Trusting Yourself Means Daring to Walk Alone

Are you ready to walk alone for a while? It is a journey we can each take. But what no one tells us is that it is one we need to choose to take on our own.

While we may have been conditioned to find answers outside ourselves, what pertains to ‘everyone’ might not include what we need or want.

Learning to trust ourselves is one of the biggest quests as we embark on this journey of the unknown; leaving behind tried and true formulas in the status quo.

When we learn to stop judging ourselves harshly or looking for blame, we not only begin the journey of trust but also understand the need to sometimes walk alone. And that alone, at these times, is healthy for our wellbeing.

It’s Your Road and Yours Alone

Making time for ourselves is a gift. And being willing to listen to our heart opens up a host of opportunities, and often, irrational fears to face. Stories that we may be telling ourselves, and serve no purpose, can come to an end.

In the Introduction of the second book in the F*ck the Bucket List trilogy, I share: “For many of us who are busy living our lives or making a living, trekking into the unknown may mean being still—a place we’ve been unconsciously avoiding because we fear what we might discover.

Being yourself is a gift. When you choose to invest in yourself, you can also begin to transform your mental models by accepting that what seemed to work in the past may not be the healthiest way to engage in the future.

You may have been taught not to burn bridges, but life teaches us that some bridges take us nowhere and that it might be more beneficial to abandon them altogether.”

It’s not about questioning the status quo; it’s about deep questioning whether we are willing to walk alone. It means getting lost in possibilities and dreams as there is no path to follow until we venture out.

This is a mostly unknown space that captures our curiosity that may appear risky to everyone around us. But for us, the need to trek into unexplored terrains of opportunities, ideas and even emotions is calling us.

After Walking Alone, We Learn We Are Never Alone

When we are fully aware and understand that leadership is not outside ourselves, we are willing to walk alone, and manage ourselves, and connect with others who are on a similar journey.

I am not writing this in theory but as firsthand experience of taking many paths over the past decade. Some paths led nowhere. Some bridges burned down. It has been a journey of facing fears, letting go of doubt, and going places I was told were dangerous. But when I finally got there, they were actually less scary than imagined and some filled with so much hope.

A big part of this path is learning how to have much needed internal dialogues. And making space for healthy people and experiences to show up; ones I was able to fully trust again because we practiced open dialogue and honesty.

What if our opportunity is to become a trusted ally to ourselves and by doing so, experimenting with what we need with people who not only walk with us but create together?

This week marks the beginning of my doing exactly this after taking some very long walks alone.

Planting seeds means taking a gamble on which ones will bloom and which ones were never meant to be on this journey with us.