5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Trust Muscle
Time to do the work when the fear feels heavier than the hope.
Until last year I’ve never thought that we could study feelings because feelings are within us and they arise based on our outside reality. But it turns out that with some effort, we can learn to feel one way or another independent from how life plays its ups and downs for us.
And trust is one of the emotions that easily weakens as we face tough situations in everyday life. It’s important to work on it because when we lose trust in life, our internal freedom gets interrupted and we live based on fear.
1. Don’t Hang up on Things
To avoid feeling disappointed over and over again because hey, we can’t control people or things if they don’t want to stay in our lives, we have to stop attaching our existence to the outer circumstances.
It’s not easy to achieve that in an instant attempt as we all have desires and goals. But it’s doable with small steps.
The easiest way to practice it is to look at our lives closely. Most of us attach ourselves to an image, a personality, or a look. And we do it with what we wear, what kind of make up we do, or a hairstyle we’ve been adapting for years.
Once you find what is that thing you cling to, make a small change about it. If it’s the forgotten clothes in your closet or an outdated object sitting in your room for years, give them away. When you do that, do it by asking yourself if your future vision has space for these objects.
2. Relax through Mindfulness
At times when the mind is active, we can interrupt the chain of thoughts through mindfulness. 5 finger relaxation technique is an easy practice we can do anywhere during the day to relax and trust more in the flow of life.
Open your palm. And always feel your awareness in your breath.
- Touch your thumb to your index finger and remember a time that you felt relaxed after a long activity.
- Touch your thumb to your middle finger and remember a time that you had a loving experience.
- Touch your thumb to your ring finger and remember the nicest compliment you’ve ever received.
- Touch your thumb to your little finger and remember the most beautiful place you’ve ever been.
And finally, bring yourself back to where you’re and observe how you feel.
3. Interrupt the Talking Mind
When we want to trust and release our worries, it’s possible that the mind will try to convince us back.
It won’t work out. It doesn’t make sense to live like that. What if those people run away if you give them a “healthy” space you mention.
You know the drill.
When we try not to think about it, or get frustrated with our thoughts, the mind does its work and talks even louder. Let those thoughts pass you instead of battling them.
Remind yourself of what you’re committed to. Separate yourself from the thoughts. Thoughts are not ultimate truths. We can choose which one to believe.
4. Listen to Your Second Brain
Have you ever felt that something was wrong even though everything looked perfect on the outside? Or have you ever felt that your energy is catching someone else’s in the room but you don’t know why?
In those moments, our second brain, our gut feeling is trying to give us messages.
We usually ignore those signals as we’re fond of making sense of everything. But we can’t make every decision based on an analysis. Research shows that unlike technical issues, solutions to adaptive problems lie in the stomach and the heart, and rely on changing people’s beliefs, habits, ways of working, or ways of life.
So, it’s possible to listen to our gut feeling when a decision is involved.
Self-awareness is important in using intuition in decision-making. Once we’re aware of how we feel and how our body responds to anxiety and worries, we can use our gut feeling for important points in our lives. We can differentiate when our decision is based on fear or intuition.
5. Surround Yourself with Good Energy
Wherever the focus goes, the energy flows. We all know this new age quantum theory. But we barely use it outside our meditation seat when we want to manifest something.
We go out, meet people and we vent about negative things that are going on in our lives. Our focus is always on the negative.
We almost never vent about good things that happen to us. Even if we share them, the topic gets interrupted by another negativity. Now it’s Covid19. And next?
But the blame is not only on us. This is what we’re exposed to daily. When we look at the media, what we see is mostly the bad events, family problems, diseases, and political issues. We almost never hear about the happy news, charity campaigns, or how we can individually contribute to someone’s life in an organization.
As we’re not bringing our attention to the good, we lose hope and trust in life. We see the bad in people before we see the good. We get scared of life before we attempt to trust that we’re not going to screw up.
To gain trust back in the goodness of life, surround yourself with people who have high positive energy. Watch how you feel when you meet up with certain friends.
Follow social media accounts that do good for others and share the happy news.
What to Take Away
To live with trust isn’t only dependent on what surrounds us but also on how we feel within ourselves.
When you go through difficult phases in your life and lose trust:
- Look closer to your life. To what or whom you depend your existence on?
- When your mind occupies you with negative scenarios, stay committed to your goal and practice a mindfulness exercise.
- Allow yourself to make decisions also based on your gut feeling. When something feels off, it feels off.
- Focus on the good and surround yourself with the good.
*This article is based on personal experience and research. Please consult an expert for your personal experience if needed.*
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