really started moving in this new direction. I'm sorry, folks. I know the microwaves too slow and we're a 7-11 society, but you know, that's not how we as humans work. It takes time. It takes what do you want? Where do you want to be? How do you want your life to be instead of being wrapped up and caught up in a life that you never wanted to begin with? And who knew that my father's death would have caused this? So I started my fourth book. I just want all of you to know that. I started the fourth book. I'm going to be putting it out on sub stack, which I just created like a week ago. And I have my first one and it's going to be and actually actually had the second book, books four and five are pretty much laid out of what we're doing because there's so much to put in. And what's interesting, interestingness, and knowing that my nervous system can handle this. And believe me, there are days when it's like, oh, this is too much. And it's like, okay, you got to rethink how you want to do things. I'm still getting it done, but I still rest. But see, I went under the weather for a few days last week. Nothing major, you know, just that little kind of uppy, but nothing, just leave me alone kind of thing. Not feverish. Know anything. Just you just knew you weren't you. And all of a sudden everything started hitting as far as the book. Like I got the premise, but I didn't know how to proceed. And it all came in. I think it was Friday, Thursday or Friday. Everything started to come in and it was just downloading like there was no tomorrow. And I was like, okay, I need to create an outline because this book is being written so much differently than the last ones. And I'm excited about it because it's like, well, I need to add this and I need to add this. So I created like an outline of where I'm going and what I'm going to be doing in the fourth book is I'm going to be going from my mother's death to my father's death and all the growth that happened to destiny within that time frame. And I'm going to be weaving it together and then I'm going to bring in the angelic thing. This is going to be an amazing book. I don't know how it's going to lay out yet. I don't know what it looks like yet. All I know is I can see it. But see, I can do all of that now instead of the dread of you want me to do what it's now. It's exciting because now I'm seeing it. It's energizing me because there's been so much healing and it was one baby step at a time one. And even on those days when I couldn't move, I still moved. And that's what self trust is. That's what's taking care of yourself. That's what stop moving does. That's with not beating yourself up because you need to rest. It's okay. I mean, I've given people permission and it's because I gave myself permission that if you want to be a boo for a day, then do it. Just go all in and just be in it. Just, you know, eat everything, gorge on TV, eat every junk food and enjoy every minute of it because what I promise you when you get done with that self pity thing that we love to do some days, there's two things that are going to happen. First of all, you're going to come out of it. You're going to feel better. Secondly, what I realized from that is that sometimes the body needs to heal and sometimes that's what the body needs to do to heal is just let it do what it needs to do. You give yourself 24 hours to be just this disgusting human being of whatever it is you think about yourself of people who gorge and binge on TV or whatever it is that you do, just do it. And then you'll watch how you feel the next day. I mean, you might not feel so good because of all the bad food you might have eaten, but you'll feel different. You'll feel better like you've released something because the body has to heal too. And that's the one thing that is never talked about in our society. The body has to heal too. You can have drive, you can have ambition, you can have goals, you can have all of that. But if your body's not working properly, you're not moving either. So when you allow the body to heal and allow the nervous system to speak and allow the little girl or the little boy to come out and talk to you, that's when the true healing begins. And you can think you're crazy because God knows I did. I thought I should have been institutionalized sometimes with the stuff that was coming out of my body. But when you listen to the body and you listen to how it's being said, a lot of times you're going to find it was the little you, the little girl, the little boy and how they perceive what happened to them. And what do you do when a child is injured? You love them. This is about you going back and loving you. It's time to stop beating yourself up. You didn't do anything wrong. Bad things may have happened to you. Bad things happen to me. But they don't define me. I'm learning from them. I'm healing from them. And I'm also gaining my power because of it. But it's about loving you, being patient with yourself and remembering you are so much much more than this meat suit. We're all the same. We all want the same things. I don't care what the color of your skin is. I don't care what your hair color is. I don't care what your religion is. I don't care what part of the world you live in. We all want the same thing. And the sooner that we come back and own that, the better off and the faster the changes on this planet will happen. That's why Bob Proctor said this once and it's like something I really want to live by. I want to be my own bank. And what he meant by that is why are we depending on everyone else for money when we can be our own bank? We're capable of generating whatever we want. We have the power within us. But as long as we allow the things that have stopped us, that are sitting in our bodies, it's never going to change. That detox did more for me than I can ever even imagine. I am still spinning of what that detox did. But it was perfect. It was the most perfect thing for me to do because my body started healing. I can heal the mind. I can heal what's going on in my heart and open it up. I could do all that. But if I can't don't know how to heal the body, I'm not moving. And that's the gift I want to bring to people to allow them to see. You didn't do anything wrong, and you are in control, and you can make the choice to make the change that you want for you, your family, and your world. And I want to thank you today for being here. I really do appreciate it. This is Kathleen Flanagan, and you don't have to carry this alone.