We often think of self-trust as something we develop once we’ve accumulated enough evidence that we can rely on ourselves. We imagine it as a kind of inner confidence that protects us from making poor decisions, misjudging situations, or losing our way. The more we understand ourselves, the more capable we become, and eventually we reach a point where we can navigate life with a reassuring sense of certainty.
But I wonder if we’ve misunderstood what self-trust actually requires of us.
Perhaps trusting ourselves has very little to do with believing we’ll always make the right decisions. Perhaps it’s about developing enough confidence in our ability to navigate life that we’re willing to make the wrong ones, too.
After all, mistakes aren’t an unfortunate interruption to the process of personal growth. They’re an essential part of it. And yet, so many of us spend an extraordinary amount of energy trying to avoid them.
The Fear of Getting It Wrong
From a relatively young age, many of us are taught to associate mistakes with failure. Our education systems often reinforce the idea that there are correct answers and incorrect answers, and that our ability to distinguish between them is a measure of our intelligence, competence, or worth. While this approach serves an obvious purpose in certain environments, it can also leave us with a rather limiting understanding of what it means to learn.
We begin to internalise the idea that getting something wrong is evidence of a personal deficiency rather than a natural part of developing knowledge and experience. For some, this becomes the foundation of perfectionism, where the possibility of failure feels so threatening that avoiding mistakes becomes more important than making progress. For others, it can lead to chronic indecision, procrastination, or a reluctance to take responsibility for the direction of their lives.
The irony is that our attempts to avoid mistakes often prevent us from developing the very confidence we’re searching for.
We become so concerned with making the right decision that we lose the opportunity to discover what we’re capable of when things don’t go according to plan.
The Paradox of Self-Trust
There’s an interesting contradiction at the heart of self-trust. We tend to assume that confidence develops through success, yet some of the most valuable evidence of our own capabilities comes from the experiences that didn’t unfold as we expected.
When we make a mistake, we’re presented with an opportunity to observe ourselves in circumstances we may never have willingly chosen. We discover how we respond to disappointment, how we manage uncertainty, and what happens when our expectations collide with reality. We learn which fears were justified, which were exaggerated, and which parts of ourselves are more adaptable than we previously believed.
These experiences offer something that success alone cannot always provide: an understanding of ourselves beyond the conditions in which everything is going well.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that every mistake is inherently valuable or that we should abandon discernment in favour of reckless experimentation. Some decisions carry serious consequences, and learning to recognise those consequences is itself an important part of developing sound judgement. But there is a difference between exercising reasonable caution and organising our lives around the avoidance of failure.
Perhaps self-trust isn’t something we develop by proving that we’re incapable of making mistakes. Perhaps it’s something we cultivate by repeatedly discovering that we can make them, learn from them, and continue moving forward.
When Self-Awareness Becomes Another Form of Avoidance
One of the more curious aspects of personal development is that we can become remarkably skilled at understanding ourselves without necessarily becoming any better at trusting ourselves.
We might spend years exploring our childhood experiences, examining our relationship patterns, studying psychology, or developing a sophisticated understanding of our emotional responses. All of this can be enormously valuable, but insight doesn’t automatically translate into action.
Sometimes, the pursuit of self-awareness can even become another way of postponing difficult decisions.
We convince ourselves that we need to understand one more pattern, resolve one more insecurity, or uncover one more unconscious motivation before we’re ready to move forward. There’s always another book to read, another perspective to consider, or another explanation that might finally provide the certainty we’ve been searching for.
But at what point does our desire to understand ourselves become a reluctance to actually experience ourselves?
This is something I explored from a slightly different angle in my blog Can Astrology Feed the Ego if Left Unchecked?, where I considered how even the tools we use for self-discovery can reinforce the identities and narratives we’ve become attached to.
The difficulty is that self-knowledge can only take us so far. Eventually, life asks us to participate rather than observe, and participation inevitably involves the possibility of getting things wrong.
Learning to Live With Uncertainty
I think one of the greatest misunderstandings about confidence is that it should eliminate uncertainty.
We imagine that someone who genuinely trusts themselves must possess an unwavering sense of conviction. They know what they want, make decisions without hesitation, and rarely question the direction they’re heading. But this image of confidence leaves very little room for the complexity of being human.
In reality, we can trust ourselves while feeling uncertain. We can make thoughtful decisions without knowing how they’ll unfold, and we can change our minds without interpreting that change as evidence that our original judgement was fundamentally flawed.
In fact, the ability to revise our understanding in response to new information may be one of the clearest expressions of self-trust.
It requires us to acknowledge that our perspective is limited, that our circumstances are constantly changing, and that the person making a decision today may not possess the same understanding as the person reflecting on it five years from now.
This is closely connected to the ideas I explored in The Beauty of an Identity Crisis, particularly the tension between the stories we tell ourselves and the experiences that eventually challenge them. Just as our identities need enough flexibility to evolve, our confidence needs enough flexibility to accommodate the possibility that we might be wrong.
Perhaps genuine self-trust isn’t the absence of doubt, but the ability to remain engaged with life despite it.
The Role of Divination
As an astrologer, I find this particularly interesting when considering the role of divination in our lives.
People have turned to divinatory practices for thousands of years, often during periods of uncertainty or when facing decisions that feel difficult to navigate. Whether through astrology, tarot, the I Ching, or other symbolic systems, there’s something deeply human about seeking perspective when the path ahead feels unclear.
One interpretation of divination is that it provides a means of accessing our own inner wisdom. Rather than understanding the practice solely as a way of receiving information from an external source, we might also consider how the symbols themselves encourage us to recognise thoughts, feelings, and intuitions that haven’t yet found their way into conscious awareness.
In this sense, divination can sometimes function as a kind of mirror.
A particular interpretation might resonate deeply, while another leaves us feeling resistant or unconvinced. Both responses can be interesting, not necessarily because they reveal an objective truth, but because they invite us to consider what we already believe, fear, desire, or suspect about our circumstances.
Of course, our reactions aren’t always reliable indicators of what is best for us. Sometimes resistance points towards something important, while at other times it reflects an uncomfortable truth we’d rather avoid. The value lies in becoming curious about these responses rather than treating them as definitive answers.
This is also why I think it’s important to distinguish between using divination as a tool for reflection and using it as a substitute for personal responsibility.
When we repeatedly seek external confirmation before making decisions, we risk reinforcing the belief that our own judgement isn’t sufficient. The practice that might otherwise deepen our understanding can gradually become another way of avoiding uncertainty.
Astrology occupies an unusual space between symbolism, interpretation, and divination. Its value, at least in my own practice, isn’t limited to providing answers. It can also help us formulate better questions.
And sometimes, those questions are far more useful than another attempt to predict the outcome.
Making Peace With Being Human
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of developing self-trust is learning to separate our mistakes from our sense of worth.
When every misjudgement becomes evidence that we’re inadequate, irresponsible, or incapable, it’s hardly surprising that we become reluctant to take risks. We begin treating our decisions as tests of character rather than opportunities to participate in the unfolding experience of our lives.
But making a mistake doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve failed ourselves.
Sometimes it means we acted with the best understanding available to us at the time. Sometimes it reveals an assumption we hadn’t recognised, a boundary we didn’t know we needed, or a desire that turned out to be different from what we’d imagined.
And sometimes we’ve simply made a poor decision.
There doesn’t always need to be a profound psychological explanation or a hidden spiritual lesson waiting to be uncovered. Part of becoming more comfortable with ourselves is accepting that we’re capable of getting things wrong without turning every mistake into a referendum on who we are.
What matters is our willingness to acknowledge what happened, take responsibility where necessary, and allow the experience to inform our understanding moving forward.
In this way, mistakes become part of the fertile ground from which self-knowledge develops. Not because suffering or failure is inherently transformative, but because our willingness to engage with those experiences creates the possibility of learning something we couldn’t have known beforehand.
Trusting Ourselves to Become
I wonder how much of our struggle with self-trust comes from the expectation that we should already know how to navigate experiences we’ve never encountered before.
We expect ourselves to make decisions with a level of wisdom that can only really emerge through living. We want the insight before the experience, the confidence before the risk, and the reassurance before we’ve given ourselves the opportunity to discover what might happen.
Yet so much of what we come to understand about ourselves is revealed through the process of making choices, encountering consequences, and gradually refining our judgement.
Self-trust isn’t a fixed quality that we either possess or lack. It’s a relationship with ourselves that develops over time, shaped by our willingness to participate in life even when we cannot guarantee the outcome.
Perhaps the greatest hurdle isn’t learning how to make better decisions, although that will naturally come with experience. Perhaps it’s learning to trust that we can remain on our own side when we make the wrong ones.
Because personal growth isn’t necessarily about acquiring more answers.
Sometimes it’s about changing our relationship with uncertainty, allowing ourselves to be imperfect, and recognising that we don’t need to know exactly where we’re going in order to trust ourselves along the way.
The Pattern Finder
If this reflection has you considering how you respond to mistakes, uncertainty, or the fear of getting things wrong, I’ve created a short reflective guide called The Pattern Finder. It’s designed to help you notice recurring reactions, internal narratives, and behavioural patterns with greater curiosity. It offers a grounded way to explore the relationship between self-awareness and self-trust, creating space to recognise where familiar responses may be limiting your ability to move forward.
Photo credit: Selma DA SILVA
