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- [00:00]
Gemma Spaeg
This is an iHeart podcast. This is Jemma Spaeg from the psychology of your 20s. So you can't get the trip out of the group chat. We have all been there, but did you know there may be an easy solution. EF Ultimate Break is a group travel company for 18 to 35 year olds with over 140 itineraries all over the world. Just sign up and recruit six or more friends for a trip. You will save hundreds or even thousands of dollars. You could even travel for learn more@ef ultimate break.com that's EF ultimate break.com and turn the group chat into a group trip. I truly don't think I have ever had as many events as I do right now. And N's shower cream has been not just a lifesaver but a time saver as well. Because I don't know about you, I just can't be bothered with shaving anymore. Especially as I've been trying to move house and do a million other things. Nair is the number one hair removal brand and their body and shower creams. Firstly, they actually smell delicious. Whilst working so well to get rid of all of my hair. When I'm tight on time, I use the shower cream infused with coconut oil. And it's also so gentle on my skin. I feel so silky afterwards. And it's free of dyes, parabens, phthalates and sulfates. So get ready for summer buy now at all major retailers. Please welcome aboard the Johnson family.
- [01:24]
Commercial Announcer
The whole fam's here for the Disney cruise. So you know we came to play. And listen. The adults are gonna have a ball. First we're chilling in the infinity pool onto massages at Sense's Spa. Then gliding into Star Wars Hyperspace lounge for a toast. We're even gonna kick back with Mickey on Disney's private island. That's how we get down. Cause Disney Cruise Line is where we came to play.
- [01:51]
Gemma Spaeg
What happens when Delta Air Lines sends four creators around the world to find out what is the true power of travel? It's these small moments of intention, right? Not just people to places and destinations. It's connecting people to other people, other cultures and ultimately experiences that can't be replicated. Find out more about how travel can support wellbeing on this special episode of the Psychology of your twenties presented by Delta. Fly and live Better listen wherever you get your podcasts. In our 20s, we are basically constantly evolving emotionally, hormonally, and yes, even our skin. I've been using Primally Pure's soothing mist and Clarifying serum. And it has changed how I approach skincare. It's not about control or perfection, it's about support. Primally pure is female, founded, clean and rooted in simplicity. Go to www.p r I m a l l y p u r e dot com, use my code GEMMA15 and get 15 off. Your skin deserves care that matches your growth.
- [02:58]
Commercial Announcer
Foreign.
- [03:03]
Gemma Spaeg
And welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our twenties. If you have been around for a little while, you might remember that at the start of each year, I kind of like to set a theme for the next 12 months to come as part of, like, our welcome to the New Year like podcast series that I do every new year for 2025. This year's intention. It was the year for trusting yourself, which to me I think really meant, like, letting yourself be a little bit afraid, trusting yourself in situations you haven't been before, honoring your intuition, amongst many other things. And today I wanted to kind of return to that new year pledge and do like, a check in for like, the final. What is it? Like, final third of the year. I'll be honest, and I said this in the initial episode. Trusting myself is something I've always struggled with. I can think of so many moments where I knew deep down what was the right decision for me, but I still asked five other people what they thought or I still hesitated. Everything from when I wanted to break up with my first boyfriend to literally, like, the other week I was at IKEA and I was like, trying to decide what lamp to buy. This, like, opinion shopping that I often do either leads me to an outcome that I don't really want, not because of the other people, but because of me, or it takes me so much longer to act on things that were pretty emotionally and time sensitive. And later on I look back and I think, why did I not just listen to myself? Like, in hindsight it was so clear what I wanted. It was so clear what I was being called to do. And I just didn't have that sense of trust that I actually was making the right decision or that I could trust my intuition. Maybe you have been here too. That kind of like the tug of war between your own instincts and the pressure of outside voices. It's definitely not easy, especially in your 20s, when I feel like we'd all just love for someone to give us the answer and to, like, kind of play your life for you like a video game. But what I've learned is that trusting yourself doesn't actually mean you're always going to get it right. The same way that if you put someone else in charge of your life, they wouldn't always get it right either. It doesn't guarantee an outcome. What it really does is just give a sense of, I trust myself, which means I'm going to be fine anyways. And as I always say, the opposite of anxiety isn't calm. It's actually trust. So building that internal anchor and that internal system and process is, like, one of the most crucial things that we can do during this decade. So in today's episode, we're going to dive into why self trust is honestly so hard. How trust can be the antidote to a lot of innate fears that this decade of life brings up for us, and how we can kind of rebuild the connection with our. This inner voice that we all have. Even if you can't hear it very clearly right now, how can we rebuild that relationship using some essential psychology tools. I really hope that you guys enjoyed this episode, because if there's one relationship that's going to carry you through life, it is the one you have with yourself and learning to trust that person, the one who will make every decision for you, be with you for every outcome, see you through every setback that is going to make you feel a lot more capable. So without further ado, let's get into how we can fully trust ourselves. Trust is one of those words we, I think, tend to place in the hands of others a lot. You know, we talk about whether we can, like, trust our friends, whether our partners are trustworthy, whether, like, the people we've worked with have, like, gained our confidence, whether we can, like, trust politicians. Trust is like this leap of faith for another person where if you're wrong, you can obviously fall pretty far. But the deeper, more unsettling question that's often left unasked is, do I trust myself? Not only do I trust myself in my judgments of those people, but do I actually believe that I can rely on my own judgment, my own instincts, my own ability to handle whatever life is going to bring me? Or is it the case that I kind of hide behind other people's opinions, hide behind indecision, hide behind kind of doing nothing for many of us, especially in our 20s, you know, the answer is we probably don't trust ourselves fully. I, at least I go back and forth sometimes feeling like I'm so in my element, I'm so prepared for whatever. Whatever happens in life. And other times, like just really feeling like the wind could blow me over. And that's not because we're weak or incapable. It's because our 20s are like, uniquely challenging to the self trust. We've talked about this term before. Emerging adulthood. This is a term that was coined by the developmental psychologist Jeffrey Arnott, and he uses it to describe how uniquely tumultuous this period of our lives is and how we are kind of playing what he calls a roleless role, often shifting by hour, by day, by week, between different perspectives and essentially different versions of ourselves and trying to find the right ones or one against like the backdrop of some pretty life. Defining choices. Meaning that you are sometimes going to make wrong choices according to the future version of you. Sometimes you're going to make wrong choices that later on you might regret. That doesn't mean you can't trust yourself. It means that you made the best decision at the time with what you knew now, and you made the best decision at the time with the identity that you thought was most true to yourself. But that doesn't always help. We don't always have that perspective. We can actually be rather cruel to our past selves and, and about the decisions that we're currently making. And it means that we can feel kind of alienated from our own selves. Like, why did I think that was a good idea? You know, how did I end up here? Why did I think that was a good decision? That's like a classic thing in our 20s, especially as we get into our later 20s, of like, wow, why did I wear that? Why did I D that person? Why did I say that thing? Why did I take that job? Not remembering that, you know, at the time that's what felt like the right thing to do. It's all part of it. There's also this undercurrent of fear and kind of like, what if? Thinking that definitely stalks a lot of the decisions that we're making. This really does injure our self trust because we're constantly thinking, you know, what if I'm wrong right now? What if I can't handle the consequences? What if, you know, this one Choice and the 10 Years of Choices that it leads me to mean that I end up having a lot of regrets or I regret my life as a whole. That's a classic for me. Feeling Like I can't trust myself right now because I don't have certainty around how the decision I'm currently making is going to like impact me in the future. And I'm sure a lot of us are very familiar with this. I think one of the most paralyzing experiences of our twenties is just this general anxiety we have about the future. Someone said this to me the other day and I love it. Anxiety basically thrives in the gap between what we can't control and what we think we can't handle. If the world is uncertain and spoiler alert, it is, and your brain believes you're helpless, which you're not, anxiety has a lot of room to operate. You're not helpless. Even if you do end up making a few wrong choices, even if you do have moments of fear, literally, there are people who come back from hugely destructive, life altering decisions and still live out incredible lives. You will as well. I know this probably won't do much to ease your anxiety though, and that's because cognitive behavioral models of anxiety really talk about how there is this vicious cycle when it comes to our lack of trust in the future. Anxious people, I count myself as one of them. We constantly overestimate the threats in the environment or in the future, whilst also underestimating our inability to cope. And because we seriously do not acknowledge how much power we really have and how much resilience we really have, it just feels like anything we catastrophize about any big life altering thing we can imagine, each of them could just like be the end of us. And we don't give ourselves enough credit for the fact that like, we will probably be okay. Not only will a lot of that stuff probably not happen, but you are a lot more capable in those times of crisis or even in those times of just like a little bit of negativity than you think you are. The antidote to that spiral, of course, is once again self trust. And that's sometimes the thing that feels the hardest in those moments. But it is the truest anchor you can find. A recent study, I think it was conducted last year at a university in South Korea, looked at around 800 participants and it looked at what the most effective emotional antidote to anxiety was. They looked at things like hope, they looked at things like happiness, they looked at things like trust. And what what they found was not only did trust actually end up improving hope and improving happiness and reducing anxiety, but self trust in particular was most influential compared to trust in others or trust in an organization or a trust in A God or a religion, Self trust, which was basically measured by like confidence in our abilities, belief in our abilities, self respect. It was the most influential thing measured in this study for improving anxiety. And yet I don't think it gets mentioned much in the literature when you trust yourself. I think the secondary thing that we've kind of been coming to is that you stop needing certainty and outcomes which you're never going to find find anyways. You know, you don't have to know exactly how a situation will unfold because you know you can handle it. So it takes a lot of the worry away. So often I think we get like swept up in this idea that the antidote to anxiety is control. If I could just predict or manage every possible outcome well, I'd feel safe. If I just knew exactly how this situation would pan out, I wouldn't worry. And so control becomes kind of like a red herring that we are like constantly chasing, not realizing that it is entirely an illusion and what keeps us really deeply entrenched in an exhausting, anxious pattern of thinking. It is like looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That's how I always think about it. Trust, on the other hand, unlike certainty, is real. It is the rainbow, it is practical, it is actionable, and it turns the focus away from external to internal. We no longer need the illusion of certainty or trying to seek reassurance from others to know that we'll be okay. Instead we can be really secure in the knowledge that whatever happens, you're going to be okay. And in that anxiety, like it doesn't have anything left, like it really loosens its grip because it's like, okay, maybe we can't predict when the army will attack, but it doesn't matter because like my forces, my emotional forces, my forces of resilience are super strong. So if self trust is so vital, why do so many of us lack it? This is pretty multi layered. I think the first reason is because yes, there isn't that focus. It's also not taught for some of us. You know, it's going to sound so cliche, but it always does seem to stretch back to childhood. If you grew up in an environment where your opinions weren't respected, where you were shamed for your mistakes or your feelings were dismissed, you may have internalized the message that your instincts, your relationship to your emotions, you know, when you really do require help, like all of those messages can't be trusted. Eric Erickson, we talk about him again a lot. He's very famous. He developed the eight stages of psychosocial development. Back in the 50s, he basically suggested and noted that of all the stages that we go through from when we're a child to when we're an adult, one of the most important ones is this trust versus mistrust stage. This takes place like around 18th, 18 months to like 2 years old. And according to him, this period is so crucial because it's when our view of the world and ourselves and our personalities and our abilities are really shaped. Even if we don't have memory, memory of that time at this age when, you know, we are completely dependent on our caregivers. And so how our parents obviously interact with us has a big impact. Aspects that can really build a sense of trust are things like the caregiver creating a safe environment for us to make mistakes or our caregivers being attentive to our needs or offering reassurance when we are scared or distressed, basically saying like, oh, you're having a reaction, you're having an emotion, you're having a feeling. Well, that must mean something. And so by building trust in them and knowing that they're going to give that feeling attention or some kind of solution, we also build trust in ourselves. You know, hopefully that kind of makes sense. Of course, you know, things wouldn't have been perfect all the time. You know, when a baby cries sometimes it is really hard to figure out what's wrong. But it's really about whether the trustworthy relationships and interactions that we had outweighed the untrustworthy ones. If the positive does outweigh the bad, then according to Erickson, this gives us, this gives infants a good sense of how to trust themselves as well and how to trust the world around them all through that primary relationship. However, if bad interactions outweigh the good, if untrustworthy interactions outweigh the trustworthy ones, and you know, we as children haven't yet been able to rationalize why that may be. We instead, as he suggests, begin to internalize that completely, begin to turn it inward, begin to believe we're unimportant, we're unlovable, and also that we can't trust those around us. We also can't trust ourselves or we can only trust ourselves. We lean towards hyper independence, which can actually be equally unhealthy because hyper independence actually isn't necessarily about self trust. It's again about control. Hyper independence is about feeling like the only person you can rely on is you because you don't trust yourself in situations where you do need like a broader set of skills. So I don't know if that makes sense to me. It definitely does. And like I think about that, I'm like, oh, yep, that definitely sits. But it's just important to understand how like along the way think of trust as like this tree that has like that needs to have really deep roots in order to stand tall in adulthood and you know, in our 20s. And if at any point something has poisoned those roots or something has made you believe that this tree is shakeable, that you don't find support in the trunk of it, like it's going to deeply injure you and harm you. Another significant element of this is perfectionism. You can really see that like what we're not, we're not just talking about self trust again, we're talking about this competition between control and a reliance on ourselves. At first I think perfectionism can actually kind of seem like trust, much like hyper independence, right? Like we prove to ourselves that we are capable through pushing beyond what we imagine. We strive for excellence and often this excellence is rewarded. We prove that we can trust our abilities. But if we believe our self worth is conditional on never failing, every single mistake becomes proof that you can't trust yourself. And so you have to apply more pressure, you have to apply more force onto yourself to keep meeting your standard. This inner critic becomes a lot louder in your 20s when I think the stakes become a lot higher and you begin to feel even an even greater sense of responsibility for your actions. Because again, it's not about making the right decision that will continue to work out in the future forever and ever. It's just about being able to make a decision at all. And often perfectionism is master's procrastination, which again is an indicator of a lack of self trust. If you cannot make a decision because you do not have confirmation that everything isn't going to turn out absolutely perfectly how you would like it, you are going to procrastinate on that decision. You're going to experience major decision paralysis. That's your perfectionism at play. Again, it shows that deep down you don't really think that you're capable of handling what might come if you can't predict or control the outcome from the get go. I think also as a culture we're also conditioned to outsource authority. And that further kind of damages this tree or this compass or however you want to visualize it. You know, algorithms these days tell us what to buy. I don't know about you, but like I'm just buying the first thing that shows up when I Google it. Like I don't really like trust myself to know what I want sometimes, you know, career guides tell us what the best route is and what our dream job will be. Self help books give us like the perfect formula if you can just bring yourself to follow it. You know, advice isn't bad in itself, but when we rely on it too much, we really do forget how to hear our own voice. And over time, the silence of that voice feels like its absence when really it's just like waiting for us to tune back in. These external factors, perfectionism, childhood, outsourcing, authority, they all kind of play into each other to make it really difficult to break out and to just like come back to what is a deep human intuition that we all have. This is the other thing. Self trust also means reconnecting with like a really ancient information system and a really ancient intuitive system that perhaps we've kind of forgotten and that perhaps we kind of don't have time to listen to because we are so busy, because we are required to make such urgent choices. Because the stakes of this, like modern day feel very fast. Intuition is not always going to be the most urgent voice in the room. It might actually be the most calm. It might also need a little bit more time to rise to the surface. And I know that sounds counter to what you may expect or imagine intuition as, which is like that immediate reaction or response to something happening in your environment that tells you that you're in danger. But the intuition we're talking about is like a sense of like the intuition around a deeper sense of self. And I think in like a modern context, we don't. That intuitive sense of self doesn't have as much breathing room. And so of course when we're constantly pushed into making quick, urgent decisions or wanting to outsource our decision making again, that muscle, that self trust muscle, atrophies and continues to weaken. So we're going to talk about why that is, but also how we can rebuild that muscle, how we can re hear. I don't know what, what's the right word? How we can, I guess, tune back into this like deep pool of self knowledge and self trust that we all innately have after this short. Okay, listeners, if you've listened to my recent episode on how I want to break up with my phone, you will know I'm trying to be a lot more conscious about just how much time I spend in front of a screen. Specifically blue light from my laptop, from my tv and of course my phone as well. Blue light damage it doesn't just happen to your eyes, it also impacts your skin as well. Nature Sunshine's Marine Glow is the only collagen product clinically proven to protect against blue light whilst supporting both skin and eye health. It's basically a simple, effective drink you can take at any time, made from the most natural ingredients Earth has to offer and it honestly, it tastes like tropical delicious goodness. Let me tell you, I have seen my skin become so much more hydrated, brighter, it just feels healthier. I also love that Nature Sunshine is committed to products that support people and the planet. Protect your eyes and skin against harmful blue light effects with Marine Glow. Get 20 off your first order and free shipping by using checkout code psych@naturesunshine.com that's code psych@natureatureaturesunshine.com this is Sophia from OK Storytime.
- [25:23]
Music Show Host
The wait is over. The next up Live Music finals are here on September 26th. TikTok Live and iHeartRadio bring you the biggest night in live music streaming directly from the legendary iHeartradio radio theater in LA. The top 12 artists you've been following will take the spotlight for one career defining performance judged by music gurus and industry powerhouses Tom Pullman, Chief programming officer at iHeartRadio, Bianna Murphy, program director of 102.7 Kiss FM Justina Valentine from MTV's Wild N Out and viral guitarist John dredda hosted by JoJo on the radio and EJ from 102.7 Kiss FM. This is the ultimate showdown. The judges will crown the next up live music winner and you have the power to decide who takes home the people's choice. You don't miss a second. Watch it all unfold live on TikTok on September 26th from 7 to 9pm Pacific Time only on the official TikTok handle at Tik Tok Live. Underscore us again. That's at Tik Tok Live. Underscore us together. Let's witness the birth of the next music superstar.
- [26:25]
Gemma Spaeg
This is Gemma Spag from the psychology of your 20s so you can't get the trip out of the group chat. We have all been there but did you know there may be an easy solution. EF Ultimate Break is a group travel company for 18 to 35 year olds with over 140 itineraries all over the world. Just sign up and recruit six or more friends for a trip. You will save hundreds or even thousands of dollars. You could even travel for free. Learn more@efultimatebreak.com. that's efultimatebreak.com and turn the group chat into a group trip. My life has been chaotic recently, to say the least. And with so many events going on at the moment, my friend's weddings, my book tour, I'm also moving house. The last thing I have time for is shaving. That is where Nair's shower cream comes in because it saves me so much time. And bonus, it also smells delicious. Nair is the number one hair removal brand, so you know their stuff works. And their hair removal shower cream uses natural extracts for its scents. So things like coconut oil, almond oil, lavender, they smell delicious. It's fast, like the length of your shower fast, maybe even quicker. And it's super easy to use as well. It's also, and this is a big thing for me, free of dyes, parabens, phthalates, sulfates, and dermatologist tested. Which is probably why it leaves my skin feeling so insanely silky. Here's the other reason. I've been really over shaving and I hate when I end up like cutting or nicking my skin. And I also feel like I end up missing spots anyway. So I'm kind of like, what's the whole point of this? But with Nair's shower cream, I have never had that problem. I just need you to try it out for yourself. My friends were actually over the other day and I had some in my shower and they were like, what is this? And they tried it out almost as a joke, but I'm fairly sure all of them left with that on their shopping list because that stuff works. Nez hair removal shower cream. Get ready for summer. You can buy it now at all major retailers. Okay, ladies, when I said we came to play, didn't I mean it? This Disney cruise got me feeling like a queen. We can get massages at Sense of Spa, have a meet and greet with Black Panther. Oh, I love him. And I can't wait to sunbathe on the private island. And the kids are be fine, girl. They're good. Exactly. While they hang in the kids club with Mickey Mouse, we can do our thing and do it well all day. Disney cruise line is where we came to play. I think if we want to learn how to implement self trust into our lives, we need to first really understand like, what that actually looks and feels like. I think it can be tricky to describe because like, unlike external trust, where you can kind of of assess how reliable someone is by past performance, sometimes we aren't as objective with ourselves. So here's your kind of guide to I guess what it feels like. Firstly, self trust means following through on promises. If you say you'll stop work at 6pm, you actually do it. If you commit to calling your friend because they matter to you, you follow through. If you set a goal, if you set a boundary for your well being, whether that's blocking someone, saying no to a draining event, knowing when you need to take a break, you don't abandon yourself for the sake of approval. You really understand that you are the one who understands yourself the most. A really famous psychologist, Carl Rogers, he described this as congruence, which is basically when what you feel on the inside aligns with how you show up on the outside. This is less about perfectionism, it's less about about consistency, it's less about control. The knowledge that you can count on yourself the same way, maybe even more than you want to count on others, is just like this very deeply stable, calm feeling that like there is someone who has your back and that person is you. I think self trust actually I know self trust also feels like compassion. Think about it. If you constantly punish yourself when things go wrong, which they will, why would you ever risk trying again? If you keep beating yourself up when you make a mistake because you literally didn't know any better, that doesn't sound like someone who trusts that they're going to be okay even if it's not right now. But in the end, self trust, if you want to build it, it looks like speaking to yourself with the same tone you would use with a really close friend or with, you know, your baby s with your childhood self. Instead of saying like oh my God, I should have known better. I'm such an idiot. This was like totally avoidable. It's more like saying, yeah, that was really hard and this is a great opportunity to learn. And in those self directed moments of gentleness, you deepen that bond. The way that a child would respond to gentle parenting. Or like someone who lets them make errors and therefore allows them to test their boundaries more, allows them to trust themselves more because they know they are in safe company. The world can be really critical and really judgmental. Like if you're looking for someone to hate on you, if you're looking for someone to tear you down, you can find someone like that pretty easily. So let someone else take care of the harshness, Let someone else be your bully. The least that we can do for ourselves is to have our own backs. Self trust gives you the freedom, I think, to make choices without guaranteeing outcomes or demanding guarantees. Imagine like you're standing in front of two job offers. This is actually an example that was given to me by a listener at one of our live shows recently where she asked, she asked me, you know, I've got these two job offers, I've just graduated university. One is super safe and predictable, one is really risky, but it's super exciting. She was talking about how she's kind of been sitting on these offers for over a month out of fear that she would make the wrong choice, out of fear that that wrong choice would then spiral and ruin her life. Trust me, it's actually harder to ruin your life than you think. And really like what I said to her was that not making a decision is the worst decision that you can make. The thing is, is that the fact that you care so much shows that even if you make the so called wrong choice, you are still going to be able to act on your future interests in like a way that will guarantee you will come back to the right choice. What I mean by that is that you obviously care a lot about your life and you care a lot about making it a good life. So it's not like that's gonna go away and disappear just because you make a choice that maybe wasn't right. Also, there's no way of knowing if the other choice would have been better. But say you're really unhappy in the risky job, say you're really unhappy in the safe job. That's not the end of your options. That's not the end of your ability to change things or to make a different decision. You are going to be okay because you have that sense of investment and care, because you trust yourself. You trust that you will not abandon yourself. That's perhaps, you know, the deepest sign of self trust. It's resilience. That's really what I'm describing, resilience. There is a developmental psychologist, and I cannot remember her name, but she calls resilience ordinary magic. You know, it's not superhuman. It's not like wild to come by. Very regular, normal people recover, adapt, grow from decisions that didn't work out in their favor all the time. And having resilience is kind of just having the ability to just acknowledge a bad outcome, acknowledge that it sucks, and say okay. Is ruminating on this and obsessing over this actually going to change anything or help me? Probably not. The best way I can learn from this, the best way I can move on is to integrate what I've learned. Retune, that deep intuition that I have. Retune or you know, in hindsight, rethink about the signs that were there or weren't there and keep trying. I think as well. And I keep saying this, but I just want to reinforce it. Self trust is really just a sense of calm. And that's why I think that it is the opposite of anxiety. Anxiety. I. Anxiety wants to like, shift everything into high gear. And it wants you to get somewhere as fast as possible. It wants you to get the answers as fast as possible. And if it doesn't feel like you're moving, well, it's gonna, like, it's gonna put a bit of a spark in you to do that. And I think that's where like a lot of that, you know, very quintessential anxiety, anxious feeling comes from. It wants to rush you, it wants you to be urgent. It wants you to just, like, figure things out, even if it's not the best decision for you. Self trust feels like calm in comparison. It really is a physical sensation of just like, feeling like your feet are firmly planted, feeling like you're going to be okay, feeling like you do have some kind of like invisible armor not against the bad things, but against being sunk by those bad things. So the good news is that self trust isn't something you either have or you don't have. It's not something you're born with. It's not like some genetic blessing, like we said. It's ordinary magic. And it's something that you can build through daily choices, through small experiments, through conscious reflection, even when it might bring up some hard stuff that you don't want to look at. I think something really helpful to get us back in touch with this internal compass. Compass and our self trust is again just to like, check back in with your intuition instead of jumping into a choice, pause, acknowledge the anxiety, or acknowledge the indecision. And just ask yourself, what does my gut tell me in this, in this moment is the right move? And what is an even deeper part of myself? Tell me about my abilities and my capabilities, even if it isn't. When you face a decision, take a minute, take a few days, even if this is for something as small as what you want for dinner or what activity you want to do that day. Write down your initial instinct, step away from it for a second, come back to it, and perhaps act on it before you seek external advice and see what the consequences are. See, like, learn from the consequences. Instead of seeing the consequences as punishment, think about the reasons that you often trust others. It's likely that the reason you do is because they're kind because they're consistent because they keep promises because they show up for you. These are all things that we need to start doing for ourselves. Start with some super small, simple promises that you can make to yourself. If you've been wanting to get fit up, promise yourself that you will go to the gym twice a week or that you will go on one run this week. This is something that I've been doing a lot. I'm training for like a half marathon at the moment. And you know what? It's not very fun. I actually really don't enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to, but I made a commitment and it has been like this beautiful exercise in being like, okay, I'm going to follow through with things that I decide to do. The same way that I would want someone else to follow through if they'd made a promise to me. Keep the promise. Keep the promise. Don't let yourself down. Don't let yourself feel less worthy of your time and your energy than someone else. You know, by having this kind of respect for ourselves in these small ways, we do really start to strengthen the narrative that like us and our unconscious or our subconscious, us and the parts that sometimes actually want to act against us. We are a team, we can work together, we can make things happen and we can survive the things that we didn't necessarily want to happen but happened anyways. Next come the small scale experiments. I always say this and I will continue to do so. Life is not a recipe. I think that there is this. When you think about how life is sometimes described, it definitely has this like A to B to C idea. Like you do this and then once you've done that, you do that and then once you've done that, you do this. And like there's a. There is a right way to go about things. And no, it's not a recipe, it's a series of experiments. It's a series of experiments where you are the subject. And whether these things work out or not, it doesn't matter. Like, it still teaches us things sometimes. Like, the most successful experiments in science are the ones that don't work out because both of those outcomes contain information. So you need to be experimenting, you need to be seeing like your life is a series of smaller chapters and opportunities to redirect yourself rather than just this like one long linear continuous line where you know you have to make the right decision every single step of the way, otherwise the line is broken. Totally not the case. Self trust, I think really grows in Active practice. I think it can be super helpful to choose low stakes decisions where you can follow through on your instincts or just test them. Try new places even if you don't know if it's going to be good. Deciding when to leave an event, speaking up in a meeting when you feel like that, pull in your chest to do so. Doing things you'd normally want to do with someone else, doing them alone and being like, hey, I survived. This whole process is about really gaining and gathering evidence of how capable you truly are. Remember, your comfort zone feels safe because it's predictable, because again, it satisfies the need for control. It's easy to control an environment, whether it's emotional or physical, that you already like, understand every inch of. But it's also where your growth will stagnate. And I'm going to take an educated guess and say that you wouldn't be listening to this episode if you were actually happy staying stagnant. Like, that's not why you're here. Our expansion zone is where true learning and true self trust happens. It's a space of discomfort. It's also totally necessary to grow. The way we move into this zone is again, through micro actions. Something I always say about risks is that like, they don't necessarily have to be spontaneous and large to still be expansive and to still be a risk. You don't need to quit your job and move across the world to show that you can trust yourself again. Just start with something small. Start with something small that you may also know won't work out so that you can kind of, again, as an experiment, see how you will still survive. See how even though you didn't know the outcome, the outcome was not as bad as you probably suspected. I also think something really crucial to add to this is to stop explaining yourself. When you make either small or big decisions that feel intuitively correct to you. Fight the need to explain it to family, to colleagues, to friends, to people you don't even know. You know, I had this experience the other day where I think I've talked about this a little bit. Me and my boyfriend are moving overseas soon. We're moving to London. And it was my mum's 60th on the weekend and we were in Melbourne for that. And one of her friends, who I love, she's a close family friend, but one of her friends, like, was talking to me and she was kind of drilling me on like, well, why are you moving to London? Doesn't like everyone kind of do that? Like, what's your plan? Do you have a plan. Like, do you know where you're going to live? Like, what if you can't find anywhere to live? Like, what if you don't like it and you need to come home? Like, have you thought about that? And I just felt trapped in having to explain something. You know, I don't even know if it's going to turn out right yet. But I trust that if it doesn't, I'm going to be okay. And I trust that this is where I want to be. And it immediately got me, you know, A, very defensive and B, very insecure and in like a state of doubting myself. And afterwards I was talking to my cousin who is wise beyond her years and she was like, like, you should have just said, I don't know yet, but I'm excited to find out and left it at that. Like, why did you feel like, you know, I think what she said was like the fact that you, like in your act of explaining it to this person, maybe you were trying to explain it and justify it for yourself. But you don't need to because you already have that intuition and intention and desire to do that. And that is literally all you need. No one needs to know your reasons, especially since you're the one who's going to face the outcome anyway. It's not personal. It's not meant to shut them down. It's meant to protect your ability to hear your desires and feel directed by your compass. It really is, you know, so marvelous when you let yourself be a little bit afraid and so marvelous when you let yourself make a decision that you don't know, you don't know the outcome of and you still show up for that. And I know I'm using like a lot of therapy speak and a lot of like self help language. I think the real thing is that you don't really understand the brilliance of self trust until you really experienced a moment where you're in a situation where you really can't trust anything else or you really can't trust anyone else. Then you just have to be the one who like is fully there for you and fully says, I'm gonna be okay and I'm gonna be okay. Even if this is like a complete mess around, even if this is like a complete explosion. I am grounded in my confidence. I am grounded in the fact that sometimes I don't know how capable I am until there is a situation that stretches me to my limits. And then that's like my new, that's my new level, right? Like that's My new. That's my new threshold. And then something else will. And then by being in that threshold, there's like a whole new, a whole new, like, environment of opportunities that become available. And once you've mastered those, like, another level will open up by you extending yourself and by you saying, I'm gonna be okay, I'm gonna be okay in this. I trust myself, I trust my abilities, I trust my intuition. And the more you, like, operate with that manual in mind and the more you operate with that perspective, like, like the stronger and stronger this muscle becomes until, I don't know, I feel like you can really do anything. And I feel like you are willing to make risks that take risks at the drop of the hat. You are willing to leave situations you don't want to be in. You are willing to leave relationships you don't want to be in, friendships you don't want to be in, jobs you don't want to be in, because you know that something better will come along or that you'll be able to create that better situation for yourself. So that's just a convoluted way of saying self trust is important. I hope that it's something that you continue to focus on. I hope that you can see it now as a bit of an antidote for a lot of what we fear and a lot of what, you know, we desperately want to cling onto, which is control and certainty. You can't have those things, but you can have self trust in the face of them. I want to thank our researcher Libby Colbert for her help on this episode. And if this helped you, make sure you share it with a friend. Share it on social media. Share it, I don't know, with a parent or with a colleague, whoever. If you want to hear more about this topic. If you want to see more content like this, you can also follow us on Instagram at thatpsychology Podcast. People always ask me about the name. This is like a total tangent. But someone the other day was like, why is it that psychology podcast when that's not the name of your podcast? And I was like, because the psychology of your twenties was too long to like show up. So anyways, that's where you can find us. We do like these cool summaries of these episodes. If you want something to refer back to as well. If you feel called to do so, leave a five star review. Make sure you're following along or subscribed wherever you are listening to this episode. And until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, trust yourself. And we will talk very, very soon. Foreign.
- [47:22]
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- [48:14]
Gemma Spaeg
Stop.
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- [49:38]
Gemma Spaeg
This is an Iheart podcast.