Listen to yourself.
When making a big decision, I used to look for an opinion from everyone in my life. My parents, sister, husband, friends… the list goes on and on. It took me a while, but I realized there was something deeper to this lack of self-assurance.
This is becoming an epidemic for many reasons. We can’t make choices ourselves anymore. We now not only consult the people around us, but also look for answers in the endless world of social media and, most recently, Chat GPT. What should I wear? What should I do for work? What should I look like? Where should I travel? What should I eat? What workout should I do? Again, the list goes on.
We look externally for answers to the most mundane questions, and then we start to lose our sense of knowing— that gut feeling that guides us down the right path. I believe that knowing is like a muscle- if you don’t use it, you lose it. You go from being a confident person with the ability to trust yourself to needing input for every little thing. It’s exhausting.
The worst part of it all? No one knows what’s best for you better than you do! We get advice from people looking at a situation from their perspective. We look for guidance in people who have no business guiding us. That’s not to say that advice is not given with the best of intentions; I’m simply saying that in the end, self-trust is more important than anything.
You are all you have in this world.
Read that again.
What I mean by that is not that you are here alone, with absolutely no support, but that your relationship with yourself is and will always be the most consistent and important one in your life. You have to live with every choice you make, good and bad. So shouldn’t those choices actually come from you?
I realized I was looking to others, not because I actually wanted their input, but because I would have someone else to blame if I made a bad decision. I had a fear of messing up, disappointing, and failing. It’s still something I struggle with at times, but I’m learning that the weight of regretting a choice that wasn’t even mine is so much heavier than the weight of messing up on my own terms.