How to Begin Trusting Yourself Again When You’ve Tried Everything | 003

You're listening to the Sacred She Reset podcast.

If you're a woman in midlife who's done doing this alone and

ready for real conversations, real wisdom, and real radiance,

you're exactly where you need to be. I'm your host Sharia Shana.

Your path to radiance starts here. Welcome back, beautiful

ladies, to the Sacred She reset, awakening your radiant wisdom.

I'm Shriya Shana, and it is an honor to have you here again for

this next episode. And this week, we're looking at how to

begin trusting yourself again when you're saying, "Oh, I've

tried everything. So today we're going to dive into how there's a

particular type of exhaustion that comes from trying again and

again. When you've read all the books, you've bought the

supplements, you've done all the meditation and save the

meditations. You've started the routine, and you promised

yourself that this time is going to be a little bit different.

And then what happens? Life happens, right? Life gets busy.

Someone needs you. You miss a day. The routine disappears, and

before long, you begin telling yourself again, and a lot of the

time, this is unconscious.

Telling yourself again, nothing works for me, or perhaps I never

follow through. I don't have enough discipline. I should be

able to work this out for myself. I know I came under that

banner a lot. I've left this too late, and this is what I hear a

lot for for as ladies later on in life, going through the

midlife transition of I've left it too late. It's too late for

me. It's never too late. It's never too late to start. It's

the time is now, today, the present moment, and so at some

point, the fear is no longer only that the next approach will

not work. So we get into that cycle of like, oh, another

approach. Will it work? Will it not? And we get into this fear,

but the deeper fear is, what if I am the reason nothing works?

So today we're going to speak directly to that fear, because

very often the problem is not that you're incapable of change.

The problem is that you have been trying to create change

inside of the same patterns that keep pulling you away from

yourself, and that may not land for you straight away, so give

that time to just mellow and marinate. But we're going to

dive into this a little bit deeper on how our patterns can

be pulling us away from ourselves. And so, when I

reached the turning point in my life, which I I spoke into this

in the last episode when I was 33, and I decided I need to

become more involved in understanding my body. I

imagined that the choice, that choice alone, would change

everything.

So it was a big decision, and I thought perhaps the decision

itself would be enough. But there's work to do. There's

always work to do. It's the first step, isn't it? That once

I and that once I chose myself, I would suddenly know how to

trust myself. Sometimes it begins as a very small, shaky

voice saying, "There's, there must be another way. And I know

that I know when I was sitting in when I've been sitting in

some of these moments in my life, when I know that there's

something moving and something needs to change, those have been

the words that there must be another way. There's got to be

another way, and so I spent a lot of time worrying and being

afraid about getting it wrong. So I'd spent years relying on

external authority, and if you haven't listened to that

episode, I highly recommend you going back and just having a

little listen to the backstory of my life, so you know where I

am and how I how I am with you now here on this podcast. But I

really did spend a lot of time giving giving my power away and

relying on external authority, so doctors, specialists,

prescriptions, procedures, and that became my cycle. That

became the way I operated in the world.

And so, while that was all valid and it was important and it had

a place, I did not yet yet know how to bring my own voice into

the conversation, so it spent so long externalizing that I I just

I did not know the relationship with myself and my own voice and

how to cultivate this and how to start. I swung between two

extremes. At times, I wanted someone else to tell me exactly

what to do, and that's that would be so nice, wouldn't it?

Just someone telling you what to do all the time, but that is not

empowering. And at other times, I believed I should be able to

work everything out alone, and I can relate to that one in such a

big way, because most of my life I have gone lone wolf, solo

traveler, and we that also gets us stuck in a cycle of being on

our own and in our own thoughts, and that's also it at times

cannot be healthy. So neither of these positions created genuine

self trust. One gave all my authority away, and the other

one isolated me. I collected information, I studied,

experimented, and I made lots of wonderful mistakes.

Tried things that helped and things that did not. And there

were times when I became frustrated with myself because

healing was not unfolding in a straight line, and so what I

mean by that is that the healing process was very much an up and

down journey. There was a lot of peaks and troughs, and a lot of

the time I felt like I was going backwards. You know, it felt

like you know, step forward, three steps back, and so I

thought that if I had truly learned the lesson, I should

never return to the old pattern. But healing is never like that,

is it? It's a relationship, and relationships require us to

return again and again. Over the years, I have seen a familiar

pattern in women who are intelligent, capable, and highly

aware. They often know a great deal. They know they need more

rest. They know move movement would help. They know they need

better boundaries. They know they feel disconnected. They may

even know exactly what practice would support them. But knowing

is not the same as feeling safe enough to change. A woman may

understand boundaries intellectually while still

feeling terrified, and saying no will make her selfish. How many

of you can relate to that? She may know she needs rest while

carrying a belief that her value depends on being useful. She may

want support while feeling ashamed that she cannot manage

everything alone. We just carry so much. It almost seems crazy,

even speaking into this and and sharing this with you.

But it it is a thing. This is a thing, and this is what we go

through. And she may crave change while fearing what the

change will ask her to confront. So she begins, then retreats,

begins again, then judges herself. Eventually, eventually

she uses her inconsistency as evidence, and so we weigh up

these stats, and it's like, yeah, nothing works for me. I've

tried everything. See, I knew I couldn't do it. But

inconsistency is not always failure. Sometimes it is

evidence that an old pattern or protection pattern is still

active. Now we often speak about change as though people resist

it because they are lazy or unmotivated, but change can

threaten belonging, identity, relationship dynamics, the roles

that keep us safe. Suppose you have spent decades being the

dependable one, the peacemaker, the caretaker, the woman who

never asked for much. If you begin expressing needs, the

people around you may not immediately understand, right?

If you if you rest, someone may be disappointed. If you change

your mind, someone may accuse you of being difficult. If you

stop over-functioning, other people may have to carry more.

Their body understands all of these risks, so even when your

conscious mind says, "I want to change, another part might be

asking, will I still be loved? Will I still belong? Who will I

be if I am no longer the woman who holds everything together?

This is why shame rarely creates lasting transformation. Shame

tells a nervous system that change. Is punishment.

Compassion tells it that change can be safe, so we need to make

that shift, and that's what we're going to move into the

shift now. The shift for me came when I stopped treating self

trust as a feeling I had to wait for. I began to understand it as

something created through action. Self trust grows when

you hear your own need to respond. When you keep a small

promise, it's these small little steps, tiny little bite sized

chunks. And I'm just going to throw this in here because I'm

thinking of it right now. But one of my mentors says, "What's

the best way to eat an elephant, and it's one bite at a time. So

it's these small little promises, these small steps.

When you and when you tell the truth, when you ask a question

and you start to get curious, when you change direction

without making yourself wrong, when you seek support rather

than waiting until collapse. Now that one right there is, I feel,

is a huge one in our society because I know so many of my

beautiful sisters who, and me included here. So I'm speaking

from personal experience, where you go full on. You're just in

action mode. Your, you know, productivity's on. You're on,

on, on, on, on, and then you collapse. It's like out, and and

then you you collapse because you could have you've seen the

signs earlier on, and you could have actually asked for help

sooner, and so you do not have to believe with absolute

certainty that everything will work. You only need to become

willing to remain in relationship with yourself while

you discover what does, and so it's this beautiful dance we get

to do, and this is a-it's a very different way of beginning.

It's a different way of starting again. It's more gentle. It's

kind. It's softer. It's tender. Tender is such a beautiful word,

and when we drop into tenderness for ourselves around self-trust,

it really slows everything down. It slows the narrative down for

us. And so today, I've got three ways that you can begin trusting

yourself again. And one is start smaller than your perfectionism

wants. Now, if you're anything like me in the past, I'm a

recovering perfectionist, and there's still traits of that

that follow through today. But just you know, dialing, just

pulling back, pulling back, and not having this laser-focused

attention on it needing to be perfect. Often, the greatest

change looks unbelievably messy, and so perfectionism loves

dramatic beginnings, the complete new routine, the

seven-day cleanse, the two-hour morning practice. I'm laughing

and I'm I'm smiling at myself because this all of this I share

with you comes comes from my own journey and from my you know

working with other women as well and seeing this pattern play out

and then we commit to a meditate to meditate every day for the

rest of our natural life and it's just not sustainable,

ladies. It really isn't. It's a very enthusi. It's enthusiastic

on Monday morning, and by Thursday, it's packed its

suitcase and left the country.

So instead, choose something small enough to keep. I'm always

thinking sustainability. Is this sustainable? Can I maintain this

for the duration of how long? And am I open to allowing it to

shift? Am I open to allowing it to move and be fluid? Because,

as you know, ladies, we even when we've we've come through

menopause and we've stopped bleeding, and there's no cycle

there. We are still cycling. Our body remembers. I know mine

does. It remembers. It knows this. We we follow these. We're

very cycling. We follow these patterns and flow, and the moon

and the seasons. We're highly beautiful, sensory, intuitive

beings, And so, instead, keeping it small enough-five minutes

outside, one glass of water before coffee, one honest

conversation, going to bed 20 minutes earlier-it makes a huge

difference. Putting your hands on your heart before answering a

request, you know, and that's the big one where we go yes

straight away and we overcommit to people around us, and then we

kind of let it settle for a few days, and we're going, oh, so

no, I don't really want to do this, or I don't feel like it

anymore. It's okay to say maybe. Can I get back to you?

The actions may seem small, but the deeper message is powerful

because you're sending, starting to integrate new pathways, new

neural pathways. You're retraining, and so it's like

when I when I hear myself, I respond. That is how self trust

begins, and so little steps. We're not overcommitting

ourselves, and that's step number one. Number two, we are

going to track our evidence of return. So many of us only track

what they did not complete, and this is like that's where you

know cross it cross it out. That's where the mistakes begin.

We track out how incomplete we are. You you remember the missed

walk, and now this is actually something in our humanness that

we have naturally have a negative bias, so naturally

slant towards the negativity of these things. It's just the way

we work. It's the way we're wired, and that's why I say

we're retraining ourselves here. So it does. It feels like we're

training a new muscle. We're going to the gym and we're

working out and we're doing one little weight at a time, one

little rep.

And so, instead of trying to remember the missed walk and the

unfinished journal and the failed boundary you didn't hold,

and you're beating yourself up about it, a moment that you

overlooked, and when you know you just in chaos and you break

down. So begin tracking different evidence. That's what

I'm inviting you to do today. Notice when you recognized

fatigue, when you paused before saying yes, when you asked for

help, and so you're getting these nice little gold stars on

the board, nice little green ticks instead of these red

crosses. Notice when you spoke without apologizing; these are

huge steps. These are massive, and just want to add here: we

mustn't forget to celebrate the small wins. Things like this are

huge, especially if you're someone. I don't know. I I

remember taking a plane trip not that long ago, and a beautiful

couple sat next to me, and all she did was said sorry. Nearly

every second word she said, she got up, got a sorry, sorry,

sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm like, now that was a totally

ingrained, unconscious pattern she was playing out.

I found myself almost getting agitated and saying, "What are

you apologizing for? She hasn't done anything wrong. But when we

flip that and start recognizing and taking, like tracking this

evidence of us improving, like spoke without apologizing, like

I've just mentioned, it's um, it's it's great. It's progress.

It's all progress, and all these little pieces and these little

steps forward all layer up. And then you'll look back in a

year's time, or six months, or even four months, and you'll be

like, "Wow, I've come such a long way. So it's just shifting

the narrative, shifting your perspective. What else here? Let

me see. What else have I got in my notes? So you've yeah, when

you rested before you collapse. Now that, like I spoke into

earlier, that's a huge one. Recognizing when you need rest,

and when you need to take care of yourself, and when you felt

joy, tracking your joy, your joy meter, that's just you know

huge. Like when you felt joy and vibrance and vitality, when you

changed your mind, because it's okay to change your mind.

All of these moments matter, every single one. So you're not

searching for evidence to become perfect, because we're we're

bypassing that. We're actually leaving that behind. We're

going, hey, and going to say, hey, that's not where we're

going anymore. You're gathering evidence that you are becoming

present. Big deep breath, becoming present in your life,

and you're actually cultivating this awareness. It's very, very

different, and I'm sure if you're following me here, you

can feel that there's a difference between the two. So

let's move on to number three. Let yourself be supported. So

one of my early mistakes was believing I needed to work

everything out alone, and that within itself can become quite a

painful cycle because then we start to push others out, and

we're not relying on people anymore or asking for help, and

we think we can do it on our own.

Now that within itself, later on in life, can turn into where you

start becoming very rigid within your life, there's no movement,

and because you think you can do it all on your own, you become

quite stubborn and obstinate. And from the outside, people

might look in and see that, like, oh, she's a very stubborn

old lady; she doesn't want any help. But inside, the person who

is living that life of doing everything alone is all they

really, really are crying out for is love and someone to

support them. But they've gone so far down that track of being

in that alone mode that it's become there's so many big walls

around them, so let yourself be supported. Perhaps part of that

is from come from not knowing who to trust. It comes from not

knowing who to trust. Also, there's a big part which is

pride as well playing into that, and also just really accustomed

to surviving, and yeah, it's it can become very isolating and

feel very lonely because then we, what can happen is we can

then start to almost tell ourselves stories that there's

you know the outside world is out to get us, and so you know

that's going into the extreme. But when we isolate ourselves

and don't don't ask for support, there's some really big patterns

that can play out later on in our life that are not helping us

at all. all, the belief is that you must be carrying everything

by yourself. So support does not mean handing away your

authority.

You're not going to be giving anything away by asking for

help. The right support helps you hear yourself more more

clearly, and so that may come from a practitioner or a mentor

or a doctor, a trusted friend, a circle of women, some other

communities. It might be online or in person, and so the

question is not, "Can I do this alone? And you probably can, and

you probably have been for a long time. But how is that

serving you? You have likely done many different things

alone, and so I would say a better question to ask is, why

should I have to? So feel that difference there. Can I do this

alone? Why should I have to? And so you start to open yourself up

to receiving rather than going. I'm going to work this all out

on myself in my own head, in my own body, all those things. So

there's three tips for helping to begin trusting yourself

again. The first one, I'm just going to recap there, just to

remind you. I'm going to put all this in the show notes as well.

But the first one was start small, rather than what your

perfectionism wants. So get that in check. Two, tracking your

evidence of return. You know the times that you felt joy, and you

felt supported, and you rested before collapse. And number

three, let yourself be supported. Don't be on your own,

ladies.

Start to, you know, if you are someone out there who is on your

own and you need support, it's time to reach out. It really is.

We are in a time now when it's important for us to all come

together and to really support one another, and so help is

never too far away. So, if you're a lady out there who's

saying I've tried everything, I, I, what I hear is

disappointment, and I hear the fear of hoping again. And I've

heard this a number of times when I've been in conversation,

you know, and it might be in a women's circle or somewhere. And

it's a really great opportunity, I think, when we catch

ourselves. Just want to kind of dive deeper into this for a

little while. When we catch ourselves in conversation with

another and going, "Oh, I've tried everything, let's just

look at that for a second. If if you've tried everything, how how

is that humanly Possible, like for me, I'm looking at the words

I've, I have, tried, you've attempted everything. Listen,

that word everything. You've you're telling me you've tried

everything in the whole entire world on this planet, and

nothing's worked.

And I'm calling out a slight overexaggeration of that comment

there because we can we can really get stuck in that going

back to the other thing, being being on our own, trying to do

it all our own, or having the opinion that we know best, and

it's really important to stay curious. It really is to stay

curious in our lives because when we stop being curious,

well, what's the point of us even being on this planet and

walking this earth? What's the point? If you've tried

everything and you know everything, then okay. But I

invite you to actually take a look at what language you're

speaking and what what words or spells or what are you casting

with your with your words around this, because I, you know, I'm a

I'm a woman who's had a lot of experiences. I've had a crazy

life, lived a lot of done a lot of different things. Crazy,

great, yeah, off the wall, whatever. I've got a huge story,

huge history. I have not tried everything, and so if you are a

woman that's saying I've tried everything, I I do.

I hear disappointment. I hear that there's a fear there and a

block of letting others in to support you, and and sometimes

you have tried a lot, but you haven't tried everything, and

there is always more in the tank for us to keep doing our best to

keep going, to get up and start again, and I can relate to when

you're in burnout or you've hit a wall and you've got exhaustion

and complete fatigue. Trust me, I've been there several times in

my life, and when I'm in that space, it's almost like a space

of me feeling untouchable, where I well, I don't want to be

touched. I don't want to be spoken to, and that's okay as

well. It's okay to be in the cave and to be processing and to

be integrating. But if we walk our life and go out saying,

"I've tried everything, nothing works for me, where is the

opportunity in that? You know, where where is the opportunity

to keep growing. I think we limit ourselves in our

languaging and the way we believe and the way we, you

know, tell our stories, and we get stuck in those.

That's what I feel. I feel we get stuck in them. I've been

there. You've been there. We've all been there. We're human. But

to say you've tried everything, you're not opening up to the

possibility that something new is just around the next corner.

And so, I feel it's important to start somewhere. Where where can

you start? Make a list of what have you tried. What have I

tried? What do I? What pattern do I keep bringing to everything

that I try? And so let's start asking different questions.

Let's start shifting our perspective around this, and

start asking the questions that actually open us up for more.

And this is where your power truly begins. And until then,

you'll just continue to hit that same wall over and over and

over. So I'd love for you to ask yourself. I've got a reflection

for you today.

I love you to ask yourself: Where have you been using an old

pattern as proof that change is impossible? Where have I been

using an old pattern as proof that change is impossible? And I

know there's something under the hood, ladies. We all have

something there, and yeah, it just take a journal out and take

some time and ask the question out loud. Where have I been

using an old pattern as proof that change is impossible for

me? Perhaps you have been calling yourself inconsistent

when you are over. Calling yourself lazy when you are

depleted, calling yourself undisciplined when the plan was

never realistic, calling yourself difficult when you are

finally telling the truth. What would change if you stopped

asking what is wrong with me and began asking what would help me

feel supported enough to take the next step? So, if you'd love

to explore this further, ladies, this has been a wonderful

episode. I feel like there's been quite a bit of fire in my

belly behind this one. Big message to share. Love to hear

from you.

Welcome to always comment and share with me here, so inside

the Sacred She resets circle on Facebook, it's the private

community. I'd love to invite you along, and you can come

along and share some of this if you're feeling really brave, and

pop it in there, pop it in the group, and come and join us in

the conversation. You will find the link to the community in the

show notes, and I'm Shiriya Shana, and this is the Sacred

Reset, awakening your radiant wisdom. You do not have to trust

the entire path. Trust the next honest step. Your radiance

starts here. Bye for now.