#1 Reason Why You’re Still Single (and/or Miserable in Your Relationship)

What if I told you that the main reason that you’re still single or in an unhappy relationship is because you don’t know how to trust yourself?

Who wants to hear that?

No one really wants to know that perhaps they are greatly contributing to their dating or relationship frustration. Heading bangingly annoying!

It’s supposed to be easier than this, right!

Weren’t you supposed to find Mr. Right and live happily ever after! But don’t fret, you still can, that is if you choose to get your head about this topic of trust!

You see, failure to trust yourself wholeheartedly leads to ineffective decisions and behaviors, that ultimately keeps you unhappy and puts you further away from finding true love.

I’ve got to tell you the raw truth; in my life I’ve had a pattern of not trusting my knowing, and in many ways this is one of the reasons I got into coaching.  Time and time again I have gone against myself – I have done this with friendships, family and with the types of men I have dated.

I have never been one to stay in a crappy relationship, though I have certainly given a few people too many chances. You see, I’m extremely finely tuned, I know when something doesn’t feel quite right, though I can question this knowing, which sees me wondering if my “knowing” is accurate…

Because we can all have some under current referencing/triggers influencing how we perceive a situation, that may not accurately reflect the situation at hand, and therefore work against us. While this is true (and not always conscious), there are certain things (i.e. people) we genuinely KNOW are not good for us, or that smells fishy, yet we can still invite the stench in.

This is why I wanted to write this post, because, I feel that this student of life and love (me) is ready to take her learning’s to the next level. I am ready to graduate from the school of self-trust with honors – because, this topic is largely about honor, self-honor.

So what does it mean to trust yourself?

Knowing Yourself + Loving Yourself = Trusting Yourself

Essentially, trusting yourself means knowing your true self, accepting who you are, your deeper feelings, your abilities and believing in yourself to navigate life well. The inability to trust yourself can gravely impact your ability to make decisions that holistically support you.  Also, when your trust yourself you live life from a place of authenticity, which allows you to attract and engage in deeply intimate, healthy relationships.

What Happens When You Don’t Trust Yourself?

Often the best way to stop repeating self-destructive behaviors is to have a clear understanding as to how they impact your life. When you’re not trusting yourself, this is what tends to happens:

• You Lose Touch with Yourself
  

Your inner self has a way of telling you what’s right and what’s wrong in your life. When you stop relying on that to make effective decisions, you essentially lose the ability to make the right decisions based on your true essence.  No one can tell you what’s right for you, you have to know what’s right for you and what truly honors who you are.

• You Waste Time

When you’re not trusting your gut, you spend a lot of time invested with a decision that is not beneficial to you. For instance, not trusting yourself to leave a bad relationship means that you’re putting useless time, effort, and energy into a relationship that is not beneficial to you to begin with.

• You Give Others Power

Have you ever known how you truly feel about a situation and not wanted to believe it, and instead of acting on what you know is true, you end up contacting all of your friends and family to give you their opinion?

When you rely too much on the opinion of others and not enough on your own, they can influence your life and the decisions that you make. As you defer to them, you allow others to make decisions for your life that may or may not support who you are.

• You Break Promises

Have you ever promised yourself you weren’t going to do something and then turn around and did that very thing?  Maybe you said you weren’t going to stay in a relationship with a guy who treats you in a way that goes against what you believe is kind and respectful, but after breaking up with him you somehow find your way back to him, or you just never get the courage to break up at all?

• You Become a People Pleaser

Do you often feel that you’re essentially at the beck and call of those around you, desperately seeking the approval of others to find some sense of value in yourself? If so, then this can become exhausting as you begin doing things that you typically don’t want to do, simply to prove yourself worthy to others and yourself.

• You Stop Believing in You

When you don’t trust yourself, you stop believing in who you are, what you can accomplish, and what you’re worth as a person. The more you doubt yourself and the decisions you make, you begin to believe in the word and actions of others over your own.  You will often beat yourself up over the decisions you make, stating that you knew better, then in no time you do the same or a similar thing again.

• You Could Lose a Good Thing

There are those that are in a good relationship who are simply unhappy because they don’t have self-love and self-trust. They encompass all the above qualities which essentially weighs on the person they’re in a relationship with. I mean think about it… if you were in a relationship with someone who couldn’t make effective decisions, always doubted themselves, and breaks promises, would this be a happy relationship to be in? Ideally, not trusting in yourself could backfire causing a great person to walk out of your life.

Start Trusting Yourself

As you can see, someone who lacks self-trust and self-love will have a hard time finding a compatible relationship, let alone staying in one. At the core of everything, it is what you believe about yourself, how you treat yourself, and how you carry yourself that will show others how to love and treat you in return. If you do not love, value, and trust yourself, what reason do others have to?

Now that you understand what happens when you don’t trust yourself, let’s look at some solutions to start cultivating trust once again:

• Forgive Yourself

One of the main reasons that it can be difficult to have a healthy relationship with yourself is the inability to forgive. We are often our own toughest critics and see failure, not as a lesson to be learned, but more as a defeat. Whatever wrongs you may have done in the past, it is time to forgive yourself and accept the fact that no one is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes.

• Distinguish Your Needs From Your Values

Let’s face it, most of us are needy in some way, i.e. – to do the “right” thing, to be liked, to be loved, to be heard, to be kind, to be understanding or understood, to be “good”, to make it work  – these kind of needs are not BAD, though when taken to the extreme they can be destructive and will most certainly take you away from what you value.

For example: If you value love in your life, and simultaneously you feel a deep desperate need to be loved, without knowing it, your need to be loved will actually repel what you value, which is to attract great love into your life. When we are NEEDY for love, then it’s very hard to live by our value. Because true love is not needy, it’s heart centered and connected.

In a nutshell – your deep-seated neediness will override your what will truly satisfy you.  In my Never Lose Him program I go into this in detail as the needs/value factor is paramount to lasting love and happiness.  When you know the difference, you will then make healthier life and love choices and you will know how to trust yourself far more.

• Listen to Your Inner Self

Stop looking outside of yourself to find inner peace. Learning to trust yourself will start with feeling, accepting, and dealing with your own emotions. While you cannot control external factors in your life, learning how to nurture your innermost thoughts and emotions will improve your ability to trust yourself. Take the time to listen to yourself and really feel what is going on. Disseminate what is impulsive thinking and what is rational/logical thinking and act on it accordingly.

• Reward Yourself

You don’t need the approval of others to reward yourself for who you are. In order to build self-trust and self-love you must learn to be proud of who you are. Treat yourself from time to time, reward yourself for a job well done, or just treat yourself just because you can. When you learn how to make yourself feel good, you won’t need to rely on others to do it for you.

• Only Make Promises You Can Keep

If someone made you a promise and then didn’t keep it, it would cause you to lose trust in them. The same thing goes for yourself. If you’ve promised to lay off of sweets for a while but keep making the same poor decisions, or promised yourself you wouldn’t go back to an abusive ex but ended up back with them, you’re going to have a hard time trusting yourself in the future.  However, if you start making smaller promises or setting smaller goals that are easier to accomplish you can rebuild trust in yourself.

Failure to trust yourself can lead to issues in all areas of your life – including your love life. If you work on developing self-trust, you will not only find true love, but you will be a better partner to the one you choose to love.

If you’ve doubted yourself for a while then getting to a point of self-confidence can take time, but with practice, understanding and patience, you can eventually be the self-trusting, self-loving, confident person that can truly love.