Why You Can’t Trust Yourself

The Hidden Cost of Outsourcing Your Authority

Hobune by Eduard Ole, 1952. Courtesy of Tartu Art Museum, Estonia. CC0.

I wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over my head.

Not because someone had died.

Not because I had received terrible news.

Because I couldn’t choose a paint color.

There I stood in front of hundreds of paint samples for my home, feeling a wave of overwhelm wash over me. What color did I want for the living room? I had no clear vision. My mind felt completely blank.

It was only paint. If I chose wrong, I could repaint it.

And yet I felt paralyzed.

I gathered sample cards, brochures, and color palettes. I brought them home. I asked my children. I asked my girlfriend. I asked my assistant. I listened carefully to the designer.

Everyone had an opinion.

Except me.

Why was this so hard?

As I sat there surrounded by paint chips, a memory surfaced from kindergarten.

We were painting horses for our school performance.

I knew exactly what mine should look like.

Brown.

With a black mane.

When I reached for the brown paint, my teacher stopped me.

“There isn’t any brown left,” she said. “You’ll have to use blue.”

“A blue horse?” I asked. “There are no blue horses.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “Blue is what’s left.”

Unhappily, I painted my horse blue.

At the performance, two older boys walked by, pointed at my horse, and laughed.

“Don’t you know horses aren’t blue?”

I wanted to disappear.

Looking back now, I realize it wasn’t just about the horse.

It was the beginning of something much bigger.

It wasn’t that I made a bad choice.

It was that I learned my choices weren’t safe.

Years later, I didn’t struggle to choose a paint color because I lacked good taste.

I struggled because somewhere along the way, I stopped trusting my own judgment.

For years, I thought my indecision came from fear.

Fear of making a mistake.

Fear of being judged.

Fear of looking foolish.

Those fears were certainly there.

But they weren’t the whole story.

The deeper truth was this:

I had outsourced my authority.

Without realizing it, I had spent decades asking everyone else what they thought before asking myself.

What did my husband think?

What do my children need?

What would my mother say?

What does the designer recommend?

What do my friends think?

Everyone else’s opinion mattered.

Mine slowly disappeared.

Eventually, I stopped asking myself altogether.

“What do you want for dinner?”

“I don’t care.”

“What movie do you want to watch?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Which sofa do you like?”

“I’m fine with anything.”

Those answers sound easygoing.

They’re not.

Sometimes they’re evidence that we’ve become strangers to ourselves and our own desires.

I didn’t just outsource decisions.

I outsourced my authority.

I outsourced my opinions.

My happiness.

My desires.

My boundaries.

My joy.

Eventually...

I outsourced myself.

The strange thing about self-trust is that it doesn’t disappear overnight.

It fades through hundreds of tiny moments.

Every time I said yes when I wanted to say no.

Every time I swallow an opinion because it might disappoint someone.

Every time I ignored that quiet feeling inside me.

Every time I chose approval over authenticity.

I sent myself the same message:

Your opinion doesn’t matter.

After hearing that message for years...

Why would I trust myself?

Then I realized something that changed everything.

My inner voice had never disappeared.

She had simply stopped interrupting.

After decades of ignoring her, she became quieter and quieter.

Not because she had nothing to say.

Because she no longer believed I was listening.

The good news is that self-trust returns the same way it was lost.

One decision at a time.

People often believe confidence comes first.

I don’t think it does.

I think confidence is the result of making hundreds of imperfect decisions and discovering you survive every one of them.

You don’t trust yourself...

and then decide.

You decide...

and then you begin trusting yourself again.

An Experiment

For the next week, practice making one small decision every day without first asking anyone else’s opinion.

Choose what you want to wear.

Decide what sounds good for breakfast—not what you always eat, but what you genuinely want.

Pick the book that sparks your curiosity.

Take the walk that appeals to you.

Spend Saturday morning the way you choose.

These aren’t just decisions.

They’re repetitions.

Every choice is another repetition in rebuilding the muscle of self-trust.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve written about self-abandonment.

I’ve come to believe it rarely happens in one dramatic moment.

It happens through hundreds of tiny decisions.

Tiny compromises.

Tiny silences.

Tiny dismissals of your own voice.

Which also means the journey back happens the same way.

One small choice.

One honest answer.

One quiet act of listening.

Until one day you realize something remarkable.

You are no longer looking outside yourself for permission.

You have remembered something that was true all along.

You are a trustworthy source for your own life.

The Tarot Nook

The Queen of Wands Reversed

Queen of Wands Reversed from Smith-Waite Deck

At first glance, the Queen of Wands reversed looks like a woman who has lost her confidence.

I don’t think that’s what she’s showing us at all.

I think she’s showing us what happens when we spend years asking everyone else who we should be.

The Queen of Wands upright trusts her instincts. She doesn’t wait for permission to speak, create, choose, or take up space. She knows her own mind.

Reversed, that certainty has been outsourced.

She second-guesses herself.

She asks everyone else’s opinion before honoring her own.

She confuses other people’s approval with inner wisdom.

As I looked at this card next to today’s blog, I realized something.

Perhaps I haven’t lost my confidence.

Perhaps I’ve simply stopped consulting the one voice that has always known the answer.

The Queen of Wands reminds me that my inner fire hasn’t gone out.

It’s just waiting for me to trust it again.

And maybe that’s what rebuilding self-trust really is.

Not finding a new voice...

But finally believing the one that’s been quietly speaking all along.