Making high stakes decisions is a drag if you don't trust yourself

Have you ever wished someone would simply tell you the right thing to do?

When faced with a significant decision and high stakes, do you ever find yourself seeking guidance and validation from friends, family, and colleagues, hoping to find direction? I certainly have. However, more often than not, this approach leaves me feeling frustrated and anxious, spinning in circles like a top. While seeking collaboration and external perspectives is essential, when it comes to personal decisions, particularly major ones, only you truly know what is right for yourself. No authority, institution, or even loved one can fully grasp what is best for you. The answer lies within you. However, uncovering your inner truth requires some effort to eliminate conditioning, the distractions of busyness, and the influence of comparing oneself to others. Your inner authority exists, but it may be buried beneath layers of mental and emotional clutter.

Then there are moments in life when you may have made big decisions or even big mistakes that frightened people or didn’t align with their perceptions of your well-being and future (cue parental judgment). In such instances, you might have internalized the criticism, whether it was loudly expressed as "I told you so, you should have..." or subtly conveyed through silent disapproval. Consequently, you may have become disconnected from your inner wisdom and self-trust.

We can’t trust ourselves, if we are terrified of failure. No one teaches us how to fail. Fear, the pressures of capitalism, the dominance of patriarchy, and our survival instincts gone awry all push us towards striving, producing, and pursuing perfection, progress, and accomplishment. But what about the incredible power of fucking up? We cannot learn and grow unless we make mistakes. Years ago, I read an article about a female CEO who credited her success to her father, who taught her to embrace making mistakes. Every evening at dinner, he would ask about the mistakes she had made that day and he would celebrate them! That, my friends, is parenting for the new paradigm.

Let's delve into our cultural obsession with perfectionism and the fear of making mistakes. Why do you suppose we are so fixated on perfectionism, looking good, and getting ahead? The answer lies in our late-stage capitalist culture, which prioritizes productivity and profit above well-being. We are instinct-driven creatures living in a world where our survival mechanisms have gone haywire. Our nervous systems are completely dysregulated, wired to seek acceptance and belonging in a culture that suppresses our internal needs and emotions in favor of striving, conforming, and keeping up with an inhuman pace of life. How often do you pause to feel your feelings? How often do you pause at all? Precisely.

We are sentient beings, and our minds and bodies need to be harmoniously integrated. We can thank René Descartes for the Cartesian Split, a concept he championed in the 17th century, which promoted the idea of mind-body duality—claiming that the mind and body were separate entities incapable of unity. Oh, René, what a legacy. Since then, we have culturally lived as if our minds and bodies lack any interconnectedness, disregarding the intelligence held within our bodies, which is where we sense our inner truth. The Industrial Revolution in the 18th century only solidified this mentality, paving the way for the capitalist mindset that we have all internalized.

The good news is that discovering your inner authority and learning to trust yourself is a gentle, liberating, and dare I say, enjoyable process. Of course, some effort is required, and you may need to confront discomfort along the way. But don't you long for true freedom? It is undeniably worth it. When you wholeheartedly trust yourself, the possibilities become boundless. Mistakes transform into guiding lights, teeming with juicy lessons and empowering insights. Here’s to failing forward together!