Unshakable Trust in Yourself: Tips for Nurturing Self-Confidence and Resilience

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. This is episode number 169. Today marks the 3rd episode out of 4 in the Believe, Achieve, Succeed Series that I have put together for you. It is part of my new experiment for having more solo content on this podcast, and I have to tell you I am enjoying the experiment. It's a new phase for me because I need to spend more of my time in thought and thinking about what do I really wanna communicate to you. And today's message is all about how to build unshakable trust within yourself and with yourself because I do believe that sometimes the mistake that we make when we are trying to be successful is that we forget the fundamental component of success, which is self-trust. And since self-trust is such a multi-faceted topic, I talk about a lot of different things in this episode, including how to avoid feeling like you wanna quit, how to deal with intense emotions and lack of self-confidence, and some strategies for just staying in the game and deepening your self-trust. Let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:22]:
It's really, really rich.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:30]:
Hi. I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:56]:
to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:01]:
see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:13]:
Hello there, my friends. I am so glad that you are with me again for another episode. Today, we're gonna talk about how to build unshakable trust in yourself. And to be honest, a couple of minutes ago, I reflected to myself that I myself am still in the process, the long process of really building unshakable trust in myself. So I'm gonna share everything that I feel I know, but please understand that there's still room in my heart to build even deeper trust in myself. But perhaps that's the point, that we're always striving for that feeling that we cannot be rocked from our position, that we can always trust ourselves no matter what the situation is. I think that's the ideal, isn't it? But I wanna set an example that even if you aren't at that point, you can still be striving. You can still be building that trust in yourself, and we can all be learning from our lives every single day.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:17]:
To start off this conversation, I want to reflect with you that I think we all have goals. And if we're really honest with ourselves, we have really big goals, many of which may feel totally unachievable in a way or, like, we would need some massive magic trick to happen in order for us to create those goals in real life. But those goals still exist, and I think they exist for a reason. I think they exist because there's something in those goals that is meaningful to us. There's something within ourselves that we understand is potentially available to create that big goal, to make that reality happen in reality. No matter how scared we are, no matter how daunting the odds may be, we still have that goal for ourselves. So let's trust that. Tip number 1 is if you've got a big goal in your heart, don't doubt yourself.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:14]:
It's there for a reason. It was implanted there by you, by the universe, by society, understanding between us, let's now go to how you want to envision that goal happening and how you want to feel. I think that's where the issue of trust comes in because we don't wanna just go to this school and that coach and that newspaper and that podcast and go willy nilly towards our goals. We really wanna have as straight a path as possible. I believe we wanna have as easy a path as possible. And in order to do that, we have to really know where we wanna end up. We wanna know what the destination is. We wanna know exactly what our goal is gonna be and feel like when we get there.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:12]:
We wanna be very specific. We wanna be very purposeful about thinking about our visions and having that bright view in front of us. And now back to the issue of trust. You have to trust yourself now in the current day before you reach that goal in order to learn how to build enough trust in yourself to withhold and uphold that big goal when you get there. Let's say you wanna get a PhD, and you are feeling like, well, there's so many different applicants and maybe they're not gonna choose me, and then lo and behold, they actually choose you, how are you gonna step into that doctoral program? Are you gonna step in feeling really shaky, which would be understandable, or are you gonna feel like this is a major opportunity for me to uplevel my understanding of myself and my trust in myself? That's actually a true story from my life. When I was admitted into different doctoral programs, I was probably the most unsure of myself as you can imagine. I really thought I was gonna be the student who failed out. That was the level of self trust that I had at that point.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:28]:
And thankfully, I went through the program. I graduated, and I've done lots of work on myself and my ability to trust myself since. So know that even if you feel like you're super shaky, like you're super anxious, that you haven't had a history of trust with yourself, that there is a wide open space for you to walk into now to build deeper trust in yourself, and I'm gonna help you. So what are some more things that you can do? You can decide that you're gonna get out of your own head if you're filled with that I'm not good enough. I'm gonna be the first one to fail. All that negative, frightening, pessimistic chatter, all those fears of not knowing what's gonna happen, that fear of uncertainty, that fear of risk, that fear of losing things, money, energy, time, that fear of bringing harm to yourself, all of that, sometimes it's just a vibe. Sometimes those are just passing fears and thoughts that come into our vulnerable hearts and minds. It's okay.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:34]:
But remember, we always wanna protect our vibe. We always want to be elevating our energy, elevating how we vibrate in the universe. So what do you do if you're stuck in that lower negative pessimistic vibe? There are lots of things you can do. You can get a coach, you can download a podcast episode, you can listen to some high vibe music, You can get out in nature. You can do breath work. You can do meditation, and you can just plain restore your regular positive outlook and reconnect to the goals that you have. The goals that you have are always gonna be orienting you towards a more positive, higher vibe future. So that's always a good technique to rely on and fall back on.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:20]:
So remember, what you desire is gonna be like a goalpost for you. It's gonna stay relatively steady over time and over circumstances and years in your life. So support all of your efforts and thoughts and dreams of getting there as soon as possible with as little effort as possible. Another thing that I have to share is that I want you to remember your own history. As we grow up, we absorb so many of the world's fears, so many of our parents' and other adults' fears about us that we would be unsafe, that we would make bad decisions, that we would not find our way. And look what happened. We're fine. We survived, and we even thrived.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:03]:
We may be bruised a little bit, but we're here. We've survived. We're now listening to a podcast. We're now working on self development on an even deeper level than we have been in the past. And if you can see that everything you've been through has been either a straight out win or a lesson that you can take for future wins, otherwise known as mistakes. So you have wins and you have lessons you can learn from. If you understand that life is filled with just those two things, you can move really confidently towards any future goal. Again, this all feeds into that process of trusting yourself.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:45]:
When you make a mistake, you attack yourself. You decide you're too scared to proceed. You decide you're really not worthy of anyone's affection or attention or praise. Where is that gonna get you? It's gonna get you into a deep dark hole, and, of course, we don't want you living there. Temporarily, we understand. But, really, this is your big, bright life. You have to come back, bounce back, trust yourself again as quickly as possible, and you can do that. Remember your history.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:17]:
Another thing that I have to share with you instead of numbering today, I think I'm just saying I have another thing to share. I want you to remember the cost of quitting. Sometimes when we doubt ourselves and when we lose a sense of trust for ourselves, we start thinking about leaving the game, leaving the goal in our dream life instead of seeing it on our vision board and really attacking it and going forward and doing the work that it will take to get there. But I think we oftentimes forget what the cost of quitting is. Right? Remember, I said at the top of this episode, you wouldn't have this particular goal if it wasn't super meaningful to you, if it really wasn't meant for you, if it really didn't hold some value to you. So by abandoning it, you're losing so much. You're losing something that you've already been connected to. You've lost a bit of your ideal future, so don't let yourself quit.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:19]:
I would offer that when you stay the course, when you allow yourself to stay the course, you are showing yourself your own resilience and consistency, 2 very important factors in wellness and success, resilience and consistency. And when you show yourself that you have both, that in itself is a goal achieved. That that is really a huge win for yourself. And the more you show yourself resilience and consistency, the more you're gonna accumulate that trust. The deeper that trust is going to be, the more unshakable you're going to feel. And along the way, you're also gonna accumulate many more wins because you're gonna put yourself through the challenge, You're gonna get the goal, and you're gonna count it as a win. You're gonna remember to celebrate each win, and you're gonna remember how well things turned out when you trust yourself. Now I have a list of 4 things.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:25]:
I have numbers now where you can work as a little bit of homework, areas that you can work on and think about as areas to develop a deeper practice in self trust so that you can really say I have unshakable trust in myself. Number 1, learn to have patience with the feeling of being frustrated. Frustration is a word that I hear from my clients time and time. Again, it's really a very frequently used words. And real life, daily life can be frustrating indeed. I've worked with clients for whom their work was really not the thing that was the issue. It wasn't that they weren't talented enough or they didn't have what it takes to do the work. But what they were struggling with was that feeling of frustration that would come in the gap space.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:19]:
I call it the blank space or the gap space. The space between you and the goal is that gap. And if you are low in terms of your ability to tolerate frustration, you're gonna be more inclined to quit. You're gonna be more inclined to give up. You're gonna be more inclined to procrastinate and make things a little more difficult for yourself. So my tip here is to develop an awareness of when you feel frustrated. What causes you to get triggered and to feel like you can't do it anymore? Understand yourself at a deeper level here, and then build up that muscle of staying the course even when you're feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. I promise you this inner work is really valuable.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:08]:
It's not nothing. It's actually the thing that is gonna help you to stay the course and do what you say you're going to do. Tip number 2 is to develop your ability to hold your focus. Of course, focus is a central executive functioning skill. It's something that we need in our day to day life. But when you develop your ability to hold your focus despite all the distractions that we have in modern day living. The social media, the news, socializing with actual people and stuff that actually happens in our lives. When we have so much distractions, it can be so valuable to trust your ability to stick with your focus, to pay attention to what you're doing, to follow the plan for the day as you've laid it out at the beginning of the day or the night before.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:06]:
Having great focus is going to ensure that you don't end the day each day feeling disappointed with yourself, feeling scared that you didn't meet your goals for the day, and wondering where the time went. I know that that can lead to a cycle of frustration, and then we're back to step number 1 or tip number 1 where you have to build your muscle against the feeling of frustration. So develop your muscle against frustration and then develop your strong ability to have strong and powerful focus. The 3rd tip that I have for you is to allow your emotions to be seen and felt and then to pass by. Sometimes, we overdo our emotional life. Sometimes, we get very dramatic. Sometimes we get very hysterical and catastrophizing. Sometimes we're just truly panicked, and we need to have patience with ourselves when we feel that heightened emotion, but we also have to understand that our emotions are not supposed to lead us around like a leash leads a dog around.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:16]:
We should not be victims of our emotions. We should use our emotions as cues for how things are going, cues for how we're feeling and reacting, what we might need to pay attention to, what we might need to be alert to, but we should definitely not be pulled around by our dramatic feelings and our panicky feelings because we have bigger places that we want to go. We don't wanna end up in a massive panic attack. We wanna end up landing exactly where we envisioned our goals to be. When you practice this, tolerating your feelings and allowing them to pass, you will notice how transient they really are. I have heard that each emotion, if you just wait 90 seconds, they will pass. So test this for yourself and see how good you can get at overriding your feelings when you need to. Sometimes we need to perform and show up and face challenges even when we're feeling lots of shaky emotions, lots of destabilizing emotions, but we can still show up.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:22]:
We are stronger than we believe ourselves to be. I really believe that. So get good at feelings. Step number 4. Tip number 4 is to develop an ability to perform in spite of intense emotion. I think I've already just covered that in step 3, but I will share with you a little story that I recalled when I was drafting my notes for this episode. It was a story that brings us back to when Christine Lee was in 2nd grade in New York. I was your typical second grader, but I was a kid who was asked to perform a duet with, another second grader, happened to be a boy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:10]:
And that was all hunky dory, except that when it came to showtime, it was a bright morning. I remember the sun streaming through the auditorium. It was a packed auditorium, a very large auditorium. And I remembered that the other part of the duet, that guy that I was mentioning, that little boy, did not show up. And I was asked if I could do the duet solo. And, of course, I was doing it without any benefits of having a rehearsal period. But I said, yes. I could do it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:46]:
I remember doing it with a kind of powerful energy in my voice because probably I was terrified. So I was terrified, but I was also strong at the same time. And I will always remember that scene because how often does that happen to a person where you're just put to the test? And when we're put to the test, we learn. We develop deeper trust in ourselves. We encode a memory that will last a lifetime. So if you're just about to embark upon something challenging and you're wondering, where can I develop some trust in myself? You've got lots of different memories that I've just shared with you in this episode. Lots of little strategies that you can piece together to really build yourself up, but not in some artificial way, in a way that you can use for the rest of your life going forward, for any goal, for any relationship, for any time you have to speak up for yourself, for any time you have to do something even though there might be some reason to doubt, I really invite you to try these tips out. I trust you deeply, and I'm really excited to hear the results of your efforts.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:05]:
Always feel free to share your wins with me. I'm over on Instagram all the time. I'm at procrastinationcoach there. I'm always in your corner and I'm always rooting for you to develop deeper trust in yourself. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Believe, Achieve, and Succeed series. I'll be back next week for our last installment. Thanks again. Take care.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:30]:
Bye bye.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:32]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:21:12]:
Talk to you soon.