Quick Read Summary:
Short on time? Here are the key takeaways:
• Trusting life often leads to better outcomes than constant doubt
• Childhood experiences can make trust difficult, but we can reframe these as adults
• Three questions to help doubt your doubts:
1. Are my doubts really protecting me?
2. What possibilities are my doubts hiding from me?
3. What actions would I take if I trusted life to be "for" me?
• Start small: Choose one area to practice trusting life and see what unfolds.
Full Length Article:
Why Doubts Are Dangerous
If you're struggling to trust life, challenge the idea that your doubts are keeping you safe. The biggest problem with doubt is it keeps us focused on what we don't want - and what we focus on expands. In the past, the more I focused on doubts, the less I achieved.
One of the worst and most traumatic experiences of my young life occurred in the dentist’s chair. I was only four years old, and I don’t remember what he did to me that was so painful. He had a practice of taking a photo with his patients after their treatment. You should see the photo! He has a big smile on his face. My face is tear stained. After years of painful disconnection, it makes sense that many adults have trust issues.
Children are so vulnerable because they can’t take care themselves, and their parents may not be very good caretakers as well. I remember when I was pregnant, I prepared by reading lots of books. Then she was born. Suddenly I was responsible for this tiny life. I was quickly overwhelmed. If even the best intended parents fail and make serious mistakes, how is a child supposed to learn to trust?
"Children need secure relationships to thrive. When they are deprived of consistent love and care, their ability to trust is profoundly compromised." —John Bowlby, Psychologist
Children typically believe that everything wrong is their fault, and repeated punishment of their choices inadvertently trains them not to trust themselves.
The helplessness that children feel and the relative powerlessness they experience due to their lack of control make trust difficult, leading many adults find it hard to trust themselves, life, and other people. Fortunately, as adults we do have the power to make new choices about the meaning of our past experiences. By adopting an empowered perspective, we can let go of the “victim” identity and reclaim our power.
Reframe Your Past To Take Back Your Power
One of the most empowering experiences we can have as adults is discovering that we can reclaim our power by reinterpreting our past. My dad told me that it was my job to make him happy. This requirement set me up to be a first-class people pleaser with major trust issues. Instead of trying to change myself to please others, I now accept that I can be myself. Not everyone will like me, but those who do, like the real me. I don’t need everyone to like me to feel good about who I am. My identity has been transformed by reframing my painful childhood experiences from an adult perspective.
Instead of a victim identity, I have learned to interpret those tough experiences in terms of positive qualities that those same experiences taught me. I am a compassionate and caring adult because I know firsthand that people have had painful experiences which shaped them into the adults they are today.
"The only way to find true trust is to risk being completely shattered. And the only way to do this is to remember that our past does not define us, it is only a lesson." —Simon Sinek
I have learned to trust myself to cope with life as it comes. If I am betrayed by someone, I know I can count on myself to learn from what happened and make better choices next time. I also know that life will support me as needed when I focus on opportunities and unseen possibilities.
I have the maturity to use setbacks to help me grow and actualize more of my potential. I choose to see life as happening for me, rather than to me. This makes me much more optimistic and able to identify opportunities more easily. I am more likely to take effective action toward realizing my desires because I don’t allow doubts to defeat me.
Choose An Empowered Focus
Scientists have proven that what we focus upon expands. When I focus on what I don’t want, I seem to get more of it. My doubts create paralysis, leaving me feeling stuck, which is not the result I wanted.
Years ago, I paid a lot to have an app developed. I doubted anyone would like it. Just before the app was shut down, the developer emailed me that the app had been downloaded over 15,000 times! I knew nothing of this. My doubt blinded me to the tremendous success that was occurring. This doubt was one of the biggest ways I sabotaged my success as an entrepreneur.
As I have learned to focus on what I want, and trust that life is flowing my desires toward me, I have been getting the results I was seeking. I now understand that doubts are dangerous. I was raised to believe my doubts would protect me, when, in fact, they endanger me the most! Isn’t that ironic?
"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."—Marcus Aurelius
I was widowed in 2017. I thought I could never love again. I felt too old to be attractive and too afraid to get back in the dating game. I heard too many stories of scam artists preying on widows.
Eventually, I decided to join a dating site. True to my fears, I had some scary experiences, including being stalked, and having to call the police when he showed up pounding on my door at midnight. Though my confidence was shaken, I made it through that night.
Despite several very upsetting experiences, I had a strong intuitive urge to join a different site. Within 2 weeks, I met the man I have now been in a relationship with for the past 3 years. If I had used those bad experiences to decide I couldn’t trust life, I would never have known the joy of finding love again.
Trusting Life Creates More Flowing Experiences
The more I relax into life and trust it, the more I seem to more easily move toward my desired results. Even though I am working hard, I often experience my efforts as play. Who knew life could be like this?
Last summer I ran a five-day challenge. It was hard, but enjoyable, work. The vulnerability of delivering the 5-day content was a real test. The participants’ appreciation and thanks provided a huge reward. By contrast, I’ve struggled with a lack of response on social media. My doubts caused me to think it was a waste of time so I quit. Instead of accepting that social media often takes a lot of unrewarded effort before gaining any traction, I interpreted my results as evidence that people didn’t like me, which was foolish.
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
—Steve Jobs
Powerful doubts kept me in a vicious holding pattern instead of slowly building a following on social media. When I did the 5-day challenges, I pushed through my doubts, trusted the process, and the rewards were great.
It isn’t easy for me to share my personal experiences with strangers, but their appreciation and gratitude pushed me into an upward spiral of trust in others and trust in life. This inspired me to run the challenge two more times, each with better results, more gratitude from the participants.
The best moment was when one of my students from the first challenge came back a second time, looking for even better results. The testimonial that she gave, completely unsolicited by me, was incredibly powerful and gave me even more incentive to keep sharing. These positive experiences gave me a helped me trust life and other people at a higher level. Knowing women’s lives were better for my efforts filled me with joy and fulfillment.
Three Great Questions To Help You Doubt Your Doubts and Trust Life
Are your doubts really keeping you safe, or are they holding you back from pursuing the life of your dreams? If you are struggling to trust life and doubt your doubts, you’re not alone!
What if challenging your doubts could open doors to opportunities that you never imagined could come your way? Use these powerful questions to challenge your doubts and take a chance by trusting life.
1. Are my doubts really protecting me?
Because of the way I was raised, I never examined my belief that my doubts were protecting me. I didn’t realize the doubts were dangerous because they kept me in a loop of inaction. Sure, I was safe from haters and scammers, but my life lacked fulfillment and the joy of contribution. Far from protecting me, my doubts were costing me the life I am now enjoying. Don’t waste another day believing your doubts. Act on your dreams today.
2. What possibilities are my doubts hiding from me?
Because I felt safer believing my doubts, I had blinders on. it didn’t occur to me that life might be sending possibilities my way. I now suspect they were there all along, hidden behind the curtain of doubt. One client I coached had gone through a bankruptcy and was struggling to find her way forward. As the result of doubting her doubts she found new opportunities were showing up almost daily. Within a year, she had established a new and improved business model, and was well on her way to having a very profitable enterprise. Had she listened to her doubts, she would never have found this way forward.
3. What actions would I take if I trusted life to be “for” me?
This question can lead to good things coming your way. I see this frequently with my coaching clients. They are surprised by unexpected opportunities that appear when they give life a chance. One executive I worked with 10xed her business’s profitability in one quarter because she trusted life enough to say “yes” to unexpected opportunities.
Trusting life is a choice whose benefits are revealed after the choice is made. When I trusted my doubts, my results seemed to justify doubting life. However, I’ve learned that life responds to us in kind. The more I’ve chosen to trust, the more life has shown me it can be trusted. Give life a chance to show you that it can work for you. I predict you will be surprised at the doors that open when you approach life with trust instead of doubt. Each small step of trust can lead to bigger opportunities and a more fulfilling life.
I hope I have convinced you that trusting life is the safest and smartest choice you can make. We all have challenges in our childhoods that justify doubting that life, but as adults we have an opportunity to see these circumstances from a higher perspective.
Learning to reframe our past, give up the habitual interpretations of victimization that we have fallen into, and trusting life will change your world in dramatic ways. While not every choice you make will be perfect, you can train yourself to learn from every experience.
As you learn and try again, you will find that life is getting behind your efforts and bringing new possibilities into view. With courage and the willingness to say “yes” to life, you may find yourself actualizing your full potential and having the life of your dreams.
Start today: Choose one area of your life where your doubts have been in control. Apply the questions we've discussed and take one small action to demonstrate your trust in life. You might be surprised at what life has to offer you.
Have you had an experience where trusting life led to unexpected positive outcomes? I'd love to hear about it in the comments! And if you found this article helpful, why not share it with a friend who might benefit from these insights? Your story could inspire others, and sharing could help someone take their first step towards trusting life more.
Doubt is huge. You really unpacked it with so much clarity.
I never thought about checking to see if I thought that was protecting me from some thing and then to look further how is it protecting me at all?
Wonderful essay
I’m new here as well and I imagine that you could break this into smaller chunks for notes and lead people to the larger article. I could be wrong but given attention spans these days?
I’ll see you at the campfire !🔥
Kristin, what an amazing deep dive into doubt and how it holds us back - AND how we can be empowered to push past it!
I like this alot!