Building self-trust can feel like a monumental task, especially if you’ve been second-guessing yourself or holding back from taking real action. In today’s episode, I’m sharing a simple, no-fluff process to strengthen your trust in yourself and create a foundation you can rely on. It’s about moving from self-doubt to solid self-belief, step by step.

We’ll walk through five powerful practices to help you connect to your inner confidence and self-trust. I’m also breaking down the BRAVING acronym to give you a framework for building trust with yourself as you navigate life’s challenges. Whether you’re feeling uncertain, overwhelmed, or just unsure of your next move, these steps will help you get grounded and reconnect with your own inner guidance.

Key Takeaways from this minisode:

• Embracing Self-Reflection: I share the importance of checking in with ourselves regularly to understand how our inner dialogue might be affecting our confidence.
• The Role of Boundaries in Self-Trust: Establishing boundaries—especially in areas where we tend to people-please—plays a huge part in reinforcing our trust in ourselves.
• Commitment to Small Steps: Building self-trust doesn’t require a major life overhaul; it’s about committing to small, daily actions that remind us of our capability.
• Recognizing Self-Doubt Patterns: I discuss common patterns that sabotage self-trust, like overthinking and perfectionism, and how to start letting them go.
• Reinforcing Self-Trust Through Accountability: Sharing our intentions with others can be a powerful motivator and builds trust in ourselves to follow through.

Building self-trust doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It’s often the result of small, steady actions that add up over time. Using the BRAVING acronym is a powerful tool to remind yourself of how to nurture that trust, even when things feel uncertain. Remember, this journey is about honoring your own worth—keep choosing yourself, one step at a time.

Resources from this episode:
Get coached on the podcast – apply here!
Brené’s episode on trust
Braving acronym PDF
Getting Damn Good at Life

Book recommendations:
I love a good personal development book, and you do too, right? I’ve compiled a list of book recommendations, as mentioned in past episodes. Check out these amazing book recommendations here. Happy reading!  

MSN is supported by:
We love the sponsors that make our show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: andreaowen.com/sponsors/

Transcripts from this episode: 

00:00

You're listening to Make Some Noise Podcast, mini-sode number 637.

00:06

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I am coming to you today with a mini-sode. And this has been a particular topic that's been on my mind over the last several years as something I'm intentionally working on in my own personal life and one that's also come up even more prominently as of late over the last year and a half or so. And I'm going to get into that in just a minute. But I wanted to mention again that

00:36

52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life is being re-released this December, 2024. And it's being re-released because it's been revised and updated, which is super exciting. I have been wanting to do this for years and years. 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life is my very first book, for those of you that don't know. It came out in January of 2014. Actually came out a little early, November 2013. But technically, the publication was January 2014. And I have worked.

01:06

This year to revise, update it, every chapter at the very end is going to be like my other two books, How to Stop Feeling Like Shit, and Make Some Noise. If you've read either of those, at the end of each chapter, you know that there's questions at the end. Sort of a summary of the chapter, and as well as giving you the opportunity to do the work. So I have added those in to every single chapter of 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life. Yes, there are 52 chapter challenges, as we're calling them.

01:35

And also, new chapters, a couple, a few were removed. And I have some new stuff. And then every single chapter has been updated. All that to say, I am looking for two of you to come onto the podcast to be coached by me for free. And we're going to talk about one of the topics for 52 Ways to Live a Kick-Ass Life. This can be anything from control to perfectionism, communication, stepping out of your comfort zone.

02:05

really looking at your fears, trying to do some work around your inner critic, any of those resonate, then head over to andreaowen.com slash links, and that's where you'll see the application to fill out. And hopefully you and I get to have a conversation, and then it goes on the podcast. So all the information is over there, andreaowen.com slash links. All right, let's get in to today's content.

02:30

All right, so we're talking about self-trust today. And I have a pretty strong feeling this is something I'm going to revisit probably with guest experts who, that's their niche, and they teach about that a lot and work with people around self-trust a lot. But I'm coming at this today from a place of, well, two places. One, a place from personal experience that I'm going to just briefly touch on. And then I'm going to go through a

02:59

PDF, and I'm going to link to it in the show notes. So as most of you probably know, I'm certified in the work of Dr. Brene Brown. I love this work around vulnerability, courage, shame, big, big topics, big experiences. And the work is called The Daring Way. And she has curriculum around it. And one of the pieces of curriculum is an acronym called BRAVING. If you read, I believe it's in Rising Strong,

03:29

She talks about this. And it's around trust, both trusting other people and self-trust. In my opinion, the acronym and the examples that are given, which I'm going to go through, point a little bit more towards trusting other people, which is a big part of the Daring Way curriculum. However, you absolutely can look at this from a place of self-trust as well, which is.

03:58

what I'm going to be talking about. In the show notes, you're going to see two specific links. One of them will link you to one of Brene's podcasts, where the title of it is the Anatomy of Trust, where she talks about this acronym. And another one is the PDF, so you can download it yourself. And the PDF is straight from Brene's site. And so I am going to go through B-R-A-V-I-N-G

04:28

talk a little bit about how it might look for in the realm of self-trust. And you can also, I don't know if you're like me, like to print it out and have it put on your fridge, frame it, whatever you want to do with it. But before I do that, I want to just give you a brief kind of update, if you will, around what I have been working on specifically around self-trust. So years ago.

04:53

I did my values, my personal values for the first, and I hadn't done it in several years. And oh my gosh, this might have even been like eight years ago or so that I revisited my values. And one of them was trust, both self-trust and trusting of others. And this is like one of my very top values. Another one is responsibility. Another one is courage. But trust and self-trust was important to me for a couple of reasons. One.

05:22

I felt like it was another, a big frontier for me personally. Trusting of others really as someone probably like many of you who's had my heart broken many times, been disappointed by people because I have expectations because we're all human. And that can lead to feeling a lack of trust for others. And also around self-trust.

05:53

I think that at the time where I was thinking about this particular topic, I had a good feeling that I didn't trust myself wholly. And I also wanted to know, what does that even mean? What does that look like? What do people do or think and believe that have a strong sense of self-trust? That was really my first question. That was my first step on this journey.

06:22

And in 2016, when my father passed away, a few months after that, I got the word surrender tattooed on my arm. Because to me, that word encompasses so much. It encompasses me letting go of control, me really understanding that there are very few things I have control over, and even those I would need to be flexible on. And

06:50

Part of what surrender means to me is surrendering to my own divine wisdom, my own intuition. And really what that also points to is some kind of higher power. For me, God is love energy. I really resonate more so with the term the divine. To me, it is the source energy.

07:20

we all have. And that's what I choose. That's how I choose to look at it. I don't so much look to quote unquote God as something that needs to be obeyed and worshiped and has conditions, anything like that. Mine looks a little bit different. And this has been a spiritual transition that I've been on over the last probably 15 years or so. And so surrender to me also pointed to self-trust.

07:48

So after the years went by and I kind of got to the place where I understood that at the core of it, at the center of what self-trust looked like for me, was truly hearing, accepting, and taking action on my intuition. That was it. That was the absolute first step.

08:19

And from there, because many times we don't do that, we ignore it, because to listen to our gut feelings, to listen to our inner wisdom that tells us we might need to make a decision that's going to break our hearts and or is going to break other people's hearts, we don't do it because of the obvious. We don't want to.

08:48

hurt other people. And I also think that when we make the decision not to do something because we don't want to break our own heart, we do that because I think for many of us, we don't trust that we're going to be able to handle the painful consequences on the other side of the decision. At least that was for me. And leaning into the trust of my resilience,

09:16

has been a slow march. I'm happy to say in the right direction for me. And one of those major decisions was leaving my marriage in 2023. It was a big example of knowing that I was going to break other people's hearts. I was going to, it was gonna hurt me, but also

09:46

not doing the thing was breaking my own heart. And trusting that although the journey was going to be extraordinarily difficult and painful, and brought me some of the darkest moments of my life, trusting that it was temporary, trusting that I had the courage and the hope and the support.

10:14

both outside of me and inside of me, to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to be able to get through each day minute by minute. Because there were days last year that were so fucking excruciating that to think about just getting to tomorrow was too much to bear, so I had to take it breath by breath and minute by minute. And so, as I've gotten older too,

10:44

I think that just from experience, self-trust has gotten a little bit easier. And I also, again, this is just my experience, I have found that once I kind of got on board and was like, okay, this is really the answer, surrendering, listening to my intuition all the time, 100% of the time consistently. Once I…

11:14

kind of got on that train, it started to go faster and faster and pick up momentum to where I was hearing my intuition easier. I was accepting it easier. I trusted that I was going to be OK on the other side if it meant I had to do something hard easier. And now I'm at a place where I've

11:38

been thinking about it and working on it slowly for many, many years, and then over the last 18 months or so, been working on it intentionally, consciously, diligently. I will tell you that at this point, I am in places where I find myself blurting things out in real time as they're happening in my mind and in my body, things that could bring on hard conversations, things that could surprise other people. And it feels completely natural.

12:08

And to not do that feels like, what the fuck am I even doing? So I just wanted to share with you what that looks like for me. And again, I know I'm going to be talking about this fairly regularly as the months go on and the years go on. And so stay tuned. All right, we're going to get into the Braving Inventory and the Braving acronym. Before we do that, we have to take a quick ad break. And when we come back, I will jump in.

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you

12:43

Thanks for watching!

12:47

All right, my loves, let's start with B. So the acronym again is braving, B-R-A-V-I-N-G. And so for B, the word is boundaries. Setting boundaries, so I'm reading from the PDF, quote, setting boundaries is making clear what's OK and what's not OK and why, end quote. Both for trusting other people and absolutely for trusting ourselves. I truly believe that women, we are conditioned and brought up.

13:16

to not trust ourselves. And therefore, poor boundaries arise. So we don't trust our own hunger. We don't trust our own instincts when it tells us that danger might be present because we don't want to hurt other people's feelings or we don't want to come across the wrong way. There are so many examples of how we are taught to really not trust our own instincts. And so

13:43

A matter of self-trust is truly tapping into what those instincts are and setting boundaries around them. What I just said can feel like a monumental shift for a lot of people, for a lot of you listening. And it's valid. It's valid. This is a lifelong journey, but that is B for boundaries. R is reliability.

14:09

Quote, you'll do what you say you'll do at work. This means staying aware of your competencies and limitations so you don't over compromise and are able to deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities. End quote. I think that you can look at reliability as a measure of self-trust as well. How often do you say what you're going to do? I think that this can also be tricky, because I know a lot of you.

14:40

put really high expectations on yourself. When you put really high expectations on yourself, you tend to have really high goals, really big goals. The, your to-do list and measure of productivity is enough for 10 people, for a lot of you listening. So this one, be mindful, pay attention. In other words, it might not look like productivity in terms of reliability.

15:09

The way I look at this in regard to self-trust is that, do you trust that you are going to be able to show up for yourself, perhaps when shit hits the fan?

15:25

It's the whole, this can point to any of you listening who, like me, have always felt like there's somebody out there who's going to save me. And the harsh realization is that nobody, nobody is here to save me. I'm the only one who's here to save me. There are people to support me. This is why we have connections with people. This is why we have friends. This is why we, you know, venture into romantic partnerships, but not save you.

15:55

but not heal the wounds for you, not fill any voids that you have in your heart, not heal your childhood trauma for you. Me, I'm the only one that can do that. And in theory, it's like, OK, yeah, I get that. And the integration of that, I believe that you have to kind of go through sometimes life-shattering moments.

16:24

to really see what that looks like and what it doesn't look like? And for me, that is just something that has come with experience. That's reliability. Can you rely on yourself? So A is accountability. You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends. I think that this goes for trusting other people very much, as well as trusting yourself. Do you own the mistakes that you made? Do you apologize? Maybe sometimes do yourself or other people.

16:53

And do you make amends? I call that cleaning up our messes. This is such a huge form of connection that I do believe that it is closely related to self-trust. I also think that there's a few of these that are going to point to self-compassion, and I think that this is one of them. Owning your mistakes and having compassion for yourself is a measure of self-trust. All right, the vault, that's V. Quote, you don't share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept.

17:22

and that you're not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential,” end quote. Again, this points to being in relationship with others and trusting each other. However, where it shows up in self-trust is that imagine that someone shared something with you, and it was in confidence, and you ended up telling the secret to somebody else from a place of gossip. And I think that, especially when

17:50

were younger and in high school in those years. I think many of us have had that experience. I have. And it feels shitty, doesn't it? I think that when we do that, it gets us to a place of feeling not in integrity with ourselves and not in integrity in our friendships, but especially with ourselves. And I think that that can damage our measure of self-trust.

18:20

Which brings me to the I, which is integrity, end quote. Choosing courage over comfort, choosing what's right over what's fun, fast, or easy, and practicing your values, not just professing them, end quote. All right, I'm going to go backwards. And I'm going to start with what she says about practicing your values, not just professing them. And how to stop feeling like shit, I said that.

18:44

Just professing your values, just naming them, just saying, yes, I have a value around courage and authenticity, is like naming your children and calling that parenting. It's not how it works. The most important part of values work is identifying what behavior goes with each value. Because what looks like courage for me might look slightly different for you.

19:07

I will probably do another mini-so just on values because I feel myself wanting to talk more about values. But I just went through it with a client yesterday, so it's fresh in my mind. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. If you have how to stop feeling like shit, the very last chapter, I believe it's chapter 15, I go in depth in values if you would like to do values work. I personally think it's very thorough if you wanna do that on your own. Here's the thing about integrity and more specifically choosing courage over comfort.

19:37

practicing your values. If you listen to this podcast, I have a feeling that you probably listen to other personal growth podcasts or read books or are just interested in the topic in general. If that's you, which I am assuming that it is, you probably have a value around courage or something similar, something that's in alignment with growing as an individual.

20:03

You know being the best person that you can be evolving as a human so that you can be great in relationships So that you can be a better parent a better whatever and If that is the case if you have a value around any of those things it is my professional opinion That in order to practice that value You have to listen to your intuition. I got excited and just smacked my elbow on something

20:32

Because I can almost guarantee you, it was your intuition that brought you here in the first place. I call us seekers. Many times, we are a little bit different than our other family members. We were the people who were interested in either spirituality or some kind of wellness, like wanting to maybe talk about hard things, or at the very least learn about them. And that's not typically.

21:01

especially if you're my age, generation X, not typically was welcomed in families. This isn't saying that any of our parents are bad. They just never were introduced to it themselves. It was more of a taboo topic. And so we find ourselves in these communities as, quote unquote, seekers who have been, for lack of a better term, called to do this work, even if you just dabble in it. And again, I want to emphasize that that is a matter of

21:29

of your intuition speaking to you, and that is a matter of you trusting yourself. You trusted yourself enough to dive into these topics that are tough, that you knew at some maybe unconscious level even that this was for your greater good. That is trusting yourself.

21:51

Okay, I'm getting all fired up. We do need to take a quick ad break, and when we get back, we're gonna be on the letter N.

22:02

A-A-

22:06

Next is non-judgment. Quote, I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment. End quote. So much of self-trust comes from working on looking at your behaviors, looking at your thoughts, looking at your patterns, looking at your beliefs from a place of non-judgment.

22:35

looking at all of those things from a place of curiosity. Why does this matter? When we judge ourselves, we are making up a story that either we or parts of us are bad. But when we come from a place of non-judgment, when we come from a place of curiosity, we are offering ourselves grace and self-compassion and really acknowledging our own humanity. When we don't do that, when we come from a place of judgment, we close ourselves off to

23:05

any kind of self-kindness, any kind of alternate ending, any kind of growth, we shut it off when we come from a place of judgment, which means our intuition has a harder time being heard. And this can be some damn hard work, because again, we are raised in a culture that tells us the harder we are on ourselves, the more motivated we're going to be, the more inspired we're going to be, the more productive and efficient we're going to be.

23:35

If we have someone yelling in our ear and telling us to work harder that we messed up, all of that probably negative self-talk that a lot of you have. I mean, I have it too. P.S. I did a whole audio program all on the inner critic. This episode is brought to you by getting damn good at life. The audio program. See the show notes for links. However, I digress.

24:04

That is the non-judgment soapbox. The last one is G in the braving acronym, generosity. Extending, quote, extending the most generous interpretation to the intentions, words, and actions of others, end quote. If you read Rising Strong, or if you've worked with me privately, we have probably talked about this. And it is working on adopting the notion.

24:32

that everyone is doing the best they can. This does not mean that we let people off the hook for being assholes. Nope. That means that we assume that everyone's doing the best they can. And also sometimes people's best is shit. Sometimes people's best is shit. And when it is, that's where we get to decide.

25:01

if we're going to set a boundary or not.

25:06

I don't mean to sound. I don't mean to have this condescending voice. My apologies if it's coming across that way. I think I have this tone because it's one of those things that sounds so simple. And it can bring up a lot for people. If it does for you, I invite you to come at it from a place of curiosity. Do you have a hard time accepting that everyone's doing the best they can?

25:35

because you judge yourself? Maybe. I get it. Okay, gorgeous humans, that's all I got for you today on this. Hey, if you loved this podcast episode, will you DM me on Instagram? That's the easiest way to get to me. And I always love to know, I love your DMs where you tell me that you loved an episode. And I love it so much also when you share it. And I always try my best to repost those in my stories.

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It just makes me happy. And I look at your profile and I'm like, oh, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it more than you will ever know. You sharing about the podcast, you telling your friends about it, and also you DMing me when something really resonated with you. Those never get old. I always read them. I'm the one that reads my DMs. I appreciate all of you so much. And remember, it's our life's journey to make ourselves better humans and our life's responsibility to make the world a better place. Bye for now.