Trusting Your Self

I love sharing what I’m learning.

Yesterday I was listening to a half-hour Masterclass with Jamie Smart, author of Clarity and Results. This one was all about “Imposter Syndrome” 

Even if you haven’t heard the term, most people have had a taste of this experience. 

Have you ever heard the voices in your head saying: “Who am I to be doing this? Who cares what I say? Why should people listen to me? What do I know? It’s all a charade. I have no idea what I’m doing and people are certain to find out…” On and on and on it goes…

What Jamie Smart pointed out is that what we usually think of as “ourselves”, (“me”, “I”, “myself”) is a tangle of memories, circular thoughts, judgments, survival techniques, and all those limiting beliefs we’ve grown up and adopted. All that “stuff and baggage.”

We take these murky things that actually have no solid substance at all and paint a picture of “ourselves” with them in our heads.

I heard someone the other day call the voices in her head  “grooming tapes”. In her case, she was referring to the horrible, demeaning things an abuser would say to her to inculcate her into her abuse.

So of course we don’t trust ourselves! Why would we want to trust that? That bundle of anxiety and fear is completely untrustworthy. What Jamie Smart told us is that all that, in reality, is the Impostor. He says that “Impostor Syndrome is the idea that who you are is your ideas about yourself.

So…who can we trust? Or what can we trust?

I once sent a message telling a friend how nervous I was about a step I was about to take. Her quick two-word message back to me was “Trust Self.” (I don’t remember whether she capitalized that second word or not…but that’s how I see it in my head, right now.)

Trust Self. 

There is something beyond our “ideas” about ourselves. It lives in our breath, in our silence, in the simplicity of our being, in the naturalness of our authentic laugh. In our most graceful moments we can feel something resting way out beyond the tangle—something quiet and pure and absolutely not made-up. 

Some call it God or Allah or Jehovah or the Christ. Some call it Life or Nature. Some call it the Self…with that capital “S”, Some call it Awareness or Consciousness. Whatever we call it, we can trust the direct experience of that and our deep connection to that ever-flowing source of Creation. Always. 

Yesterday I was fretting about what I should do—to get ahead, to be productive, to make my life work. Today I am writing and posting this little piece. Why? Because that’s what feels good…and right…and organic…and delightful.