Choice Requires Trust and Faith

Let’s talk about love.

I talk a lot about choice, because healing and growth and stepping into new ways of being requires so much choice. Daily. Weekly. Moment to moment. Choice is everything, and it can be the most challenging aspect of change.

I talk a lot about choice, but I don’t think I’ve talked enough about how much trust and faith choice requires. To be honest, I don’t think I fully understood it myself, at least not to the degree I do now.

You see, sometimes creating what you desire starts with knowing what you want and stepping into the new way of being that allows you to create it. It involves using your ideal life, business, or relationship vision as a guidepost that moves you forward. You choose to take one step after another until you get there.

Sometimes, though, choice requires jumping wholeheartedly into a heap of unknowns… with no idea what comes next, let alone how you’re going to create it. Sometimes it requires leaning in and trusting that something is actually possible, even though you’ve never seen or experienced it before.

That’s the very definition of faith, is it not?

But I think faith is more complex than we make it out to be. It’s not just about declaring to the Universe that we “believe” and “trust” that things will work out as they’re meant to—it’s not as simple as deciding to have confidence that something is possible, despite the lack of proof—it also involves having trust and faith in YOURSELF, in your ability to make the conscious and continuous choice to show up and create what you desire.

If you asked me a year ago whether or not I’d ever be in a relationship again, I would’ve told you no. Not just “no,” but “HELL TO THE NO, NEVER AGAIN.” And I meant it. With my whole body, mind, heart, and soul I meant those words.

Never. Again.

Because for me, love wasn’t good. Love was traumatic and suffocating. It meant giving away pieces of myself for the sake of someone else’s comfort. It meant control, manipulation, and abuse. Love was not a thing I wanted anymore.

But yesterday I was sitting on a couch with two of my favorite humans, talking about love and needs and new ways of being in relationship. Talking about what it means to create a partnership that is GOOD and SUPPORTIVE and allows for each person to be ALL OF WHO THEY ARE.

As with most conversations around this topic, I didn’t really understand what was being said. To me, the idea of a happy, healthy relationship was all theory. Nice ideas. Something people talk about. Until it clicked.

“Oh my gawd,” I exclaimed, “I GET IT.”

I have to CHOOSE IT, just like everything else. But more than that, I have to have TRUST and FAITH in myself in order to create what seems “impossible.”

Creating what we desire when we don’t have any context for what it could look and feel like in our own life doesn’t just involve choosing it… it requires trust and faith. Not just in the possibility of “impossibilities,” but in ourselves.

It involves trusting ourselves enough to make those conscious and continuous choices. Without that trust, the actions can be empty, they can become misdirected, or they can be self-sabotaging. So then when things ultimately fail, we can use that as proof that “it’s just not how things are” or “it’s just not possible,” rather than continuing to FIGURE OUT how to make it happen.

This isn’t a totally new idea for me.
I do this in my business and I have for years.

There have been many times—SO MANY TIMES—where I’ve had absolutely no idea how to take the next step. When I started my business, all I knew is that I wanted to be of service and create change. I didn’t know what that meant or looked like. I didn’t know exactly what I was working to create.

I just knew I wanted it and that I was committed.
I was willing to leap into the unknown as many times as it took.

I made the choice to keep figuring it out, no matter how hard it got, no matter how many times I failed, no matter how much it hurt. I had trust and faith in myself to continuously and consciously show up to create it.

Turns out this applies to everything… ha. Even the idea of creating a good, healthy, happy relationship when I’ve only experienced everything but.

I’m sharing this very fresh and raw realization with you for two reasons.

1) Trust and faith go hand in hand with choice, and that needs to be a bigger part of the conversation.

If you don’t trust yourself enough, you’re never going to leap. You’re never going to dig into the challenging aspects of this work. You’re never going to fully heal or realize your true potential. If you’re not making the choices you know you need to make, ask yourself where you don’t trust yourself enough to do so.

2) When trauma is involved, it’s really, really not as simple as telling someone that things can be different than they are.

Trauma and PTSD rewire how we see and engage with the world. It’s physiological and neurological as much as emotional. If you told me I could create whatever I want in my business, I wouldn’t have argued with you, even if I didn’t know how to do it. But I could NOT for the life of me grasp the concept that a relationship could be GOOD and SUPPORTIVE and as BEAUTIFUL and CONNECTED as my favorite friendships… because trauma taught me otherwise.

It’s taken rebuilding trust with myself, learning that I’m safe, and leaning into a totally new way of being in order to even get to this place of seeing it as possible. It’s taken choosing to have FAITH IN MYSELF that I can—and WILL—create something different the next time around. If you’re not able to wrap your mind around the idea of certain things being POSSIBLE and SAFE and HAPPY, there may something deeper at play, like trauma.

Choice is everything.
And it requires so much trust and faith.

Where are you not trusting yourself?
And how will you start leaning into the unknown more fully?