Building Self-Trust: Honesty and Promises to Ourselves

it’s Hypocrite again. Today, I wanted to talk a bit about having a conversation with yourself. You’ve probably heard a lot about looking at yourself from a third-person perspective and honestly assessing what you do and how you do it.

It’s highly likely that by writing a journal, having honest conversations, and analyzing, you can get to the core of what you truly want. And all of this culminates in an interesting exercise that can help you right now!

For some, it may be easier, while for others, a bit more challenging, but believe me, it’s worth a try!

Having a conversation with yourself means looking at yourself from a third-person perspective, separating into two individuals. One is our mind, logical and efficient, knowing what we need, what we have to do, and how to do it. The other we’ll call the heart, representing our laziness, emotions, and creativity, which is damn hard to cooperate with.

For example, when we want to go to the gym, internally we know it’ll be good for us, and we can even see the positive effects. However, our heart absolutely doesn’t want to go there because it only sees exhaustion, torture, sweating, and so on.

What to do in such a situation?

We split ourselves in half. To begin with, it’s best to take a piece of paper or a journal and write down the conversation. This way, we start talking to ourselves.

“We need to go to the gym, I know you don’t want to, but listen, if we go, we’ll feel better. Maybe we’ll treat ourselves to an espresso after the workout? You like espresso, right? Maybe a doubleshot?”

“I do… but do you promise we’ll go? You won’t lie to me like last time?”

“Yes, we’ll go, right after the workout, and we won’t do anything until we allow ourselves that moment, agreed?”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

We need to start treating ourselves like little children for whom we are responsible. Meaning, a child knows what it wants but doesn’t necessarily know what it needs, and it will resist eating vegetables when it knows that sweets taste better.

Similarly, we must do the same in such situations. Let’s give ourselves small rewards and fulfill our own promises!

In this way, you’ll regain trust in yourself because you’ll know that you’ll keep your word.