How I’m Building Self-Trust, And Why This Is My Late-2025 Priority
A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet
For this final half of 2025, I’m putting my energy into cultivating greater self-trust. Whilst I’ve been writing about personal growth now for 5 years, I’m still prone to bad mental health spells.
I’m in one right now: I’ve fallen back into old mental habits of overthinking past mistakes and fearing the future. A scarcity mindset, I’ve believed less and less in my unique capabilities and gifts.
In essence, I’ve lost the trust I had in myself.
Nathaniel Branden, writer of The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (a book I’m picking back up), says, “A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet” and lately my life has felt like I’m pushing up against a brick wall every day.
How can you move through life with ease when you’re in opposition to yourself?
How can you motivate yourself towards your goals if you don’t trust your ability to achieve them?
How can you even feel passionate?
It’s very hard.
It makes running a blog difficult. It makes showing up to the things you have to show up for a nuisance. It makes being happy and satisfied impossible, and it makes unhealthy distractions very tempting.
This is to say, building your self-trust is important. If you’re reading this and have been struggling with your self-confidence, are overreliant on others to make you feel good, and are fed up with not having your own back, cultivating self-trust will help.
Here’s how I’m rebuilding my self-trust.
I’m Letting Go Of The False Beliefs I Built Up That Said I Should Be Someone I’m Not (To feel safe).
I recently wrote an article on dismantling self-directed frustration and our need to grieve all we are not. When we lack self-trust, our sense of self will cling to things like our status at work, our manager’s expectations, the latest situationship, or what someone online thinks of us (who doesn’t even really know us).
Part of trusting yourself again is letting go of this external reliance — which will feel scary and uncomfortable at first because our Ego is under threat.
Take a note where you’re relying on someone else’s approval, and ask yourself why your own approval isn’t enough.
Moreover, allow yourself to feel through some of the difficult emotions that come up for you. I allowed myself to cry last week thinking about all the ways I’ve tried being someone I’m not, and how that isn’t working for me.
Grieve the person you’re not. Think of how you can honour your authentic parts. It’s OK to be different.
It was necessary for me to make peace with this reality to move on.
2. I’m Acting Like Someone Who Trusts Themself
This is a big one.
Self-trust is a chicken-and-egg game. Where do we start cultivating self-trust if we don’t believe in ourselves? Is it a case of some people have it, some don’t?
The people who seem to innately trust themselves were likely given the framework and support to build a life in alignment early on. Many of us don’t have this. Instead, we were conditioned into false selves propped up by an array of behaviours that we act out daily.
A cycle then ensues: We act out alignment because we don’t trust ourselves, which then erodes our self-trust further. Others or society at large might praise us for acting out of alignment, too, which only reinforces our reliance to act in such ways.
I know what I’m good at, and I know what makes me happy — but by acting out of alignment, I’ve felt further and further away from this intuitive sense of what is right or wrong for me.
Building self-trust means beginning to take actions that reflect your values; your authentic desires, wants and needs. By doing so, we strengthen our sense of self and begin to trust ourselves more.
This doesn’t mean we have to have it all figured out, either. Self-trust is built on our self-awareness and ability to care for ourselves through thick and thin.
Cultivating this self awareness and then acting on it will likely be hard. You will have mental blocks that try to stop you, but you know what?
It feels good to take care of yourself in spite of these things.
I feel great when I put time aside to work on a passion-project because it honours my authentic self. I might cry at the end of a breathwork session, but later feel good having done something good for myself.
By starting to take actions that reflect a more authentic self, and by giving ourselves what we need, we’ll build confidence and trust in ourselves over time.
Which brings me to my next point:
3. You Have To Have Your Own Back When Things Get Tough
Trusting yourself when everything is rosy is easy.
The real challenge comes when life gets hard.
Post breakup last year, my self-trust was put to the test: Do I care for myself when I’m hurt, or do I revert back to the Joe who lived by his regrets and destroyed his sense of self through constant self-criticism?
Unfortunately, I did the latter. I self-abandoned, I partied, drank lots of alcohol, and took drugs. I ruminated on the past for more hours than I could count, and I neglected the things that previously nourished me.
Things got ugly. Not trusting yourself will do that to your life, and you’ll suffer as a result.
That said, it’s in times of challenge that you really need to show up for yourself. This doesn’t mean absolving yourself from responsibility when things go awry, either. Shame and regret are important emotions for us to experience — so long as we don’t drown in them.
It means being the supportive caregiver you may not have had growing up.
It means having self-care tools and routines you can turn to when you need them or to build mental resiliance for when challenges come (which they will).
It means surrounding yourself with supportive and driven individuals who support your best self.