what helped us make it, so when hard times come again, we're better prepared. We aren't afraid to stop moving and just be with ourselves because we know ourselves to be a source of wisdom. Our feelings are no longer so threatening to us, and we are able to serve as guides and mentors to others who suffer.
I believe that the same rewards can happen for you when you make this inner shift. You'll know you trust yourself when you feel less tense and more positive, when you feel lightness in your daily circumstances, when you feel more accepting of yourself and others, when life is less drudgery and more joy filled. But don't take my word for it—try a few of the attitudes and practices in this book and see for yourself. It's your capacity to trust yourself that interests me, not your trusting me.
If there is a through line in my life, both personally and as a writer, it is to identify and develop those qualities that help us grow individually and collectively in wisdom and love. That's ultimately why I'm so interested in self-trust. “Wisdom,” Buddhist monk Khandro Rinpoche says, “is innate in us; it is not something that can be bought, heard, or received from the outside.” In other words, we must look within to find it. It can't come from anyone but us. Without self-trust, we can never become wise because we will continue to look outside ourselves for the answer. As for love, it is only when we are grounded in our own beingness, comfortable with who and what we are, that we can enter into a truly loving encounter with another human being. Otherwise we are using the other person to meet our needs for security or approval rather than entering fully into the soul-growing encounter that a real loving relationship promises.
Ultimately, the greatest rewards of trusting ourselves are to be found at the soul level, the place where we are called to discover and express the wholeness of who we are for the benefit of all. “A self is made, not given,” says author Barbara Myerhoff. “It is a creative and active process of attending a life that must be heard, shaped, seen, said aloud into the world, finally enacted, and woven into the lives of others.” We can't do that if we are looking outside ourselves for the answers. As that wise man Carl Jung once said, “He who looks outside dreams. He who looks inside wakes.”
This book is an invitation to look inside in a new way and awaken. Not to detail what is wrong, but to come to deeply treasure what is right. And to use what you discover to make your way more happily in life and to offer the gifts that only you can provide. For the more you trust yourselves, the more you will know just what your place in the grand design of life is and what your matchless contribution might be.
TWO
The Gifts of Trusting Yourself
Doest thou reckon thyself only a puny form When within thee the universe is folded?
—Imam Ali
We begin with looking at what cultivating self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-reliance will bring into our lives. Change is challenging, particularly by the time we are adults and our habits of mind are deeply grooved in. That's why it's important to focus on the benefits first. The more we understand what we will receive, the more motivated we will be to cultivate self-trust.
We Blossom into Our Fullness
When Akiba was on his deathbed, he bemoaned to his rabbi that he felt he was a failure. His rabbi moved closer and asked why, and Akiba confessed that he had not lived a life like Moses. The poor man began to cry, admitting that he feared God's judgment. At this, his rabbi leaned into his ear and whispered gently, “God will not judge Akiba for not being Moses. God will judge Akiba for not being Akiba.”
—from the Talmud
I was on the phone with Elizabeth, a middle-aged woman who had spent the last twenty-five years as an operating room nurse. She had been feeling stale for the past few years and was considering a career change. She thought she might go back to school, a move that would cost her about $20,000. But something didn't feel right about it, so she called me. I asked her what school would give her in terms of opportunities that she didn't have now. She said she'd always heard that education opens many doors. Then I asked if she had ever enjoyed school. “Only as a means to an end,” she said. “I wish I were the kind of person who likes academics. I wish I were someone who breezed through school.”
“Hold it right there,” I said. “Wishing you were someone else is a big red flag. It only gets in the way of your becoming more yourself. What I know about you is that you are very goal oriented. Once you know what you want to go for, you put all of your energy, talent, and intelligence into getting it. That's how you got your nursing certificate, your husband, your children, and your beautiful house. Given that, does it make sense for you to go back to school?”
“Not until I know what I want to do,” she replied immediately. “So I guess my hesitation isn't procrastination, but my inner wisdom telling me this isn't right for me.”
Elizabeth is like so many of us. Without trust in ourselves, we're so full of ideas of how we are supposed to be that we don't even understand who we are. Like Akiba, we can get so obsessed with trying to be Moses that we miss out on the grand adventure of becoming ourselves. This is a terrible tragedy. Each of us is unique, and we are here to grow that uniqueness for the benefit of all. Our souls demand it—and we will not be happy unless we take this task full on.
A colleague of mine once worked with an engineering firm, helping the staff understand their team's thinking talents and how to use them on behalf of their business goals. One middle-aged gentleman stood out. His partners complained that while they admired Jim as a person, he seemed to be just “going through the motions.” When their talents were plotted, his were very different from those of the rest of the group. Jim was strong in empathy, caring for and about the feelings of others. But he spent all his days in a mechanical world. When asked how he ever became an engineer, he said it was because his high school guidance counselor said it was a good profession for him!
This story has a happy ending. Once Jim realized that he was miserable not because there was something wrong with him, but because he'd been living a life designed by his high school teacher, he became the human resources person in his firm. Spending his days helping to solve people problems, he began to blossom. He was happy because he was doing what he was meant to do, and the firm was happy because he was contributing his gifts in a useful way.
I believe it was Joseph Campbell who once said that the spiritual imperative to be ourselves is so strong that the soul would rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's. And the story of Akiba implies that the task of becoming fully ourselves is not only what will bring us utmost happiness, but what, in the end, our lives will be judged on. The great poet Kahlil Gibran said, “God has placed in each soul an apostle to lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without, unaware that it is within them.” The more we trust ourselves, the more we are able to listen to the apostle within. This ensures we end up fully ourselves, joyfully living our own dreams and answerable for our own choices.
Choices Are Easier
One's philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Recently I was sitting at the end of the day in a hotel hot tub with
