Do you trust yourself?
I know it’s a big question that could mean a lot of different things, like, “Do you trust yourself to make a great souffle?” Or, “Do you trust yourself to walk down the hallway without tripping?” Or, “Do you trust yourself to create and publish something that you’re proud of?”
We’re keeping it a big question because I believe the ways we trust ourselves in everyday life reflect in our creative work.
I am a person with historically low self-esteem. I don’t think highly of myself, and it can be problematic because I was never good at trusting myself. For example, growing up, I wasn’t allowed to watch TV. So, when I went to public school, I learned that I didn’t have the same cultural and social references that the other kids had. If I didn’t want to get taunted for not knowing what “Saved By The Bell” was, I had to keep quiet, observe, listen, and learn from those around me.
Initially, I tried having conversations with people, but it became evident that I didn’t know much.
Since then, I’ve made it my mission to learn from everyone around me.
Plato once famously said, via Socrates, “All I know is that I know nothing.” This is a paraphrase, but I’ve always found that quote to be accurate. The more you learn about the world, the more you realize that there’s so much left to learn. So, I started going through life listening and observing under the assumption that, “Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” (Thanks, Bill Nye, the Science Guy!)
I’ve opened myself up and learned a lot, but when do we start trusting ourselves and our knowledge? At what point do we stop learning? In my opinion, we never stop learning, and I find it exciting because learning shows the richness of the world through our experiences and the experiences of others.
However, there is another side to this thought, and it’s that you never know enough to speak up or feel confident sharing your opinion.
If you’ve been listening to the Write Now Podcast for a while, or you’ve gone back and listened to my earliest episodes, you might know that I used to do book reviews as part of the show. You might also notice that I quit that fairly early on, and I stopped leaving book reviews on Goodreads as well.
I stopped doing book reviews because I thought I didn’t know enough to give an opinion.
I felt unqualified to give book reviews.
I was right, in a way. I don’t have a degree in literary criticism, but neither do most book reviewers. I always say that you don’t need a degree in writing to be a writer, nor do you need specific qualifications to review books.
In my case, I felt that, without all possible knowledge, I would say something wrong and look foolish. For some reason, I didn’t think I could review a book subjectively and say, “Hey, I didn’t enjoy this,” and have others see it as a valid response.
That’s because I didn’t trust the value of my experience.
Now, this subject doesn’t just relate to book reviews and book criticism. It also relates to creative work. There was a time when “All I know is that I know nothing” turned into, “I am wrong, and everyone else is right.” There’s a difference between leaving yourself open to new ideas and latching onto ideas that don’t serve you.
The other day, I was masked up and delivering a gift to a friend’s house. I hadn’t been to their house in over a year because of the pandemic, and they lived far away through several exits on the freeway and a maze of identical housing complexes.
I didn’t have their address written down, and I let muscle memory take over. I remember thinking to myself confidently, “Oh, I’ll get there just fine. I’ll know the house when I see it.”
And I did.
I had trusted myself to get there, to find the right place, and to do it safely (and without earning a speeding ticket along the way).
Here’s another example. You know that I read books and listen to a ton of podcasts, and I’m constantly taking webinars and masterclasses so I can take in as much information as possible.
The other day, I was sitting on the couch with my notebook in front of me. I pressed play on a podcast that I had been saving, ready to listen. It was my first experience with this particular creator, even though I follow this person on Instagram, and I looked up to this person. The podcast had awesome cover art and looked so enticing that I thought, “Oh, I’m so excited to learn so much from this person.”
I hit play on the first episode, and I was nodding and smiling as this person talked through some basic principles, and I started taking notes.
I was about nine or 10 minutes into this podcast episode when I realized I wasn’t nodding as much. Instead, I was frowning — as though something didn’t sound quite right. I realized I had stopped taking notes because I was not getting any value out of listening to this podcast episode.
I wasn’t learning anything new.
The information they provided was information that, through my own experience, I had already learned. Because this podcaster had beautiful cover art and billed themselves as a coach (and is ostensibly very well-known), I had assumed that I knew less than this individual. But, as I listened, I kept realizing that they were wrong. I kept telling myself, “No, that’s not how that works. I’ve been there. I’ve done this. You can’t just do this, and magic will happen. You have to put in time and effort and work.”
It threw me for a loop because I’m so used to assuming that I fundamentally know and understand less than everyone around me.
I trusted myself, my own experience, and I realized that I didn’t have to believe what this other person was saying because I knew what they were saying wasn’t right.
I now had questions.
- Whom do we trust?
- Why do we trust them?
- Do we trust them because they’re on TV and they have an official-looking logo with their name on it beneath their face?
- Do we trust them because they have beautifully designed podcast cover art?
- Do we trust them because somebody else says we should?
When you set out to learn something, and you’re searching for answers, whom do you trust? At the same time, are you diminishing your truth, experience, and expertise in deference to someone else’s?
Why? For what reason?
At what point will we begin to feel confident in trusting ourselves?
For me, this journey has taken time and practice, and it might be different for you, or it might be very similar. But I do notice that I am a lot less likely to agree with just anyone. I’m also a lot less likely to look around at everyone else to see what they think before I feel comfortable weighing in.
Before, if we were in a group and everyone asked, “Oh, what did you think of this?”
I would listen to what everyone else said before offering my own opinion, and my “own opinion” was simply a regurgitation of what everyone else had said before me. Back then, I wanted to fit in and belong.
I didn’t want to feel like this outsider who loved weird 1970s sci-fi and thought Shakespeare was difficult to read and uninteresting.
Again, that’s a subjective opinion. I’m not saying that Shakespeare is terrible- I personally don’t like him. I prefer to read most other things other than Shakespeare, and I’m more comfortable saying that now because I have read Shakespeare. I have seen several plays and movies based on Shakespeare’s writing, taken several college-level classes in Shakespeare, and I understand that there are beautiful, glowing reviews of his stuff. But all of that stuff cannot (and did not) persuade me to enjoy reading Shakespeare.
I can trust that that is my opinion.
I think that you should read whatever you want to read. I think you should enjoy what you enjoy.
I think you should trust yourself to know what you like and what you don’t like because it is a huge factor in developing your creative work- especially in developing your voice as an author.
Trust yourself, respect yourself, and understand what is true for you.
It’s okay to infuse your work with your truths, what you’ve learned, and what you have experienced.
These qualities make your voice necessary and unique, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to diminish yourself. You don’t have to think less of yourself or think that your opinion doesn’t matter as much as someone else’s.
So, I encourage you to go through life looking to learn and experience things, but I also encourage you to ask yourself, “Does this feel right with everything that I’ve learned and experienced myself?”
I want you to know that your experience and your opinions are valid, even if they don’t conform to what everyone around you thinks and says. I want to leave you with this question: how much truth comes from our formal education, our work, our experience, or taking actions and risks? How many of the answers we seek are already inside of ourselves?
I want to say one final thing about the concept of trusting yourself. If you feel called to create something, I want you to trust that call.
For example, if you feel compelled to write a book or create a podcast, I want you to trust yourself and do it.
I want you to take that big step and trust that you want to do this for a reason, even if you can’t quite articulate what that reason is. Writing a book, your poetry, creating a podcast, starting your memoir, whatever project it is that is haunting your thoughts- don’t let anyone else talk you out of it. Trust yourself. You want to do this for a reason, and I want you to trust that instinct.
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Full Episode Transcript (click to expand!)
This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, episode 119: Trusting Yourself.
Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. I’m curious, do you trust yourself? Now, I know this is a really big question and it could mean a lot of different things, like do you trust yourself to make a delicious souffle? Do you trust yourself to get from point A to point B without tripping and falling? Do you trust yourself to create and publish a work that you’re proud of? We’re going to keep it a big question, because I think that the ways in which we trust ourselves in everyday life do end up reflecting themselves in our creative work.
I am a person who historically could always be described as someone who has very low self-esteem. I don’t generally think very highly of myself and that can be problematic. We won’t go into that right now, but I was never very good at trusting myself. Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to watch TV, and so when I went to school, I went through public schools. I learned pretty quickly that I didn’t have the same social and cultural references and touchpoints as the other kids, and so I learned very quickly that if I didn’t want to get taunted and made fun of for not knowing what Saved by the Bell was, I learned to just keep quiet, observe, listen to, and learn from everyone else around me. Everyone else, including and especially my teachers, always knew more than I did. That’s even outside of Saved by the Bell, which if you’re not familiar with it, either, was an American sitcom that aired in the ’90s. Initially, I tried to partake in conversations with people, but it very quickly came out that I did not know what I was talking about, so at a very, very, very young age, I began my quest to learn everything I possibly could from everyone around me.
There’s a very popular paraphrasing of Socrates by Plato that goes, “All I know is that I know nothing,” and hilariously/ironically, the more I learn, the more I find this to be true. The more you learn about what there is to learn in the world, the more that you realize you have so much more to learn, so I continue to go through life listening and observing and learning under the assumption that as Bill Nye the Science Guy says, “Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” I’ve opened myself up to learning from so many different people and I have learned a lot, but at what point are we able to trust ourselves and our own knowledge? At what point do we stop learning? In my eyes, the answer is never, we’re never going to stop learning. I think that’s a good thing and I find that really, really exciting to me. It shows the richness of the world and the richness of our experience and other’s experiences and the importance of community as we all learn from each other.
But there’s another side to this and that is this thought that you never know enough to speak up, you never know quite enough to feel confident sharing your opinion. I say this because the other day, I found myself trusting myself and it was a very new feeling for me. If you’ve been listening to the Write Now Podcast for a long time, or if you’ve gone back and listened to my very earliest episodes back in 2015, you might know that I used to do book reviews as part of the show. You might also have noticed that I stopped doing book reviews kind of early on. If you follow me on Goodreads, you’ll also see that while I read a lot of books and mark a lot of books as read, I don’t leave reviews for books anymore.
The reason I stopped doing book reviews in the Write Now Podcast and the reason I don’t leave book reviews at all is that I assume, I operate under this assumption that I don’t know enough to have a smart opinion about something that I’ve read, that I’m somehow not qualified to review books. In a way, I’m not. I don’t have a degree in literary criticism, but neither do most book reviewers, if we’re being honest. Just like I always say that you don’t need a special degree in writing to be a writer, I don’t think you necessarily need specific qualifications to review books. I always just felt afraid that without all the possible knowledge, I might say something that was wrong and look foolish.
I remember reading a book and maybe not really liking it, or just not really enjoying reading it, and then reading a whole bunch of reviews that would say, “Oh, my gosh, this is the best book I’ve ever read. This is a literary masterpiece. Oh, my gosh, this is going to change the course of humanity,” and after I read those reviews, I would be like, “Oh, my gosh, I was completely wrong. I didn’t see all of these insights. I didn’t really make a connection in my mind and understand really what this metaphor meant or how important this book was.” The authority of whether a book was good or bad seemed entirely objective and external to myself.
I stopped reviewing books because I was so scared of being wrong and I didn’t feel like I could say anything about a book that someone else had not already said better, or more correctly, or more importantly. I was working under the assumption that my opinion was so much less informed than everyone else’s and I was, therefore, more likely to be wrong. For some reason, it did not seem possible in my mind that I could review books subjectively, and just say, “Hey, I didn’t enjoy this,” and have that be seen as a valid response, again, because I did not respect and value and trust my own experience.
Now, this subject doesn’t just relate to book reviews and book criticism. It also relates in a huge way to creative work. There came a point where all I know is that I know nothing turned into, “I am wrong and everyone else is right,” and there’s a large gulf in there, a difference between leaving yourself open to learning and new ideas and an openness to letting in and latching onto ideas that don’t really serve you that well.
I was delivering a gift to a friend’s house yesterday, masked and socially distanced, of course. Because of the pandemic, I had not been out and about to this person’s house in over a year and they lived fairly far away from me, several exits on the freeway and within a maze-like housing development where there were a lot of similarities between houses, and I didn’t have this person’s address written down. I was just feeling my way there, letting muscle memory take over. I remember thinking to myself quite confidently, “Oh, I’ll get there just fine. I’ll know their house when I see it,” and the weird thing was I did. It was in that moment that I realized I had trusted myself to get there and not only to get to the right place, but to get there safely in one piece without any speeding tickets or anything like that.
Here’s another example. You may know this about me, I read a lot of books, I listen to a lot of podcasts, I am constantly taking webinars, I am taking masterclasses. I am just constantly taking in as much information as I can possibly handle, and so the other day I was sitting on the couch and I had my notebook in front of me and I pressed play on a podcast that I had been saving to listen to. I was really excited to listen to this podcast. This was my first experience with this particular content creator, even though I follow this person on Instagram and I looked up to this person. They had great cover art, they looked like their life was together. It just looked so enticing and I thought, “Oh, I’m so excited to learn so much from this person.”
I hit play on the first episode and I was nodding and smiling as this person talked through some basic principles and I started taking notes and I was about nine or 10 minutes into this podcast episode when I realized that I wasn’t nodding as much and I was, in fact, frowning and my head was tilted slightly to the side as though I was struggling to understand something, as though something didn’t sound quite right. I realized I had stopped taking notes about four minutes in and I realized that I had done that because I was not getting any value out of listening to this podcast episode. I wasn’t learning anything new.
Even more than that, I realized that the information I was taking in was information that through my own experience I had learned was not true. Because this podcaster had beautiful cover art and billed themselves as a coach and is ostensibly very well-known and famous, I had just assumed that I knew less than this individual, but as I listened, I kept realizing with everything this person said that, “No, that’s not how that works. I’ve been there, I’ve done this. You can’t just do this and magic will happen. You have to put in time and effort and work.” Also, this other thing that they said is just simply not accurate and it really threw me for a loop because I’m so used to assuming that I don’t know anything, or that I just fundamentally know and understand less than everyone around me.
I realized, with a bit of shock, that I trusted myself, I trusted my own experience, and that I didn’t have to believe what this other person was saying, because in my experience, what they were saying did not work and was not true. This raised so many questions for me about: Whom do we trust? Why do we trust them? Do we trust them because they’re on TV and they have an official-looking logo with their name on it beneath their face? Do we trust them because they have beautifully designed podcast cover art? Do we trust and believe them because somebody else that we respect says that we should? When you set out to learn something, when you set out in this world and you’re searching for answers, whom do you trust? At the same time, are you diminishing your own truth and your own experience, not to mention your own expertise in deference to someone else’s? Why? For what reason? At what point will we begin to feel confident trusting ourselves?
Now, for me, this whole thing has taken time and practice and experience, and it might be completely different for you, or it might be very similar. But I do notice now that I’m in my late 30s, I am a lot less likely to simply agree with everyone around me all the time and I am a lot less likely to look around at everyone else to see what they think before I feel comfortable weighing in, because that was always me. If we were in a group and everyone was like, “Oh, what did you think of this?” I would listen to what everyone else said before offering my own opinion, and often when I did, my “own opinion” was simply a regurgitation of what everyone else had said before me. I wanted to fit in, I wanted to belong. I didn’t want to feel like this outsider weirdo who loved weird 1970s sci-fi and thought that Shakespeare was difficult to read and uninteresting.
There, there’s an opinion for you. Again, it’s subjective. I’m not saying that Shakespeare is terrible. In fact, most people would agree Shakespeare is probably the best writer ever. I personally do not like Shakespeare. I would personally prefer to read most other things other than Shakespeare, and I can say that to you now, whereas 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I would’ve been like, “Oh, the bard.” I’m more comfortable saying that now because I have read a lot of Shakespeare. I have seen a lot of plays and movies based on Shakespeare’s writing. I have taken several college-level classes in Shakespeare. I understand that there are beautiful, glowing reviews of Shakespeare, but all of that stuff cannot and did not persuade me that I personally enjoy reading Shakespeare. I can trust myself that that is my opinion.
Again, I’m not here to persuade anyone else not to read Shakespeare. I think that you should read whatever you want to read. I think you should enjoy what you enjoy. I think you should trust yourself to know what you like and what you don’t like because this is a huge factor in developing your own creative work, especially in developing your voice as an author, trusting yourself and respecting yourself, understanding what is true for you. We’re not going to take a detour into what is true with a capital T and what is true with a lowercase T and what is ultimately true and what is platonically ideal. We’re not going to traipse around in that garden today, that’ll be for when I start a philosophy podcast, which I don’t plan on doing. But I want you to know it’s okay to have your own opinions. It’s okay to infuse your work with your own truths, with what you’ve learned, and with what you have experienced, because this makes your voice necessary and unique. I don’t want you to feel like you have to diminish yourself, or think less of yourself, or to think that your opinion doesn’t matter as much as someone else’s, or that your opinion isn’t as valid as someone else’s.
Again, for me, this has taken time, it has taken practice, and it has taken experience. I had to learn and try and do a lot of things before I realized for me personally what works and what doesn’t, so I encourage you to go through life, looking to learn, looking to experience things, but I also encourage you to ask yourself, “Does this feel right with everything that I’ve learned and experienced myself?” I want you to know that your experience and your opinions are valid, even if they don’t conform to what everyone around you thinks and says. I want to leave you with this question, and that is, how much truth comes from our formal education, from our work, from our experience, from taking action and risks, and how many of the answers we seek are already inside of ourselves?
I want to say one final thing about the concept of trusting yourself, even though I know it feels a little bit tacked on in regards to what else we’ve been talking about under this topic, but I want to end today’s episode before we go into the thank yous and the credits and such by saying that if you feel called to create something, I want you to trust that call. If you feel compelled to write a book, if you feel like you just need to create a podcast, I want you to trust yourself that it’s the right thing for you to do.
You might get other people who say differently, you might get people who say, “Hey, you’re not a writer,” or, “You don’t have time to create a podcast,” or, “Don’t you have anything better to do than sit around writing?” Don’t listen to those people. I want you to take that big step and trust yourself that you want to do this for a reason, even if you can’t quite articulate what that reason is. Writing a book, writing your poetry, creating your podcast, starting to pencil out your memoir, whatever project it is that you’re thinking about doing that is haunting your thoughts that you feel compelled to move forward with, don’t let anyone else talk you out of it. Trust yourself. You want to do this for a reason and I want you to trust that instinct.
As you may already know, I create the Write Now Podcast for free because I want to. You might notice I don’t have any ads in my show. I don’t have any pre-roll stuff that you need to fast forward through. It’s all just the show here for you and for anybody around the world who wants to listen. I do this on purpose. I believe in making information accessible to everyone as much as I can.
To that end, I want to say a special thank you to the people who choose to help support this show financially. It’s not free to make, unfortunately, especially because I don’t do advertising or any of that other stuff, but there’s some wonderful people out on Patreon who donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, $10 million per, whatever. Nobody actually donates $10 million per episode, but hey, if you’re thinking about doing that, I won’t stop you. But they do help cover hosting costs, website costs, all of the costs that are associated with creating this show for free. Special thanks go out today to Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Evie Knight, Garrett, Leslie Duncan, Mark Bullock, Michael Beckwith, Sarah Lozan, Sean Locke, Summer, Tiffany Joiner, Tim Shen, and Whitney Magruder. Thank you all so much for your generous support. I truly appreciate it and I would not be able to make this show without you.
If you are interested in being like one of the many fine people who I mentioned in this list, you can do that. You can become one of them. All you need to do is support the Write Now Podcast on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third-party donation platform that allows people just like you to donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, whatever it is that you feel is right for the value that you receive from the show. You can become a patron on Patreon one of two ways. Number one, by going out to my website at sarahwerner.com, that’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R dot com, navigating to the show notes for today’s episode, this is episode 119, and scrolling down to where it says “Help support this podcast.” If you click that button, it will take you to my Patreon site. Alternately, you can just go straight to Patreon, if you prefer, by going to patreon.com, that’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Sarah Rhea Werner, that’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R, and you can make your pledge from there.
Out on my website on the show notes for today’s episode is also a fantastic place for you to interact with our community. I would love to invite you to leave your thoughts, your comments, whether or not you trust yourself, how you’ve learned to trust yourself, if you still don’t trust yourself. I would love to hear more about your experience as a creator, as a writer, as a person who is in this world with other people constantly telling them different conflicting things, and so I’d love to hear about your experience. You can do so by scrolling to the bottom of the page of show notes for today’s episode out at sarahwerner.com and you should see underneath everything, I think it’s at the very bottom, there is a comment section. While I cannot respond to every single email that I get, or every single mention on social media, I do respond personally to each and every comment that I receive out on my website, and so I would love to hear from you. I’d love to engage with you there and continue on the conversation about trusting yourself.
With that, this has been episode 119 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner and I am slowly learning to trust myself.
Hi Sarah!
I have found so much solace in your podcasts and the topics you cover, especially this one in particular which you’ve broken down so artfully. It got me thinking though on a deeper level of this discussion:
Have you covered the topic on the fear of writing about a culture outside of your own, especially if it is about a marginalized group? Right now, I know we do not have systems allowing equitable access to social, economic, and political capital. While it has been moving in a direction of change, only privileged segments of the population – predominantly white – can feasibly “make it” as a writer, acquire press & media support, and be rewarded (esp financially) for their work.
So if a writer consciously decides to utilize the themes or stories of another culture, particularly from a marginalized group who might feel a level of success/profit is unattainable or far more difficult to obtain, would that negate their initial validation to write about it?
I have been wrestling with this question as I (white female) write a piece of fiction with the setting of a culture that is not my own. Despite doing an extensive amount of research and living within the culture currently, is it still right for me to offer my interpretation? Is it enough to properly pay respect to and represent properly the history/principles of the culture that I am drawing upon?
Would love to hear your insight!
Hi Courtney! Thanks for listening, and for sharing your thoughts! This is such a great and enduring question. I don’t have a podcast episode about it because I’m not sure I have an answer for it, or that I’m qualified to provide an answer for it. I would honestly ask the people in the culture you’re writing about what they think, and be sure to credit them within your work (even potentially so far as a co-author). I read an amazing and comprehensive article years ago on the subject, but I’m kicking myself now because I can’t find it. However, I can recommend Nisi Shawl’s book Writing the Other, and thoughtful articles like this from Brandon Taylor. I’d also suggest googling “writing the other” and browsing what comes up — there are tons of opinions and resources that are nuanced and poignant. In short, it’s a great question, and thank you for asking it. I always like to tell people that they should write what moves them, always strive to be better and more thoughtful, and to apologize sincerely (and learn from it) if the need arises. — Sarah
I didn’t get to this podcast until today, for which I’m grateful, because I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about this subject.
You ask if I trust myself, and the answer is that “I’m learning to.” I was raised in a household where the only way to survive was to force myself to not have an opinion. Any opinions that deviated from my mother’s were to be immediately, completely, and dismissively snuffed out. As you can imagine, that led to a lot of problems down the road. As an adult, I have been coming to terms with and working to heal from that damage. I’ve haven’t had to learn how to properly express my opinions, I’ve had to learn how to HAVE opinions. Talk about starting at less than zero!
As I think through this, it strikes me how trust and validation so closely intertwine. Successful baby steps that have a positive result (whether that be a victory or a lesson) are key to developing self-trust. To have that victory/lesson externally validated early on leads to the maturity that allows for the inner validation that brings self trust. The reason teachers and parental figures are so critical is because they have that ability to help us with constant risk management and fear control.
When you don’t have that early coaching, when you don’t have that inner compass planted inside you, self-trust isn’t going to happen.
As I’ve started to learn about self-trust, I’ve also had to learn about self-acceptance. People can give me outer validation all day long, but if I’m not ready to accept it, that validation will just bounce off. My experience has taught me that a supportive community is crucial to self-acceptance. Finding that community takes intentionality because again, it’s all about fear and risk management. My husband has given up on me ever expressing an opinion on certain things, but he will push back on others. It’s a shame that he’s had to step into the role that rightfully belonged to my early caregivers, but I’m thankful that he did. Because trust me, a life of not trusting yourself sucks.
Elizabeth (Aridan!), thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insights. I especially loved your thoughts on the interconnectedness of trust and validation — internal and external. I’m so glad your husband is there to walk the path with you. <3 — Sarah
Thanks, Sarah. This was a really helpful podcast. Two related things I’ve noticed: 1) Very often the most brilliant “doers” do not make for the best teachers. People tend to be unable to distinguish between what is/was their individual experience, vs. how things actually are, in the larger, objective sense. I am a professional artist, and am continually stunned at the misinformation and pseudo-science about artmaking (light, color, etc.) that comes from artists who on the other hand produce amazing work. Often when they describe even their own process, if you observe them, it’s not what they’re actually doing. For one thing, there is confirmation bias (they tend to overemphasize those things that appear to echo existing dogma, as a way of bringing legitimacy to both it and them). Another is (though this is sensitive subject) some things tend to come more easily or naturally to some people, whether due to intuition or passion, in any case, as a result many of the best artists (and with that I include musicians, writers, chefs, etc.) simply cannot articulate how they do what they do. Yet, they believe they can. It is like trying to explain to someone how you recognize your mother’s face. As learners we tend to believe that imitating the masters or our personal idols is a path to similar greatness. More often it is the opposite. Their path is not our path, and even if we wanted to follow their path we couldn’t, because they are not seeing or communicating it accurately. My point in all that is to say, as you learned from listening to that podcast, we really cannot trust the masters to be our teachers. 2) Separately, I believe in our lovely, flawed, human society there is a significant gender aspect with respect to being conditioned to believe that you know more vs. less, or that you should offer opinions vs. keeping quiet. This is changing, of course, but I think is still a factor.
Chris, this is so wonderfully and beautifully insightful. I’m gratefully meditating on these words this morning as I journal. <3 Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, and for listening to the show. -Sarah