IN SELF WE TRUST

Do you want to be perfect or do you want to be free?

If you’re reading this, you’re already on some journey of becoming. 

You’re committed both to your own personal growth and development, and to actively participating in making the world a healthier, kinder, safer place. 

And yet: there are extraordinary forces vying to capitalize on your commitment—from those quieter, internal forces that can sabotage your best intentions, to the more point-to-able, obvious external ones (including, a $1.5 trillion wellness industry). 

These forces are deeply adept at perpetuating the very problems from which you seek liberation.

IN OTHER WORDS:

The world needs you to step into your unique wisdom and authority. Because the longer you cede your authority to anyone/anything other than your core, essential self—and the longer you stay disconnected from this core self—the longer you’ll stay beholden to your social conditioning and the lunacy of late-stage capitalism.

HINT:

You have a built-in navigation system to filter through the influences of these internal and external forces, and that filter is your own inner guidance. This essay will demonstrate how developing self-trust is a prerequisite for personal and collective liberation, and how creating a world that works for everyone starts within. 

What if I told you…

<Holds up a mirror>

EVERYTHING YOU MOST DEEPLY LONG FOR—

FOR YOURSELF, AND THE WORLD

—IS RIGHT HERE.

ALIVENESS, JOY, EASE, CONNECTION; 

A LIFE  FULL OF BEAUTY; 

A SENSE OF MEANING + PURPOSE.

Access to all these things is right here

 <taps mirror> 

In theory, you know there’s at least some accuracy to this. You know you’re responsible for your life—indeed, you’ve spent a lot of time, energy, focus, and resources on self-improvement. And, if you’re anything like the hundreds of people who have passed through my coaching practice, you tend to experience those qualities listed above as elusive at best; at worst, the idea of feeling any of these things is nothing more than an embarrassing fantasy at a time when the world feels increasingly out-of-control and chaotic.

You’re in the right place if you relate to any of the following (check all that apply):

• You spend most of your days beholden to an inner urgency, underneath which is an anxiety that threatens to choke you out the second you have a few quiet moments to yourself. 

• Leisure, pleasure, and joy sit neglected on backburners on a stove whose pilot light has been out for what feels like several generations. 

• You are full of ideas, longings, and desires, but all the NOISE is so distracting and there are always, always, bigger fish to fry. 

• No matter how good things may be, you can’t seem to shake a persistent, low-grade, uncomfortable sense that the other shoe is about to drop. 

• You spend money and time on self-care, you’re invested in self-help, and you consider yourself a relatively smart, decently self-aware person—so what the hell is up with that inner dialogue that talks to you like you’re a total piece of idiotic shit most of the time? 

• You step off the hamster wheel in lucky moments—vacations; time in nature; blessed moments of flow—and upon returning to your “real” life, you promise yourself, this time, I’ll be different—until the hooks of the capitalist machine sink back in, and you inevitably backslide into nonstop productivity mode. 

• You miss your friends; you wish you had more friends. 

• You suspect there’s something…off with your substance use, but the thought of depriving yourself of your go-to release valve feels insurmountable.

• You want to be a role model for your kids but also, you really don’t want to perpetuate the same patterns you’re working so hard to free yourself from and the amount of information coming from the parenting experts and influencers (not to mention, your peers) is overwhelming.

• You want to feel connected to the wisdom and exuberance of your animal body—and you know your spine (not to mention, your ass), would feel so much better if you didn’t spend the majority of your days hunkered Gollum-like in front of a screen—and less like a brain dragging a body around.

• You’ve checked so many boxes, accomplished so much, and you know you should be happier—but if you’re really honest, goddamn, something is still missing (cue: feeling guilty for not being happier).

• You question your decisions, because, honestly? You are not really all that sure of who you are and what you believe (Is that *really* what I think? Or is it what I’m *supposed to* think?) 

• You are active and informed when it comes to the global goings on in the world but it’s becoming increasingly harder to ignore that the “people in charge” only have their own interests in mind and the degree to which your efforts lack effectiveness is demoralizing.

• You want to invest in actions that actually contribute to change and less like you’re just taking in oo much information and then falling into despair or desperation.

If you checked any of the boxes - hello, hi, welcome; perfect. This essay was written for you. 

BEFORE WE CONTINUE, you may be wondering:

1. What is this essay? Why is this essay?

This essay lays out the 3 steps to activate your inner GPS system so you can relax into your life’s unfolding, make choices that align with the life you actually want (versus what you’ve been programmed to want), and increase your impact out in the world with greater authenticity and effectiveness. 

2. Who is this essay for?

Big feelers, overthinkers, highly-sensitives. Artists, activists, creatives, visionaries. The traditionally disenfranchised people in society whose ideas and actions have already been shaping change for generations. People with disabilities, or are BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, women, neurodivergent, and many more important groups of people. Anyone aching to step off the capitalist hamster wheel and onto a kinder, more nurturing, CREATIVE, and interdependent ground.

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

—Thomas Merton

Key Self-Trust Concept #1: Making Space for Transformation 

That checklist that kicked-off this essay? Each point is an actual example of an issue or concern one of my clients was dealing with when they decided to hire me. Every single one of them had already tried numerous interventions to move the needle on their unique area of stuckness; they eventually hired a coach (hi) because their solo attempts at self-betterment hadn’t given them the results they desired. 

The issues or concerns spelled out above are symptoms of what occurs when a person’s capacity for inner quiet is drowned out by a relentless, omnipresent external and/or internal chatter (usually a frustrating combo-platter of both) that keeps them disconnected from their inner guidance. This disconnection keeps them paying attention to everything except for what’s right here, which is to say, from anything that could actually affect meaningful change. The idea of quiet and stillness is plenty alluring, but the reality of it is often excruciating—life is already stressful; sitting quietly with the uproariousness within is enough to send them right over the edge they’re already teetering on.

All of my clients are people with specific and particular dreams, desires, goals, and aspirations. They tend to already know what’s getting in the way of making progress, and are confused that they haven’t figured out how to “fix” what’s wrong. They care deeply about their friends, family, and communities, and they are invested in living in a way that is environmentally responsible and causes minimal harm. They yearn for the promises I listed above (you know, all those sweet things like aliveness, joy, ease, connection; a life full of beauty; a sense of meaning and purpose); they want to design a life where these qualities are more consistently—and authentically— accessible, and infused into their general experience of everyday life. 

They are also humans who—like you, like me—exist in this very specific cultural context which means, they are essentially never not bombarded by a relentless onslaught of external stimuli.

We live in an era of so much noise. 

→ Your smart phone has basically become an appendage. I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the way this tiny device hijacks your most precious resource, which is of course, your attention, pumping you with more information in one day than your ancestors might have filtered through in an entire year—or lifetime. 

→ Social media is exquisitely designed to keep you scrolling, keep you adding things to a never satisfied shopping cart, keep you in a constant comparison game with your peers (not to mention, all the armchair experts and influencers) who seem to have far shinier, prettier lives than you, which keeps  you focused on everything you lack and obsessed with how you might shop or optimize or life-hack your way out of all the ways your messy life falls short. 

→ The wellness industrial complex seems well-intentioned on the surface, but on closer investigation is yet another industry preying on your vulnerabilities and selling you solutions to problems you didn’t even know you had. 

→ You’re out there doing your damndest to attend to your legitimate familial, professional, day-to-day life obligations, which are already challenging enough, even more so considering that you are living through a period of decline: Here in the United States, infrastructure is collapsing, academia is cannibalizing itself, organized religion is a farce, the healthcare insurance system is throwing millions into medical debt, job security is a myth, and don’t get me started on the freak show that is the American political system. And! All of this happening against the backdrop of climate change (I published this essay in January 2025, at the exact time Los Angeles—in my beloved home state of California—is a blazing inferno).  

~Inhale~

~Exhale~

I know what you’re feeling. I feel it too! It’s overwhelm. It’s the omnipresent, urgent thrum of internalized capitalism. It’s fear, and anxiety; maybe even despair, or hopelessness.

I mention all of this not to freak you out, but because context is important. It would be disingenuous of me to write an entire essay about the perks and promises (along with the perils and pitfalls) of what it takes to develop self-trust without explicitly calling out the unprecedented elements wresting your attention and energy away from the very steps required for you to become more free. No matter how motivated or well-intentioned you are, there is a context that colors your perception of reality and what’s possible in reality, and this context is really fucking adept at convincing you that *this is as good as it gets*.

The impact of the external context spelled out above is further compounded by your individual patterns, social conditioning, internalized programming, and limiting beliefs—all those aforementioned inner forces that can keep you stuck fighting whitewater instead of learning how to swim.

All of this to say: You understand why “connecting to your inner guidance” is extra challenging when *these* <gestures wildly> are the waters you’re swimming in.

You know that if you don’t learn to work with these forces, they’ll keep running your life. And it’s this knowing—and specifically, developing a relationship with this knowing—that is the first, most foundational stage in the journey. The transformation you seek, both for yourself and the world, is predicated on developing the inner conditions for self-trust to emerge. This is where you create space for transformation. This is where you learn to become quiet enough to listen to, and forge a relationship with, your inner guidance—what I’ll now refer to as your higher self.

Most of you were conditioned to seek answers to Big Life Questions from outside of yourself. You were programmed to cede your authority to experts, to science; to teachers, mentors, bosses, colleagues, peers, partners. You’ve become proficient at research, gathering data, and pumping yourself full of endless information. You crowdsource your friend’s opinions. You stay on top of the news. You listen to all the podcasts. You bop through different courses, trainings, workshops. You have hired therapists, coaches, energy healers, psychics, astrologers. And despite so much evidence that the people in power are beholden not to citizens, but to corporate interests, you still believe that a unifying figure surely is on their way to unify all that divides us and forge a saner path forward.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these things (except for maybe that very last one* see Step #3). The trouble occurs when you don’t crosscheck the external input with your higher self. The trouble occurs when you look everywhere but right here for the answers you seek.

In my experience, here’s how it usually goes:

You begin a coaching engagement (which is to say: a process of transformation). You’re motivated, energized, ready, and willing; there’s an excitement, and your expectations are high as hell. You say yes to your coach’s suggestions and begin experimenting with new practices, exercises, and self-awareness activities. You figure you can just…add all these new experiments to everything you are already doing. Surely you don’t need to reassess current obligations or carve out time and space for exploration! You just need to optimize your calendar, become more efficient. Self-development is supposed to make you better at life, right? More productive, more capable at managing the mess.

At some point, usually pretty early on, you enter “Instagram vs. Reality” territory. This is where you bump up against your expectations around what transformation is supposed to look like (aka, bright; shiny; linear; social media worthy), and face the truth of what it actually looks like (tedious; messy; uncomfortable; even boring at times). You find yourself in the same frustrating loop that brought you to coaching in the first place: resisting the very thing that would guide you in the direction you desire. This frustration leads to a breakdown, and—believe it or not—this is a good thing, for breakdowns are portals to something new. 

This essay is inviting you to step through the portal.

So…what *exactly* IS your higher self?

When you first turn inward, you will probably notice that it’s quite cacophonous in there. This can be intense, uncomfortable—even scary. Your skin will feel too tight. You’ll feel the siren songs of productivity, perfectionism, and people-pleasing doing their damndest to convince you that your attention is URGENTLY NEEDED elsewhere. 

As you learn to sit in the discomfort of stillness, the noise starts to quiet. Less noise opens more space. And when you push pause on filling this open space with more and more doing, you can relax, tuning your attention to a frequency of listening. And from this gentle listening, the wisdom of your higher self can make itself known.

Call it what you like—higher self, inner guidance, gut feeling, intuition, the teacher within (to name a few!)—what you call this aspect of yourself is less important than being able to connect to the idea, and eventually a felt sense, of the part of you that is driven by your best interests. Think of this as the part that calls to you in the middle of the night, the voice of anxiety that is often a signal that something is not right, or has swung too far out of balance. This is the part of you that turns away from the comfort zone of a culture whose rules promise to keep you safe—but in reality are keeping you small—and toward a path of bravery into the wild and glorious unknown. This is the part of you that is free from the family-of-origin stuff, from the social and cultural conditioning stuff, from the beatdowns of your inner critic. This is the part you see when you close your eyes and visualize the absolute best version of yourself—strong, fortified, up to something meaningful, caring and being cared for by people you love, energized by a sense of purpose, and able to access joy on a regular basis. This is the part of you that recognizes itself as it reads this essay.

Creating a relationship—and an ongoing, highly attuned, forever conversation— with this aspect of yourself is just as important as any routines, habits, and actions you might be up to out in the world. Unlike the self-care tools and practices that shift, evolve, and change over time, a relationship to your higher self is the deep, sustaining waters of an ancient, meandering river. It’s your job to listen to the river, to give over to its bends and eddies, and to trust that it’s safe to step into the current and away from the shore.

Slowly but surely, as you create more space inside, something rad starts to happen. You face a challenge or struggle (maybe something similar to the checklist of concerns that kicked off this essay), and instead of being at the mercy of your habitual, knee-jerk reactions, you slow down, get quiet, and go inside. You plug into your higher self/inner guidance/personal GPS system. You listen, and allow the next right step to reveal itself to you—what I refer to as lanterns on the path. You begin to experience yourself as a person who acts in alignment with your inner guidance, and from this gentle, quiet, inner spaciousness, resilience and responsiveness blooms. The grip of the external and internal forces that used to have you by the throat loosens. The ceiling starts to lift; possibility and potential reemerge; creativity and imagination begin to pool in.

If the connection to your higher self has been neglected (hint: this is the case for just about everyone), you might hear crickets at first. This is totally normal, and—despite what your mind might try to convince you—is not an indication that you’re doing anything wrong. Indeed, this is one of many—oh my God, so many!—moments where you might want to give up. But every time you stay in the water instead of returning to the familiar shoreline, you reinforce new, more helpful behaviors instead of capitulating to the, shitty, old, known, frustrating ones. 

(Incidentally, a secondary perk of keeping your commitment to your experiment is another way you bolster self-trust.)

Let me reiterate: With Step #1, the first focus is simply making space for transformation. You do not have to *do* anything, not just yet. There’s no rush to fill the space with new and different actions and behaviors (that step comes later, which I’ll describe in the next section); the aim here is to quiet the inner noisiness just enough that your inner guidance can be heard. 

Becoming quiet requires slowing down. Slowing down is the opposite of what I often see at this stage: Now that your eyes are open to the blocks that have been holding you back, there can be a tendency to want to throw yourself into the deep-end. I don’t recommend this. What usually happens with a premature drop into the deep end is that you blow past your comfort zone too far, too fast; thus, no learning or integration can happen and you end up angry, disappointed, and frustrated (besides, doesn’t all this hurrying up remind you of those habituated loops you’re trying to leave behind?). 

You do not need a guide (a guide can be helpful, but you don’t need one). You do not have to meditate in a lotus position. You do not have to spend any money. You do not need a playbook or manual. All you need is curiosity, and a willingness to experiment and explore until you land upon the thing that opens a dialogue between you and your higher self. This could look like traditional meditation; sure. It could also look like long, phone-free walks in nature, or journaling, or reading poetry, or listening to beautiful, uplifting music; it could be as simple as sitting quietly with a cup of coffee in the morning before the day begins, just you and your senses, relishing in the quiet peacefulness of the present moment.

Give yourself the gift of surrendering to the timeline of your experiment. Remember, this is the beginning of a great unraveling, an inner unspooling from which an entirely new way of orienting to yourself and the way you move through your life can make itself known to you. 

Increased productivity and efficiency are false gods; shiny objects distracting you away from the path of developing self-trust and a relationship with your higher self. In the context of oversaturation from external stimuli, there is very little space for imagination and creativity—let alone the emergence of a way of being in the world that allows peace, ease, and enough breathing room for you to focus on the things that would actually contribute to meaningful change.

You already know there’s more to life than productivity and efficiency; indeed, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t still be reading. You already know you’re not here to optimize. You’re here to pursue aliveness. To liberate yourself (and therefore, others, <which we’ll explore in Step 3>) from the blocks and resistances that keep you on the hamster wheel and endlessly avoiding facing the wilderness within.

It’s a big fucking deal when you have a line-in-the-sand moment that thrusts you—either willingly or unexpectedly—into a process of change. That moment of discernment that has you realize it’s time to seek support, and sets you on a journey of transformation, is profoundly sacred and vulnerable. 

Developing a dialogue with your higher self is how you honor the sacredness of your efforts. It’s how you nurture the vulnerable, honest part of you that is waving the white flag on current conditions, no longer willing to be ignored. And, it’s the foundation from which everything you seek can unfold. If you never develop the capacity to get quiet enough to listen, you might, as Lily Tomin said, “spend the rest of your life climbing the ladder of success only to realize it was leaning against someone else’s wall.” 

Taking a stand for personal and collective liberation is a rebellious, countercultural act. It’s how you build inner and outer resiliency, develop embodied agency, and learn to trust your life’s unfolding—no matter what is happening around you—so you can participate in what’s emerging instead of being knocked down by reactionary forces that seek to keep you disempowered.

Collective and personal liberation begins within you. Step#1 on the journey is making space inside. 

Take your time. Feel your way around this new space. Maybe try softening your gaze. Let things blur, fall apart. Stay in the discomfort of the obscure until new shapes reveal themselves. Maybe it’s a door, a window; a skylight, an escape hatch. You don’t even have to step through. You can trust that you’ll know when you’re ready. But maybe you crack it open a few inches. Let the breeze blow through. Let it wash over you, the soft call of a whole new life.

SO: YOU’VE CREATED INNER CONDITIONS FOR SELF-TRUST TO EMERGE. NOW WHAT?

CONTINUE READING →

Next: Part 2 of 3: Mapping A New Inner Terrain

“We cannot solve the world’s problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Albert Einstein

Key Self-Trust Concept #2: Mapping A New Inner Terrain 

There’s a question I ask clients that, no matter who they are, or why they have hired me, yields—truly, without fail—a similar effect: They lean back in their chair. A big inhale and exhale washes through them. There is an upswell of emotion, exhibited through body language: I might witness a sparkly, misty-eyed glance upward or out a nearby window; a shift in tone of voice; or a physical softening, as if just considering their answer released something that they didn’t even know had been coiled up taut within.

So what is the question that induces the type of reaction that, I’ve come to understand, is longing made visible?

Here it is:

“What would it be like to trust your life?” 

~Inhale~

~Exhale~

✨ Maybe a spark of longing rises up in you as you pose this question to yourself ✨

Most people spend the majority of their precious time, energy, and resources on controlling and managing their lives. The reason why even considering this question sparks such a visceral, immediate reaction is because it reveals the vast distance between their desire for how they want their life to feel, and the reality of how their current life actually feels. 

Step #2—mapping a new inner terrain—reveals the steps required to close the gap between desire and reality.

I was thrust into my current journey of transformation back in 2017 when I made the (longtime coming) decision to remove alcohol from my life. I immediately experienced relief, and at first the wins came fast and easy. It all seemed pretty straightforward: If I just doubled down on the things that were working, my transformation would continue to be this bright, clean, linear, easy-peasy process. All I had to do was stay disciplined to the self-care checklist (hot water with lemon in the morning; a daily meditation practice and intense exercise regimen; journaling in the early dawn; time spent building a community of all new friends; asserting and maintaining rigid boundaries with anyone who even glanced in my general direction), and I would finally become the type of person I thought I was supposed to be. This hypothetical version was organized and graceful. Calm under pressure. Measured in her expression, and definitely far less… emotional. If I could just keep it together, then surely the reasons that had had me turn to alcohol in the first place would simply vanish, right?

You can probably see where this is going. Inevitably, I’d fall short of these intense (<cough> unrealistic) standards. So, I’d double down again: Add to the already endless to-do lists. Diligently track the calories of every bite of food that entered my mouth. Count minutes in meditation. Push (even) harder at the gym. 

One morning about eighteen months into my experiment, I had one of those quiet moments in the shower where lightning struck, and it hit me that the same inner voice that berated and shamed me for not being able to drink “normally” was still very much alive, was still very much on high alert, ever at the ready to remind me of what a horrible person I was anytime I mowed down a whole pizza to myself, or procrastinated on my writing, or scrolled through Instagram instead of meditating, or overshared on a first date, or made an honest mistake at work, or did any number of things that made me human and not, you know, an android.

My line-in-the-sand moment—the moment that kicked off my journey of transformation—was recognizing once and for all that alcohol wasn’t doing me any favors, and finally choosing to 100% abstain. But that lightbulb moment in the shower (which I now know was my higher self asserting herself) began the deeper work of realizing that despite all my newfound, healthier practices, despite my earnest yearning, and sky-high expectations, I would never experience the freedom I so desired if I did not learn to liberate myself from my repetitive and unhelpful thoughts and behavioral patterns, and to soften the voice of my nasty internal dialogue. 

What was the point of all this self-work if I still hated myself?

Waking up to the degree to which the stuff of my past was negatively impacting my experience of the present ripped the blinders off and gave me a new lens. Suddenly it was so obvious: as long as I busied myself with endlessly unattainable standards, as long as I applied the same obsessive fervor to managing the messiness of self-development as I did to managing the messiness of my former life, as long as I tried to squeeze the vast mystery of my human life down into some small, malleable, and manageable shape, well, it was just like waking up to the ways I’d been bamboozled into believing that alcohol was the vehicle for a life that was edgy and wild, when really, it just held me back from making my art and whittled me down to size—until one day I looked around and my life had become a small, hard thing.

This quest for perfection was another exquisite distraction and a great way to keep avoiding the actual work of facing the habits, patterns, and outdated coping strategies that kept aliveness, joy, ease, connection; a life full of beauty; a sense of meaning and purpose continually out of my reach.

Sure, I’d removed alcohol—a massive accomplishment I won’t minimize. But I was still escaping life. As long as I stayed caught in the binary of black and white mind-loops—either future-tripping on some idealized vision of myself that fulfilled society’s expectations, or giving up after the first tiny mistake and throwing myself into the pit of rumination and self-loathing for an aggressive round of self-flagellation—I was missing out on real life, which actually happens in the messy, gray area between extremes. And it’s *really hard* to trust your life when you spend most of your time on the run from it.

Trusting your life has nothing to do with making life perfect. Instead, it is an invitation into an ongoing process of cozying up to your perceived flaws, and surrendering into the messiness of your humanity. It’s also another way to build self-trust because it reveals a new map that is grounded in reality instead of fantasy. 

Just like you, I wanted to be loved, and acknowledged, and I wanted to look good in front of others, and I didn’t want to be clumsy and fumbling, and I sure hated anytime I stuck my foot in my mouth. But that lightbulb shower moment was a holy point of no return. My desire for myself, for my own yearning and dreaming and becoming and imagination, was finally greater than my desire to be perfect. And it was stepping past that threshold that my life—my real life, and not my life’s proxy—finally began.

Self-trust is liberation from the prison of painful patterns. It is a loosening of limitations, a breaking down of walls; it is exposure and vulnerability; and, it is creating a safe home within yourself where you can trust your own desire. If desire is life’s own yearning for more of itself, then learning to trust your desire is to learn to trust life, not as a force that would break you down, but that urges you forward, to become, to show up, to do the work that you are here to do. 

That only you can do.

Now that you’ve created space for transformation—and opened up a communication channel with the voice of your higher self—the next step in developing self-trust is to chart a map of this new inner terrain. 

The contours of this new map are revealed through the process of taking wise action toward unhooking yourself from all the habits, patterns, and core wounds* that block you from living an authentic, self-expressed life. 

*NOTE: This is also the moment when you might discern that you need a higher level of care than a friend, book, or coach can provide. If you’ve dealt with trauma or PTSD, seeking the support of a licensed professional is highly recommended, and I’ve included a resource about low cost options below. As a coach, it’s important for me to be transparent that while coaching is a therapeutic relationship, it is not a substitute for clinical care.

What I wish someone had told me: As you step onto the path, the first thing that happens is the path disappears. Up to then, things had been moving along on what felt like a known, maybe even predictable, trajectory, and you had a relatively fixed idea of how things were supposed to go, how things were supposed to look (linear! upward! straightforward!), and the steps you’d take to get there. Then: a line-in-the-sand moment came and knocked the walls down, and everything you thought was happening or was going to happen morphed, mutated, or vanished completely. You looked around and you were in uncharted waters. A new trajectory did not *yet* exist. 

What usually happens here is that you start looking at other people’s maps. You read memoirs and listen to interviews and follow the social media accounts of people recounting similar troubles as you. You find yourself right back in the comfort zone of information gathering, your intellect insisting that if you just think hard enough, a NEW THOUGHT is bound to arrive that will suddenly solve everything. The familiar voices you learned to quiet in Step #1 fire back up: oh, you’re a mapmaker now? Is this *really* the best use of your time? Why don’t you come have a seat over here, back in the Land Where Things Make Sense? 

And though you might glean insights from other people’s stories of change, or fend off a few obstacles by studying the maps of people who have gone before you, or hire an experienced guide with whom to traverse the unknown territory that lies ahead, ultimately, you cannot follow someone else’s map. Nor can you think your way into change. You have to take action specific to you and your singular swirl of characteristics, tendencies, and history. 

Becoming a cartographer of your own unique lived experience, aka, moving in the direction of a life that is an expression of your essential nature, builds self-trust because it shows you who you are and what you’re made of. With every movement forward, you prove to yourself that everything you need to steer your own ship is already within. 

<Visual framework of the self-trust journey here>

Mapping a new inner terrain is the process by which you divest your attention, energy, and focus from relentless external stimuli so you can turn it instead toward the wise part of you that can guide you toward what you authentically want and believe versus what you were conditioned to want and believe. It’s the process by which you stake a claim in your life—your one, wild and precious life—take responsibility for your experience, and assert that you have authority over the story of your life, not vice-versa. It’s letting curiosity lead the way, and embracing adaptation and growth at the same time you learn to let go of whatever is no longer working—regardless of how well it might have worked in the past. It’s quieting and calming the aggressiveness of the inner critic, and learning to talk to yourself as a friend. It’s the process by which you become so fortified from the inside, that no matter how life-y life gets, you trust that you have everything you need to meet the moment. Most deliciously, mapping a new inner terrain requires vision, imagination, and creativity, which, incidentally, are the qualities needed to transform not just your individual experience, but the collective experience (which I’ll discuss further in Step #3).

A tall order? Definitely. Let’s dig in. 

Charting a map comes after making space for transformation because otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to see what you were working with. Now that you have an accurate gauge of the patterns and conditioning that need attending, it’s time to experiment. There are infinite interventions available to support your cartographic efforts—you could start therapy, hire a coach, or join a spiritual community, to name a quick few; I’m going to share a tool you can implement regardless of how much money you have, or how many resources are available to you. It’s accessible to everyone, at any time.

As a certified Integral Coach, I view human beings through the Three Centers of Intelligence. This model provides a framework for developing self-trust that is both elegant in its simplicity, and highly effective in illuminating an individual’s unique path forward—truly—in any given moment. I offer this as a starting place because connecting to the Three Centers helps reduce the dominance of the mind, which is one of the most, if not the most, fundamental starting places if there’s any chance for your efforts to be lasting and sustainable. Remember my lightbulb moment? It doesn’t matter how organized or optimized you are; if you don’t learn to shift your relationship to your thoughts, you will continue to experience reality the way you always have.

The mammalian brain is biologically wired to seek out stability and certainty. It evolved over millennia to scan for threats and to seek out safety. This part is not bad or wrong—it’s part of what makes you human. However! When you set out on a process of change, you have to learn to interact with your biology in a new way, because certainty isn’t possible. As you’ve learned: You cannot know the destination because you’re going somewhere you’ve never been before.

In addition to the limitations of your biology, you also live in a culture that pedestalizes the intellect as far superior to every other type of  knowledge. In a time of influencer culture, the erosion of public trust in institutions, and destabilizing political divides, sifting through the noise is a full-time job for your brain. When the mind has its hands on the steering wheel, it’s easy to lose perspective of reality and to experience your life through a very narrow lens. A mind in overdrive keeps you defenseless against your critical thoughts, unquestioned beliefs, propensity toward perfectionism and people pleasing, frustrating behavioral patterns and habits, and the voice of the inner critic. Without intentional intervention, your mind is always on overdrive (I guarantee that every last one of you reading this can relate). I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

When the mind is in balance, the filter through which you take in information expands. You can process information with more skill and nuance, because you’re running it through not just the wisdom of the brain, but also, the wisdom of the heart and the body.

Introducing: The Three Centers of Intelligence 

Head - Heart - Body 

(((Spirit)))

HEAD 

The mind is what helps you consider potential outcomes and consequences, make connections and see patterns, get through to-do lists, move from Point A to Point B, plan for the future, and come up with new ideas. It is the home of creativity and imagination. A mind in balance offers guidance and wisdom; an overworked mind leads to diffuse and scattered focus, stress and anxiety, burnout, and of course, the twin extremes of rumination and future tripping. 

Balancing the mind requires increasing your skills of metacognition—which is the human capacity to not only have thoughts, but to observe them. As you strengthen this ability, you become more skilled at bearing witness to your thought processes instead of identifying as closely with them. This allows you to slow down your autopilot reactions and habitual thought patterns, question your default beliefs and assumptions, and increase the possibility of responding in new and different ways. 

Your mind is a highly evolved, miraculous force, so lest anyone get it twisted, this is not about hating on the mind or minimizing its power. It is simply about reducing its dominance so you can expand your awareness and have more than one filter for your experience. 

HEART 

If the head is the domain of thought, the heart is the abode of feelings and emotions. Just like you process information through your mind, your heart also filters your experiences; this wisdom, however, is often underdeveloped, ignored, or minimized. As a result, you are less connected to the gifts of the heart, which include qualities of intuition, empathy, compassion, joy, pleasure, and play (you know…all those things that add richness and texture to life <and that artificial intelligence will never truly be able to replicate>). 

Connecting to the heart, which is to say, increasing emotional intelligence, opens the door to deeper, more authentic relationships. Because it’s how you cultivate empathy and compassion, it’s what helps bridge divides. And, expanding your emotional vocabulary and capacity for emotional regulation leads to lower stress levels and increased resilience. 

The heart is the part of you that responds to beauty, awe, and wonder, and is the home of  your inner child. It’s the part of you that cracks open when responding to injustice, pain, and struggle. It’s the realm of tenderness, vulnerability, and courage, and the warmth of co-regulation with other mammals (human or otherwise).

All of this to say: tuning into the intelligence of the heart, and balancing it with the wisdom of the mind, is another step toward honoring and expressing the complex, multidimensionality of your humanity.

BODY

Embodiment—also known as somatic intelligence—is most often the least developed of the Three Centers. The good news is that tapping into the wisdom of the body is a relatively straightforward undertaking, because the body is never not sending out signals. Bringing the body into balance is learning to listen to these signals, and noticing the way they show up in your unique biology. In order for the results of transformation to last, balancing out your thinking (head) and feeling (heart) aren’t enough. You also have to learn to embody your transformation. 

Learning the basics of how to engage with your nervous system is a valuable place to start. When you learn how to listen to your body, you can allow your experiences to cycle through so they don’t get stuck*. Discovering how to keep your body regulated—including, how to complete a response cycle when the inevitable activation occurs—contributes to developing self-trust because it’s the gateway to finding safety within yourself that isn’t contingent on any external person or circumstance bestowing it upon you. Listening to the body opens up a channel to gut feeling, an aspect of your internal GPS system that can guide you in making decisions, and help you navigate the uncertainty baked into reality. It’s what helps you start to trust your behavior and decision making, from a place of knowing that is free from internal conditioning and external influences. From this place of balance, you can create a vision for the future that is free of past constructs and gives you the genuine confidence and wherewithal to deal with whatever comes around the bend.

The Three Centers of Intelligence becomes a practical tool—and not just a nice concept—when you pause, turn your attention inward, and check-in with each aspect. Here’s an experiment: Visualize a fuel gauge at the forehead (head), the chest (heart), and the lower abdomen (body). As you take your time with each gauge, notice if the needle is more toward Empty or Full. Based on the information each center reveals to you, you’ll know what you need, what is true, and what action you can take to move the needle on whatever gauge is closest to empty a few degrees closer to full. 

Learning to listen to the wisdom of the Three Centers not only gives you the lay of the land, but also reveals what next right step is yours to take.

Voila! Your (first) map. 

By practicing this once or twice a day—or anytime you feel you’ve drifted away from your center—you gain access to a greater spectrum of your humanity. By bringing the centers into balance, you become a more whole, integrated person, no longer at the mercy of one or two centers working overtime. You can trust your ability to discern what you need to attend to yourself, and then to take action toward honoring your needs. Knowing what center feels like is important so you can know when you’ve drifted too far away; and then you call upon practices to help you return, return, return. 

Remember the lanterns on the path mentioned in Step #1 ? I use this metaphor as a reminder that when you embark on your journey of change, you don’t need to know how you will get to the other side, or what you even want on the other side. All you need is a lantern to light up the next few steps; to illuminate the next bend in the river. 

Connecting to the Three Centers of Intelligence is what opens you up to even noticing the lanterns on the path. Lanterns live in the body—the subtle vibration in your gut that signals “yes” or “no” or “not yet.” They’re the hit-you-over-the-head lightbulb moments. They’re synchronicities and finding yourself in the right place at the right time with the right people. They’re the unignorable messages from your higher self, no longer satisfied with the static status quo.

The journey of transformation is a pretty universal one; however, your journey is absolutely unique to you, and can only be walked by you.

Lantern by lantern…you can make the whole journey that way.

SO: YOU’VE PLUGGED INTO THE SELF-TRUST-CIRCUITBOARD AND CONNECTED TO THE UNRULY WILDERNESS WITHIN. ISN’T THIS ALL A LITTLE…SELF ABSORBED?

CONTINUE READING →

Next: Part 3 of 3: Where The Rubber Meets The Road

“Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure… and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”

Maya Angelou

Key Self-Trust Concept #3: Where the Rubber Meets the Road

The early stages of the journey of developing self-trust can be lonely. 

In Step #1, you reduced the external noisiness of your life, let go of superfluous obligations, and quieted down the calendar so you could create space inside and learn to listen for the guidance of your higher self to emerge. In Step #2,  you turned and faced the inner conditioning that had been preventing you from living life on your terms, and began the healing work of untangling yourself from the unhelpful—or even actively harmful—habits and patterns that kept you perpetuating the very issues from which you sought liberation. 

The work of Step #1 and Step #2 are inherently isolating because the promises of self-development require a certain amount of solitude to unfold. As you amplify your higher self, tap into a frequency of self-trust, and learn to listen to who you are underneath what family, society, and culture had convinced you you were, the external horizons have to disappear for a while. Think of this phase as if you were a recently hatched baby bird: You’re looking at the world with fresh eyes, full of wonder and awe, and also, you’re quite fragile and delicate, and need lots of nurturing, time, rest, and patience while your wings strengthen and your feathers grow and you learn to fly.

Here’s another metaphor (I can’t help myself): If up to now you’ve been learning to swim, Step #3 is letting go of the banks of the river, and trusting that the skills you’ve developed are trustworthy enough to support you no matter what hurdles you encounter. This is the stage where you reemerge into the external world and connect to an authentic to you sense of impact, meaning, and purpose. If Steps #1 and #2 were about learning, and experimenting, and filtering through lots of information, then Step #3 is integrating what you’ve learned and embodying a new way of being out in the world.

Step #3 is “where the rubber meets the road.”

Self-development is innately personal. But if you’re picking up what I’m putting down in this essay, you know that a meaningful life must go beyond just you. Step #3 is engaging more powerfully with reality as it is, not how you think it should be, or how it used to be, or how it is for your friends, or how it could be if you just bought that thing someone is trying to sell you. This isn't about "finding yourself" (or at least, it’s not only about finding yourself)—it's about discovering how your individual self-expression contributes to the larger web of life. It’s reimagining life as a collaborative partner, rather than something to get through or control or tolerate. It's taking steps toward increased personal satisfaction and funneling it into greater collective thriving. 

Because the collective isn’t exactly thriving, is it?

You reading this are living through a period of collapse. For some of you, the writing has always been on the wall—if you come from a historically marginalized identity, uncertainty was never not a myth, and you all have been working to illuminate the oppressiveness of these systems for the rest of us since forever. Some of you had great hopes that the crisis of the pandemic might actually be the wake-up call to live differently the collective needed, only to be grieving the reality that for many—including, possibly, yourself—things have only gotten darker, weirder, and more difficult in the years since. Some of you have dealt with your own personal crises—job loss, grief, debt, health issues, mental health challenges—only to discover that the institutions meant to provide support showed little interest in helping unless it benefited their bottom line, or made the process so complicated that it was less stressful to just deal with things on your own.

Regardless of whether or not these concepts spark eyeroll-inducing levels of “duh, Dani,” or you’re only recently waking up to just how high the stakes are in this current era, it’s still bizarre to be experiencing the rapidness of the decline in real time, and to face the fact that everything you were trained to believe would give you meaning and purpose, stability and security—all the information and promises that were downloaded and programmed into you by culture, society, family of origin, media, education, and so on—are dissolving in real time right before your eyes. 

You’re seeing behind the curtain and realizing that The Great and Powerful Oz is nothing but an illusion—and that, my friends, is one hell of a dissonant sounding bell that can’t be unrung.

I’ll say it clearly and in no uncertain terms: In order to help the world get free, you have to stay devoted to getting yourself free. This is the way you can contribute to a new paradigm that works for everyone instead of perpetuating the broke-ass, crumbling systems of an empire in decline. The more free you become, the more  your compassion grows, because part of becoming free is learning to forgive yourself for your mistakes—and eventually, even learning to love yourself more for them—which in turn connects you to a sense of shared humanity. It becomes easier to collaborate because you understand now that the “powers that be” are going extinct right before your very eyes, and it’s up to you—yes, you—to recognize that the new future you long for is in the hands of the collective.

I know it’s…a lot to exist in the midst of breakdown and decline. But here you are, alive on the planet at this specific moment in time. My plea with this essay is to stop chasing the (moldy) carrots being dangled in front of you by the people in power who promise that if you just keep plugging along, if you just trust their experience and expertise, that the certainty and stability you long for will be achievable. Instead, my invitation is that you reimagine what’s possible for yourself, your people, and the world—and that you put structures and relationships in place to live into a deeper sense of engagement and aliveness as a counterbalance to distraction, despondency, disconnection, and despair.

It’s easy to trust your life when things are going well. The work of developing self-trust forces you to consider what this looks like when everything is hard and weird and even grotesque.   

What if I could trust *this* too? 

What if life is unfolding *exactly* as it’s meant to? 

What if I have everything I need—*what if my community has everything it needs*—to meet this moment?

I’m making this plea because if you don’t disrupt the autopilot—all those strategies, practices, beliefs, habits, and structures of interpretation that have you convinced of a certain story about the way things are—and learn to expand your capacity to move with change, instead fighting against it—you’ll miss a once in a lifetime opportunity to usher in what is being birthed at the same time you’re witnessing the death of the old way.

Developing self-trust gives you an individualized playbook for how you can most authentically and effectively participate in the co-creation of a future that is generative, co-creative, visionary, and joyful (!), in the face of destruction and decay. Because what happens when you trust yourself—when you trust life—is, in the words of one of my teachers, Kesley Rose Tortorice, “an attunement to a possible interdependent future by empowering you as an individual to become a clearer vessel for the part of the collective puzzle that is yours to embody.”

It’s challenging to hold a fresh vision for what’s possible for the greater good in a time of chaos and uncertainty, and when it feels like there are so many dark, and even malevolent, forces at play. But if it’s true that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” then it follows that for however intense the darkness feels, there is an equal amount of light blooming in tandem. 

“Where the rubber meets the road” is learning to serve—or amplify the ways you already serve—not only yourself and your inner work, but the entire ecosystem in your sphere of influence, one decisive action at a time.

Developing self-trust helps you rewrite the narrative on what it means to be responsible for yourself as an individual, and for your role within the collective consciousness. It does this by showing you which aspects of yourself and your experience are truly yours, and which aspects are your conditioning that distorts the truth of your individuality. As you embody this unique-to-you way of being in the world, new North Stars emerge, and you can design an intentional life that aligns with who you really are and what you really desire, rather than forcing yourself into boxes you were never meant to fit into. Becoming every day a little more free from the limitations of your patterns and conditioning widens the aperture of your potential. You can concern yourself with so much more than shitty habits and petty grievances. You can be up to something bigger, which organically translates to a plugging into deeper relationships and community and impact.

The reason self-trust is a prerequisite for personal and collective transformation is because what you transform from the inside becomes a reflection of what you experience on the outside. As the result of turning toward the wilderness within, and facing your hidden, scary, uncomfortable parts with guidance from your higher-self, you begin to respond to the outer wilderness with imagination, flexibility, and creativity. You understand that you do not have to wait to be perfect in order to participate in making a difference, because you know that real life happens as the result of the messy authenticity of your human fallibility, not in spite of it. 

Self-trust gives you a map of a new inner terrain. It also shapes a map for a new external one. The path of self-development is the path of elevating your consciousness, and contributes to evolving the consciousness of the collective. There is no separation. 

My clunky, working title for Step #3 is "interdependent individualism.” I think of this term as a way to describe how your unique=to-you, embodied expression is both singularly yours, and fundamentally and inextricably connected to the body of the collective. 

This is not the pull-yourself-up-by-your bootstraps, rugged individualism that is entrenched in American mythology. “Interdependent individualism” leaves that delusion behind, acknowledging instead that the way out of the current climate of polarization and divisiveness—and toward something new and different that honors the differentiated expression of every individual—is by strengthening the omnipresent web that connects us all. It is staying engaged in your own personal development, and participating in elevating the development of the collective, at the same time. It is letting in the beauty and delight of the world just as much as the pain and terror. It’s understanding that even as you do what is yours to do to counteract and resist the chaos and uncertainty, that it’s equally important to devote time and attention to both the ideation and innovation of whatever is on its way.

So how do you know if what you are doing is deepening self-trust? “Developing self-trust” sounds nice and all, but how do you know I’m not just another random woman on the internet trying to sell you something?

I’ll admit that when I set out to write this essay, I wanted to come up with a different, less buzzword-y term, because the last thing I wanted was to be shoved into the same category as the countless online grifters who seek to convince you that they have the secrets to self-trust/self-development, and here's what you need to buy to get it. What passes as conventional wisdom online is still mostly just the same old perpetuation of perfectionism, rigid sets of rules, and the implicit pretense that the more optimized you are, the greater your chances are of fending off death. 

Ultimately, what I seek to demonstrate with this essay is that true self-trust actually makes my work as a coach unnecessary, because if I do my job well, you won’t require my services anymore. You’ll just be out there, swimming. A good guide holds up a mirror to remind you of what I claimed at the beginning of this essay (and what I know to be true): That everything you need to heal and grow is already within you. And while the support of a guide can be helpful when you feel scared or unsteady, you don’t want to become dependent on them. They’re not meant to be in the water with you forever. 

Superficial self-trust is ceding your authority and agency and relying on external people or systems in order to be OK. It is an experience that exists only in the mind, keeping you on the lam from reality. It’s uncompromising, unforgiving, and keeps you endlessly distracted by external metrics and markers. It’s a constant keeping up, and it’s rarely any fun.

On the other hand, the promises of developing genuine self-trust are in direct opposition to what you’ve been sold. Real self-trust is lanterns in the body. It’s adaptation and flexibility. It’s creating inner conditions for lightbulb moments to pierce through the patterning. It’s trusting that when you feel the call to grow and change and shift, you can trust your desire. Self-trust gives you the tools to navigate uncertainty because your inner GPS becomes so finely tuned that sure, you take in the advice and ideas of the outside, but ultimately, your inner authority—your higher self—has final say. 

“Where the rubber meets the road”—Step #3 in the journey of developing self-trust—translates to maintaining enough energy in the tank to fuel not just rebelliousness and resistance, but also, the innovation required to build something so much better. It could be so much better! Don’t get me wrong, pushing back is important. But the journey of self-trust also reveals an alternate worldview: While you’re pushing back against the status quo, you’re also giving voice to a different way of being, and a different way of seeing. 

You have swum out of the familiar structure. Your feet no longer touch bottom.

As I wind down this essay, an invitation:

Come for a swim. Let’s create the most gorgeous school of fish the world has ever seen. Look at us, iridescent and shimmering, moving with the currents, with each other, adapting and shifting and evolving in ways that call forward ever more life. Let’s surround each other through the struggles, let’s leap above the surface in joy and delight every chance we get. Let’s confuse the interlopers with the exquisite way we turn and shift in tandem, let the chaos reveal an order we could have never imagined, one that allows each of us to emerge every day more ourselves.

When you trust yourself, you are moving with life, you are partnering with her, relinquishing control and unfettering yourself from all the social conditioning that would seek to keep you small, numbed out, lonely, distracted, cut-off from your precious interdependence. When you trust yourself, you learn to feel good more often than bad, to perpetuate increasingly less harm, to heal yourself and take responsibility for the design of your life; and to be awake and alive to the vast mystery of your messy, gorgeous, precious, meaningless, miraculous humanity, and to do so with other beloveds.

Life is so hard. It is also a total miracle. And I am unspeakably grateful to live into this miracle with all of you.

“Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It’s really working to create something beautiful.”

Assata Shakur

Thank you for reading, and I’d love to see you at __________________(insert CTA)

You can probably guess how that story continued: all those wants and desires stayed crowding every available back-burner, and all that alcohol started taking more than it was giving. 

I found myself in my early 30s with a graduate degree, a hell of a lot of debt, and an increasingly sinking feeling as my peers kept hitting all those milestones I was trained to want while I sat there, wondering why everyone else seemed to have figured out how to be in the world while I was barely treading water.

The plot twist I most definitely did not see coming was that, about six months after I’d decided to quit drinking, a wild little window opened in my brain. I saw that all those things that I so desperately wanted for myself—all those big, audacious goals and desires and access to a meaningful, on-purpose life—might actually become possible because of my choice to quit, not in spite of it.

And now, as an Integral Coach, it is my utter privilege and delight to walk by your side as you do the same.

Working together 1:1 or in community, we nurture supportive practices so that we can sustain ourselves through the long game of healing, self-discovery, deprogramming social constructs, dismantling harmful systems, choosing things that make us feel better rather than worse, navigating all the things life will inevitably throw our way, and, most important of all, cultivating a world that works for all of us.

I believe COMMUNITY is essential

Genuine belonging changes everything. Being met with care and love is deeply healing and the best antidote to shame. Receiving compassion helps you freely give it to others and then, slowly but surely, offer it to yourself. (Plus, connecting to others is a great source of joy and fun.)

I believe REBELLIOUSNESS is visionary

It’s rebellious to choose to explore beyond the confines of “shoulds.” It’s rebellious to stay an oddball, to choose the margins over the generic middle path. It’s rebellious to choose liberation from drinking, or a career that doesn’t feel right anymore, or the expectation of marriage and children. It’s rebellious to choose to be present, to stay engaged with the hard stuff, to resist the urge to numb out and distract.

I believe we all deserve EASE

There is no point in doing the painstaking work of changing our lives if we don’t start to feel better and to experience more joy, goodness, and pleasure. There’s also no point in doing the work if we’re only ever living from our mind, rather than feeling fully embodied in the present moment. These are your precious days. You can learn to savor them.

I believe in the power of PRACTICE

Creating nourishing routines and rituals and devoting ourselves to them is how we fall in love with life. In order to change and grow, we have to make the process the goal and find our steadiness on the path. It’s about consistency over perfection.

I believe in the wild possibilities of CREATIVITY

Everything that exists today started inside someone’s imagination. Creating a new life and designing a future that aligns with your values begins with being able to imagine something different. And the practice of creating, just for the sake of making, for the joy of your craft or the wildness of self-expression, is life-giving.