Living a life of sacrifice and service and self-debasing behavior is put on a pedestal that leaves us all suffering and miserable in the name of our love for our families and communities, TRYING to reach this ‘ideal’, and condemning ourselves for every thought of self.

Written by Brianna Hosack - Originally Published February 28, 2023

Learning to Trust Yourself & Live a Joyful Life

Learn to love and trust yourself, and enjoy the wonderful, joyful life that comes with it. I DARE YOU.

One day in my early teens I was lying on the carpet in the living room at home, watching Olympic figure skaters twirling and jumping and gracefully floating across the 24” square screen, imagining as usual that I might be able to do that someday. 

A stereotypical Canadian, I had grown up skating. My Dad had flooded our backyards for years in the winter to make our own ice rinks, and I had even spent 9 years in gymnastics, so it wasn’t far out of reach, really. 

Photo by weston m on Unsplash

This time I said it out loud, more a personal meandering thought than a request: “I’d LOVE to be a figure skater someday…”

My Dad was sitting on the couch behind me and quickly responded: “You’re too big to be a figure skater.”

Matter of fact. No apology. No gentle cushioning the blow… Ouch. That stung.

Oh… I kinda thought I had always been small? I started questioning my size. 

I started not trusting my own judgment and perception of myself, which had always been unreasonably high until that point. I had always been full of confidence, comfortable in my own skin, not cocky but definitely sure of myself.

And suddenly, those eight words had left me feeling like maybe I couldn’t do anything that I wanted to do. I was too big.

It gave me this previously non-existent limit on what I could accomplish, that suddenly it wasn't ALL possible for me. 

It was a simple thing, a flippant-seeming response …and it flattened me. And the worst thing was, I knew it wasn’t true… logically. I was tiny. Short, thin, not even really curvy yet at all. 

The truth was, he didn't want to admit that he didn't have the money for it.

I think he always assumed that I didn't fully understand our money situation because I was a kid, but I always understood it enough. I understood that we didn't have extra money, and I wasn't even asking him for lessons at that point.

We were very poor, so we didn't have money to put me in training for figure skating or anything like that. Even my gymnastics had been a lucky break because the school offered a program for free. 

But it didn’t matter that I knew that, it didn’t matter that logically I knew what he said was a cover up. All that mattered was that I suddenly had a whole brand new, shiny set of limiting beliefs and insecurities.

Instead of telling me, ‘I don't have the money to put you in figure skating, but maybe you can come up with a solution. Maybe you can save the money yourself, or something’... 

…Instead of that broader mindset of “you can do anything you put your mind to”, he told me that I was too big to be a figure skater. 

We all need to start to take a look at these seemingly insignificant moments that completely changed the course of our lives at a young age. 

As adults, we need to do our best not to create the same problems for our kids, and perpetuate the problem through the generations.

If you've ever had something similar happen, where your dreams, hopes, beliefs and confidence in yourself were squashed, you may have stopped listening to that voice that was telling you to follow that dream in the first place.

As an adult, you might not be in the habit of believing, of having the hope that you can do whatever you want, you can be whatever you want to be, you can achieve anything that you put your mind to. 

For so many people, lacking that confidence has held them back from going after their dreams AT ALL. For many, they don’t even remember what their dreams were.

If that's the case for you, and you can't figure out why you feel stuck and miserable when you ‘should’ be happy with your ‘very good life’, and you don’t even know what you’d want to change because of it, or you can't figure out how to get there… true joy feels impossible.

When you don’t trust yourself to make things happen that you desire, or you don’t even know yourself well enough to know WHAT you want…

What do you do?

The first, very important thing to do if you want to be able to trust your own inner knowing and re-discover your big dreams is to explore, be a lifelong learner. 

Always be open to learning and exploring new things.

It's really important that you be exposed to more things in order to even have the possibility of arriving at what maybe is your real purpose and what really, really calls you forward.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash 

Second is to follow the nudges. 

These may be really tiny, and when you're not used to hearing your intuition or feeling it or however it shows up for you, it can be really hard to decipher them to realize what they are.

So if something piques your interest, follow it. Allow yourself to explore it, just because it's interesting. You don't have to go anywhere with it. You don't have to decide that it’s your life purpose and this is what you’re going to do, but explore it because it's interesting and it's okay to just be interested in something different. 

This is KEY.

We MUST stop the ingrained response that we've had trained into us, especially as women and mothers, to deny our own enjoyment. 

This life is supposed to be full of joy. 

Denying our own happiness as Moms is portrayed to be the ideal, but it’s NOT.

Living a life of sacrifice and service and self-debasing behavior is put on a pedestal that leaves us all suffering and miserable in the name of our love for our families and communities, TRYING to reach this ‘ideal’, and condemning ourselves for every thought of self.

STOP beating yourself up. You are worthy of being happy.
You are WORTH spending time on yourself. You are WORTH being treated with respect. You are WORTH other people sacrificing for YOU sometimes. You are WORTH being spoiled now and then. You are WORTH spending money on.

It is backwards and UNHEALTHY and WRONG to be focusing all of your attention on prioritizing everyone else, always. So allow yourself to explore when something peaks your interest, just for the hell of it. 

Step outside that comfort zone and help me breakthrough the brainwashing of generations, for all women.

If you are too uncertain about what steps to take, or too scared to take those steps and break the mold…

Then third: Get help. 

Find someone who IS used to following their internal guidance system and ask them for help.

You absolutely can be affected and influenced by outside sources that aren't your intuition and that make you think that they are. That is where the whole story of you not even being allowed to have a moment for yourself, or spend a dollar on you comes from, so it's good to have a little bit of certainty by getting that guidance if you need it.

And finally, start to practice. 

Test the waters on small things that won’t have huge fallout if they don’t go well. 

Practice, even if you’re unsure, on those small things. 

And each time, check in with your intuition, how does it feel? Does it feel right? Does it feel exciting, expansive, or at least positive? Then leap! 

If it feels too scary, or wrong, or negative, then re-think.

After you’ve taken the action, ask yourself: ‘Did my intuition align with the result?’ 

And even if it didn’t this time, keep trying. You will start answering that question with a yes more and more often until you come to the point where you can trust yourself with it every time.

And even once you think you know, still go back and confirm with yourself regularly. Check in and make little tweaks because it's never perfect.

All the different experiences that life throws at you bring you to a different end result than you initially think they will. 

You may choose where you're going in life, and you might plan your path, but along the way there's going to be things that are a little bit better than what you planned, and you're just going to move the needle a tiny bit when you follow your intuition and change course. 

And each time you move the needle a little, you will find yourself feeling happier and more joyful all around in your life.

Being able to rely on your own judgment and personal power will bring you SO much confidence, peace and joy. We are living in an exciting time, and I encourage and invite you to live more from a place of empowerment. 

Stop dismissing your own enjoyment. 

Stop putting everyone else before yourself. 

All of that comes from a place of more empowerment. You deserve that. 

Know what's right for YOU and what matters to YOU, and have that be as important as what matters to anyone else.

We’ve learned, due to a lack of self-love and self-respect, and a shit-ton of conditioning, to hand over our power to other people in most situations, which has created an imbalance. But it’s time to connect to our own wisdom and personal power.

Everything you need is within you. Look inside and listen to that inner wisdom and your own divine guidance. Connect with who you really are. Having that self-love to put your own needs first is imperative. It's not optional. 

If you’ve been handing your power over to others it’s time for you to take it back. It’s time to make your own choices. And then watch the opportunities and magic start flowing into your life!

It's important that you’re standing in your own power, so that you’re able to actually step up and do the things that you’re being called to do, fulfill your big purpose, and make that big impact.

Be in this radical alignment where you get to be in JOY every day, where you get to feel really good.

As women, we have been trained not even just to make it optional that we be happy, but not even to allow it. It's not even ‘once everybody else is happy, I get to be’. We're just not allowing ourselves to be happy, at ALL.

But it stops now.

Learn to love and trust yourself, and enjoy the wonderful, joyful life that comes with it. 

I DARE YOU.

Want a little boost up on your way? Check out my free “Intuition Tune In” meditation to reconnect with your inner wisdom & activate your intuition.