This is the most important thing. You can trust yourself.  I know this sounds crazy. It doesn’t sound crazy to me anymore, but it did for decades.

I know that you might think that you aren’t trustworthy or you might think that if I really knew you, I certainly wouldn’t be telling you that.  Sure, we’ve all made bad choices or stupid mistakes.  We’ve all done things we’ve regretted immensely.  Many of us don’t consider our very own selves trustworthy.  But we are.  We are trustworthy if we let ourselves be who we really are. 

Maybe the reason we don’t trust ourselves is because when we think about ourselves, it’s the 4-year-old that we see. Maybe we’ve used “being who we really are” as an excuse for bad behavior.  Sometimes we let ourselves react as if we are the 4-year-old core of ourselves.  We act how a 4-year-old would act – we cry and scream when we don’t get our way.  I’ve got to admit – that sometimes I do that even to this day.

Believe me, though: there’s nothing wrong with that inner child – we know we need to love and nurture that child. BUT that child surely shouldn’t be running the show of our lives.  Would you put your 4-year-old daughter in charge of watching the baby while you go out for an evening?  Or let the 4-year-old son do the weekly grocery shopping, or how about manage the budget and pay the bills?  Probably not.  They might not make decisions with wisdom. 

But yet we let our inner 4-year-old selves run the show a lot of the time.  I can name countless times when I have let my 4-year-old run the show.  It’s embarrassing, honestly, when I remember many of these times.  The 4-year-old in me as lost friendships, drank too much, gotten into massive debt, hurt myself, acting recklessly, and cried for many hours.  Oftentimes it looks like sadness and victimhood and weeping and desperation; sometimes it looks like rage and anger. 

When we stop and take a breath and offer compassion for the 4-year-old inner self that is trying to be heard, and we offer to keep that 4-year-old safe, we can then remember that we are now adults and we are trustworthy as that adult.  We can do both: protect the inner child and take care of things maturely and responsibly.  We can start listening to the inner voice, hearing it – it has our best interests at heart and oftentimes it speaks more truthfully than our adult voice when it comes to how we are feeling.  You are the emotional 4-year-old, and you are also that child’s loving caretaker.   You are the one that needs to sit with and love that child and then stand up and guide that child.  Out of this voice, you are trustworthy.  You know what to do. You don’t need reassurance from anyone. You just need to get quiet and listen to your VERY OWN wisdom.

Question: Describe a time when you let your 4-year-old run the show.  Now rewrite that story and what it would have looked like for you to let the adult you run the show.  How would that have looked different?

Exercise: Each day, look for a time to let the adult guide the inner 4-year-old.Make a note of these times.