A Quote on Self-Trust Stopped Me In My Tracks
I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw the following quote on Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday feed. I looked down at my phone as the metaphorical sounds of, “blink, blink…blink, blink,” happened. I focused my eyes upon the words and read them once again:
Self-trust is the essence of heroism. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
And then it struck me. I was taking in these words from the perspective of a parent whose child had been bullied. She’d been treated unkindly time and time again and yet, consciously leaned into the power of self-trust to overcome this incredibly painful experience.
A heroine trusts herself.
Do you remember encouraging your baby to crawl and then to start walking? I do. I must have said, “You can do it!” about ten thousand times during the first years of my girls’ lives:
Brushing teeth- You can do it!
Using the potty- You can do it!
Getting dressed- You can do it!
And countless more firsts…
During these wildly fascinating, exhausting and precious years of their lives, my job was to program the heroines within with encouragement, hoping my belief in them would infiltrate their entire being.
A heroine and her trusty sidekick.
After entering elementary school, my oldest child was bullied. No matter how much I filled her with words of love including the old standby, “You can do it!”, the feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness were winning the battle. That is, until we started to focus more on her own thoughts and less on what anyone else said, including me, her trusty sidekick.
A heroine steps into her light.
That’s the moment she decided to trust that she did nothing to deserve this kind of treatment from so-called friends. She decided to trust that the people meant to be her true friends would show up at exactly the right time and the right place. She decided to trust that her worth was not defined by other people. She put trust in her spiritual life. She committed to self-trust and self-love.
The effects of bullying linger.
Let me be clear. The effects of that very difficult experience still linger. We continue working through the insecurities that come up from time to time. But, I do believe Mr. Emerson was on to something when he used the word, “essence,” in his quote. Becoming the heroine of your own life story requires the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of self-trust, and if I may add, self-love.
I wrote the song, “Do Unto Others” as a way to power back up whenever my daughter felt badly about her situation. We’d sing the chorus together, myself and two daughters, and we’d all feel better afterwards. If you haven’t gotten your FREE copy, do so now while it’s still available. Perhaps you know someone who needs to power back up because of bullying? Please share this with them. Download now!
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