Chapter 27: Building Trust in Yourself Again
Kamal never made a decision on his own, and he hadn’t noticed until his sister pointed it out. “You asked me what you should have for lunch,” she said. “At a café. On your own.” He had. He had also asked three colleagues
Kamal never made a decision on his own, and he hadn’t noticed until his sister pointed it out.
“You asked me what you should have for lunch,” she said. “At a café. On your own.”
He had. He had also asked three colleagues whether he should respond to a particular email, his mother whether to take a new apartment, a friend whether to reply to a text, and, in a group chat, whether to buy a gray or a blue jacket. He kept a mental ledger of opinions and consulted it constantly. When advice conflicted, as it often did, he was paralyzed, because he had never had a standard of his own to measure the advice against.
The strange thing was that he did not think of himself as indecisive. He thought of himself as thorough and as someone who valued other people’s views. But when his sister asked him, quite gently, what he wanted for his own life, he sat in silence for a long time and eventually said, “I think I’ve forgotten how to tell.”
How trust is built
Self-trust is not a mood. It is a track record. We come to trust a friend because, over time, they have been reliable. We come to trust ourselves for the same reason: we have made decisions, lived with their consequences, and found that we could cope.
The psychologist Albert Bandura, who developed the concept of self-efficacy, the belief in your ability to handle a situation and produce results, identified several sources of it. The most powerful, he found, is mastery experience: having actually done something, and succeeded or recovered. Watching others do it helps. Encouragement helps. But nothing builds belief in your own capability like evidence from your own life.
This is the heart of the problem for people who outsource their decisions. Every time Kamal asked someone else to decide, he saved himself the discomfort of uncertainty, and he also denied himself the experience that would have taught him he could cope. The outsourcing made him feel safer in the moment and weaker over time. It is the same mechanism we saw with reassurance in Chapter 10: short-term relief, long-term erosion.
Advice is valuable, but it is not permission
None of this means you should never consult anyone. Other people have information, experience, and perspectives you lack. Asking for advice about a medical choice, a contract, or an unfamiliar field is simply wise.
The distinction is between asking for information and asking for permission. Information adds to your picture: What are the usual pitfalls? What did you wish you’d known? Permission transfers the decision: Tell me what to do, so that if it goes wrong, it isn’t entirely mine.
A helpful test is to ask: If I got the same answer from anyone, would I still need to ask? If you are collecting facts, ask. If you are collecting reassurance, notice it. When you find yourself asking five people the same question, you are probably not seeking information. You are trying to find a decision that nobody can blame you for.
Decide first, then consult
A simple habit can change the pattern: make your own decision first, and write it down, before you ask anyone. Then ask for input if you genuinely need it, and compare. Something interesting happens. You begin to see how often your own judgment would have been fine. And in the cases where the advice improves your choice, you learn that too.
Kamal tried this with small things first. Before asking about lunch, he wrote the soup. He ordered the soup. It was fine. Before replying to his friend’s text, he wrote his own answer, and sent it, without consulting anyone. It was fine. Before long, he began to notice that his first instinct was usually sound. It was not a revelation. It was an accumulation.
Handling the consequences
Trust is not built by making only good decisions. It is built by making decisions, some of which will be mediocre or wrong, and discovering that you can recover. The jacket was blue instead of gray, and he ended up not liking it much. He returned it. It did not matter.
This is why the response to a bad outcome is as important as the decision itself. If every mistake becomes a verdict (I can’t be trusted to choose), the track record never builds. If a mistake is met with curiosity and repair (That didn’t work. What did I learn? What now?), it becomes evidence of something more valuable than being right: the ability to handle being wrong.
Try this: The evidence log
For the next month, keep a small notebook or a note on your phone titled Evidence of me. Each time you make a decision, however small, take thirty seconds to record:
- The decision. Chose the blue jacket. Replied to the email without checking.
- What I chose, and why. One sentence.
- What happened. The outcome, as plainly as you can.
- What I learned. One line. I like gray better. My first instinct about the email was right.
- How I handled it. If anything went wrong, how did you respond? Returned the jacket. Felt annoyed for an hour. Moved on.
Begin with tiny decisions and let the scale grow. After a month, read through the log. You will be reading a record of a person who makes decisions and copes with the results. That person is you, and the log is the evidence.
Kamal still asks for advice on matters where he needs it, such as a lease, a tax form, and a medical question. But he asks as a person with his own view, rather than as a person with none. When his sister asked, six months later, what he wanted to do about a job offer, he said, without hesitating, “I’ve decided. I’m going to take it. I wanted to check one fact about the pension, and then I’ll accept.” She nearly dropped her coffee.
What the log does. It will not make you decisive overnight. Its value is cumulative: after a month you hold data that contradicts the claim I can’t be trusted to choose. Include the decisions that went poorly, because they are part of the evidence. If making any decision brings intense distress, a therapist can help. Keep each entry brief. The log is evidence, not a scorecard, and it is not a daily performance target. If it begins to feel like homework, skip a day, or keep only the decisions you want to remember.
A THOUGHT TO CARRY
Self-trust is not the belief that you will never be wrong. It is the knowledge that you can be wrong and be all right.