Trust in You

Photo Courtesy of Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton

In the book, Release Your Inner Queen of Sheba, there’s a chapter called “Lifting it Up.”  In it, I talk about the value of salat alistikharah in a slightly different way than people are accustomed to.  And later on in the book, I refer to a “queen whisperer” and how to become your own queen whisperer.  And while these two ideas seem disjointed, the underlying principal in both is the concept of self-trust.  In the case of “lifting it up”, making sincere dua to Allah SWT for guidance in your manners, trust has to come into play – trust that Allah will lead you to what is best, and trust in yourself to follow what you feel Allah wants for you.  In the case of the “queen whisperer”, self-trust becomes the catalyst for touching our inner core, the place where resilience and self-possession comes into play.

Self-trust is a virtue.  It’s a virtue that, if we can harness it, can give us satisfaction in all our decisions, and patience with all our circumstances.  Self-trust is how we know ourselves deeply, and how we rely on ourselves with confidence.  If we believe that we can handle the difficult times, we can conquer our fears and not allow them to prevent us from moving forward with our dreams.

With self trust, comes self possession, that “calm under stress” that keep us in control when things get hectic —knowing we can complete the assignment, juggle our priorities, handle the disaggreement with our husbands, or make a mistake and not die because of it.

When we trust ourselves, we can better weather the storms of tough emotional times, the trials and tests of grief or anger or helplessness – because we feel safe in our own care.  We treat ourselves kindly, almost like we might treat a child (a smart one ) and this helps us learn from our mistakes and propels us forward. 

Smart is self-trust, it’s self-esteem manifest in the best possible way.  It’s not arrogance, but confidence in yourself, your gifts, and your abilities.  W’Allahi, it is such a gift – and those that don’t trust themselves do themselves a grave disservice.  But not you.

If you’re lacking in the self-trust department, here are some ways to fatten your quota:

1.  Learn to chalk up past “mistakes” to wisdom producing experience.

What’s done is done.  Everything is a teacher, every situation is trying to teach you something – trusting yourself is recognizing that all of the past was meant to happen, and is what makes you who you are today.  But if it’s negative, it doesn’t have to define you – find out what you had to learn to make you better today, and then move on.

2.  Nurture yourself now.

Learn the habits and routines that make you feel healthy and happy now.  Eat right, exercise, don’t stress, and remember that ease and moderation are the way of our religion, the lifestyle we are encouraged to embrace. 

3.  Learn to communicate clearly with yourself.

For a primer on this, read Don’t Believe Everything you think here.

Gathering all the information about a situation and communicating it to yourself properly is the way to make sure that you aren’t using condescending self-evaluations sure to blow any self-trust and self-esteem you’ve built out of the water. 

4.  Intuition can be learned.  But you probably knew that.

If you’ve ever read the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, you’ll have an idea about this one.  We often think that coming to conclusions or making decisions is just a mechanical process. But if you’ve ever had the experience of meeting someone who you didn’t like but couldn’t say why, you’ll know that there are other “undefinables”.   This one is all about fine-tuning our intuition and “gut feelings”, becoming our own queen whisperers. 

Oddly enough, as children, we were probably better at this, but as time went on and we grew up we started to lose the ability.  This, of course, goes  back to that idea of treating ourselves like that (smart) child.  You want to make sure your actions start to ”feel right” for you too.  InshaAllah, I’ll write more about this in the future, but you can definitely re-read “The Queen Whisperer” chapter for a better understanding.

Indeed, self-trust.  It’s an “I AM SHEBA” thing.