By Susanna de Chenonceau
October 1, 2021
“Treat Yo Self” is one of my favorite episodes of Parks and Recs. Google this clip of Tom and Donna!
Famously, now, Tom and Donna proclaim in a tiny rap:
“Treat yo self!...
…Once a year, Donna and I spend a day treating ourselves.
What do we treat ourselves to?
Clothes—treat yo self!
Fragrances—treat yo self!
Massages—treat yo self!
Mimosas—treat yo self!
Fine. Leather. Goods.—treat yo self!
…It’s the best day of the year!”
For this blog post, though, today, I think we will change these important words of self-care to:
Trust Yourself!
…Every day, you and I have a chance to trust ourselves.
What do we trust ourselves with?
Dreams—trust yourself! Feelings—trust yourself!
Instincts—trust yourself!
Impressions—trust yourself!
Your. Best. Decisions.—trust yourself!
…You’re the best voice in your ear!
You really can, should, and must trust yourself. Some people do this naturally, and some of us have to learn how, but the bottom line is that it’s critical for you and I to learn to rely on that little voice within us that will tell us whether we should go to the right or the left.
Jane Austen wrote in Mansfield Park, “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
God, how I love Fanny Price! In Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Fanny lives as a second-class citizen in the palatial estate of her aunt, uncle, and cousins. If ever a person had every reason NOT to trust themselves, it would be poor Fanny—poor literally and figuratively. Fanny lived in relative squalor until she was invited to come and live with her uber-rich cousins.
While Fanny might be in a figuratively poor situation given how her snobby cousins and rude aunt treat her, she has one very kind (and conveniently handsome) cousin Edmund. His mom is also at least obliviously kind to Fanny, too. But Fanny’s situation is, in the main, really tough. She is silenced, ignored, used, ignored, marginalized, ignored, and mostly powerless, in most ways.
EXCEPT, that Fanny Price has a clear inner voice that she hears, and when Fanny has a bad feeling about someone, she listens to that voice. She may not say much, but she is an AWESOME listener and observer. In fact, Fanny listens to her inner voice, it turns out, no matter who disagrees with her or how hot the guy in question is. In this case, the villain to avoid is a Juan Pablo di Pace meets Leslie Odom meets Matthew McConaughey meets Remington Hoffman kinda look, but Fanny... couldn’t…care…less.
Because Fanny hears something in her heart. She hears her inner voice. And while she might not have two nickels to her name, one new dress, or any fancy education, Fanny trusts that voice.
We can all really learn from this. Here is a person who is abandoned, neglected, and emotionally abused, but who clings to her faith in herself. Bravo Fanny Price!
Let this be you. Let this be me. Let each of listen to our own inner voice.
So, let’s break this down. HOW can we be like Fanny Price? WHAT can we do to protect and save ourselves through the trials and tribulations of life? I don’t want to blow the ending of Mansfield Park for any of you, but Fanny never waivers—not even when EVERYONE around her is angry at her for her stance. Not even when she is the only person who holds the right opinion. Fanny trusts herself.
Let’s get to this place each of us, for whatever true and sacred purpose you are here to fulfill. Because here’s the deal: there is something that ONLY you can offer to our world. You are designed to do something that no one else can do. We need your gift, and you will delight and THRIVE in the giving of it. Everybody wins when YOU follow your heart and do what you were designed to do. So, let’s work on hearing your inner voice, trusting yourself, and flourishing. (Typical Tuesday.)
Trust Yourself!
1. What it looks like
2. How to do it
3. Why it’s important
4. Why we don’t do it
5. How to fix that (heal the past)
6. Expected outcomes
7. Tips to practice trusting yourself
Let’s dive in:
1. What trusting yourself looks like
When you trust yourself, you pause before answering to check in with yourself first, and when you answer, you answer from a place of calm knowing. You spend time alone thinking about what you want, what your goals are, and what is healthy and safe and on track for you. YOU WORK TO KNOW YOUR OWN MIND. Gnosis saufton was engraved into the marble above the front entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Ancient Greece—the most famous Oracle of all time. People went there for truth with a capital T, and what was the first thing they saw? Gnosis saufton—Know thyself! Only when you know yourself can you know what you are seeking and why. You can only know Truth when you know YOU.
2. How to trust yourself
To trust yourself, get to KNOW YOURSELF.
For instance, let’s say you know that you are not at all attracted to smoking cigarettes. When someone offers you one, it is natural and calm to say, “Oh, no thank you” because you are flatly not interested. Get to that place where you know yourself with all decisions. Do you want a coffee right now? Think about it. Ask yourself. Don’t look to the people you are with to see what they are ordering. They can choose their own drinks. What drink sounds good to you right now? What do you want? Ask yourself. Hear it. Know it, and then calmly say it.
Do you want a certain car or residence? Think about it. Do you want a certain career or school? Think about it. Get comfortable with yourself and learn your own mind and wishes and preferences and GOALS. Know your goals, and then all little decisions you make each day should be keeping you on track for YOUR goals. This is YOUR life, YOUR turn, YOUR time. You do not live YOUR life to make anyone else happy—they have their own life and dreams and goals and soul work.
It goes without saying that when you are choosing whom to trust or befriend, you simply must trust yourself. Does someone frighten you? Trust that. Does someone seem controlling to you? Trust that. Does someone seem like they are using you, or using someone you love, or using you to get at someone you love? Trust that feeling.
Trust your feelings.
Trusting yourself is a skill, and like all skills it will grow stronger with practice. Trusting yourself looks like calm confidence with a smile. It is effortless and peaceful. Set this as a goal, and practice today with every small decision—even if you’re trembling. When we practice with small decisions, we are training for big ones. Just like Daniel San in the Karate Kid: Wax on, Wax off. Practice makes perfect, even with self trust.
3. Why trusting ourselves is important
Trusting yourself is important so that you take possession of, use, and maintain your voice and autonomy, like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Remember, you are here on this earth to DO something that only you can do and we need you to do it. It’s ok if you choose not to do it, because the Universe will find another way, but it will be MUCH better for you and for all of us if you DO do it, whatever it is. Yay!
4. Why we don’t trust ourselves
We typically don’t trust ourselves because we have not been allowed to make decisions in the past—so we have no skills built up. Or we tried, but people silenced or ignored us—so we learned that our voice didn’t matter. OR, we tried but it went badly (which is normal!)—so now we fear that we will make another mistake. Let’s tackle these one at a time.
You were not allowed to make decisions: The size of these decisions might have ranged from huge (where you will live or go to school, or whom you will date or marry) to small, like what you will eat or wear. Some decisions it’s natural that we don’t allow children to make (like if they will drink alcohol, or work 40 hours a week at age 10), but a big part of raising a child is that you train and teach the child to learn to make decisions and to then be able to trust his/her own judgement. This is critical parenting. If you didn’t get this experience I’m sorry, but you need to give it to yourself now. (Happy to write about anger and forgiveness in another post.)
You tried to make decisions, but you were silenced: This one is particularly hurtful because you tried to speak but people ignored or silenced you and then did the thinking for you. While this really typically means that these people are controlling, we tend to interpret this as “I’m not smart enough to decide important things,” so these consequences then trickle into small decisions, too. Once you recognize this, you simply must start to stand up for yourself. You can be polite, but you must be firm. My beloved is French, and he often says to me that Revolutions get nasty because if we were all nice the people in power would NEVER give up power. Point. So, though it’s tough, you will need to take control of your life or risk living like a silent puppet while someone else lives their life and yours. NO fair.
You made decisions but you made mistakes: Large or small, mistakes are normal. So if you made a decision to date or marry the wrong person, or take the wrong class or job, hey, you know what that means? YOU’RE HUMAN. Humans make mistakes. You can’t be perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist. It’s conceited and exhausting to think that you can even try. So join the Human Club and be like the rest of us: we learn by making mistakes. Try anything complicated and you will likely “fail” but that just means you’re practicing. I actually believe the only failure is in giving up. So whatever “mistakes” you made, you learned, right? You grew stronger and kinder, right? That’s a net gain in my book, my friend, and who wants to be friends with a “perfect” person anyway? No one can relate to that because we ALL make mistakes. It’s OK! You’re Ok. :)
5. How to fix the fact that we don’t trust ourselves (heal the past)
Express your anger for anyone who controlled you. Express your anger or grief at yourself for having messed up or been silent. AND THEN LET IT GO. Grieve what was lost. Learn from what was gained. AND MOVE FORWARD NOW.
6. Expected outcomes
When you start standing up for yourself and thinking for yourself, don’t expect anyone who has been controlling you to go along easily with The New Plan. They are used to the “old, doormat , super nice, zero preferences” you. They are not going to be expecting the new “thinking and speaking and taking a stand” you to appear on the scene. You know what I say to that? TOO BAD, SUCKER.
You’ve got one life—and it’s yours, not theirs. If they want to be TRUE friends, then they will want you to live a full life. They will want to hear what you have to say. They will want to get to know you! The only way we get to know people is by hearing them. When we love people, we long to get to know them as much as possible! We long to see them succeed and follow their heart and passions! So if someone doesn’t want to get to know you, ask yourself if they really love you or if they just love controlling you.
Also, when we truly love someone, we want to help them blossom and flourish and become the very best possible version of themselves. That only happens by listening to them and supporting them as they make their way through life. Remember, you are on your path to become your best self. Everyone who is supportive of that is welcome on the team; everyone counter to that is basically, I’m sorry, but toxic. And NO toxic people on the team!! So either the person needs to step up and change and allow you to make your own decisions and have a voice, or sadly, they can’t come along. (There really is no other way, unless you agree to go through your life doing exactly what THEY want, which makes it not YOUR life anymore, so you can’t exactly in good faith to yourself make that choice.)
7. Tips to practice trusting yourself
I’m tempted to write, Just Do It. But the truth is, the main trick to trusting yourself is practice. Practice, practice, practice.
And patience. Take your time to reply. Ask people if you can get back to them. Buy time.
Spend time alone. Get to know what you want. Get to know yourself. What are you happy about in your life? What are you unhappy about?
Communicate. Can you ask any people who are suffocating you if they can change and stop doing that? Can you let them know how their silencing you makes you feel? Can you let them know what your dreams are? Can you let them know that you would love to have a healthy, reciprocal relationship with them, but that you need space to be you? People who say “You do you” and then proceed to tell you how to do it, aren’t really allowing you to live.
Make some changes. Remember the image of the 7 chakras. If you are a big house, and on each floor of you is one chakra color, then each floor also has a door. So picture yourself as a big seven story house in a pretty, fenced-in yard. On your street are the people you love, also in houses of their own with fenced in yards. You can see them all from where you are, but each of you has your own property. (This property is your life). Your soul is the essence dwelling inside of your house, on all seven floors at once.
Now each floor has a door facing the street. Keep it closed. We are not a hotel! Your parents and partner and friends should not be trying to come into your house and run the show or look around. YOU can go out to the edge of your yard and lean across the fence to talk to those you love, who can also STAY in their own yards and talk to you across the fence. YOU need to take care of your own soul-house. THEY need to take care of theirs. We are all separate souls. YOU ARE NOT A HOTEL.
We can and do love one another, and we can invite people we absolutely trust to come inside of our yard to visit—only to visit—and then they politely leave as soon as we imply the visit is over. (Like when someone comes in your bedroom right now, in real life, and you let them know when you’ve had enough of them being in your space). And for those we trust the most, we can invite them inside the house—BUT THEY STILL HAVE THEIR OWN HOUSE. They are STILL just GUESTS in YOUR house and they STILL should leave to go tend to their OWN soul. This is why we do not exist in a constant deep conversation with our best friend, baring our souls 24/7. We do those deep, deep talks once in a while. NO one could stand that much intimacy! This is why we do not kiss or have sex with someone 24/7 for seven days a week. No one could stand that much energy sharing and intimacy.
HUMANS NEED SPACE, and no one else should be touching or changing or directing anything in your soul-house. No one. Your soul is SUPER private. It is sacred. Even a super trusted, mature spiritual teacher would not come into your soul and start moving things around. Truly spiritually grounded people are well within themselves so they would not need to touch anything in someone else’s soul. They would know, in fact, that they should not!
So think about this when someone tries to control you or silence you. Do they really love you? Do they even know you?
Please feel free to ask questions if any of this is unclear. <3
In closing…
Last week I went to the Harvard Club in NYC where, even after twenty years as an alumna, I had never been. The facility was gorgeous (a far cry from the pastoral cornfields of my youth) but the libraries were the true pièce de résistance. I texted some pictures to a friend who went to Oxford. She thought I was back in Oxford! But lo and behold, I was in Manhattan.
We were both shocked by the beauty of these libraries, but our reactions are what really struck me. She and I were both stunned to see these beautiful libraries that we had never seen. Somehow we seemed to think that we had by now seen all the gorgeous libraries in the world (silly assumption). But after we calmed down in our nerd-glee, I sent her this text below, and it’s fitting here now. Remember that the world is vast, and there are other people you can lean on, and love, in this life:
“There are a thousand libraries we haven’t seen. There are a million hearts that you can love. There are other fish in this big sea.”
~Be free,
Susanna
Picture of the library at the Harvard Club NYC, photo by SdC
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