I think we expect a meaningful choice to feel a little more... meaningful when we make it.
Like there should be some kind of internal certainty. A deep breath. A clear sense that yes, this is me finally doing things differently.
But instead, it looks a lot more like sending a text that says:
“Thanks for thinking of me, but I can’t this time.”
That’s it.
One sentence.
And before you go staring at your phone like you may have just detonated a relationship, before you start asking yourself, Did that sound rude? Should I have explained more? Maybe I actually could go. I mean, technically I’m free...
Stop.
We’re not talking ourselves out of it this time.
We’ve been here before.
You already noticed that you say yes before checking whether you actually want to. You understand why you do it. You’ve even started recognizing the exact moment when the automatic yes starts loading.
And this time, you answer differently.
And surprise — nothing happened.
I mean, I’m not sure what we were expecting anyway. No big lights. Nobody clapping. No Eye of the Tiger playing in the background... which, by the way, feels like a missed opportunity.
BUT. But... something did happen.
The thing you’ve been noticing about yourself finally made its way into an actual choice.
That’s kinda huge.
That matters way more than we give it credit for.
Because once we start understanding ourselves better, it is very easy to turn what comes next into another enormous project.
My husband knows the look.
I decide I want to change one thing and suddenly there are Post-it notes covering my office floor, a new calendar involved and several colored markers that apparently mean we’re getting serious.
Because obviously I can’t just notice something about myself.
I need a system.
So now I know I need to trust myself more, which clearly means I need to become a woman who trusts herself. Immediately. Across all categories. Consistently. All at once.
Obviously.
But what if that’s asking way too much of one realization?
What if you don’t need to prove that you’re a completely different person now?
What if you just let one thing you’ve discovered about yourself show up and matter a little bit more in one simple, ordinary moment?
You notice you’re exhausted, and instead of immediately overriding that information, you go to bed.
You know you don’t have room for another commitment, so when somebody asks, you say, “Let me check before I answer.”
You catch yourself about to take over because your kid is loading the dishwasher in a way that makes absolutely no sense to you, and somehow (with tremendous personal restraint) you leave the room.
You realize you actually do have an opinion, so you say it without taking a poll first.
Or you’ve been looking forward to an hour by yourself all week, and when something else comes up, you don’t automatically decide yours is the easiest thing to move.
None of these choices changes your whole life.
That’s almost what makes them easy to dismiss.
Okay, I said no to one thing. Big deal.
I let somebody else handle the laundry and we’re calling this transformation now?
Well... maybe not. At least not by itself.
But something starts to shift when the things you’re learning about yourself stop being information you collect and start becoming information you respond to.
That’s what we’ve really been circling around.
You notice something. You understand a little more about what’s underneath it. You begin recognizing where it actually shows up.
And then there’s this tiny moment where you get to decide whether what you know about yourself is going to count.
That decision may look almost embarrassingly small from the outside.
But you recognize it now. You know what the old response would’ve been, and this time you try something different.
That matters.
We tend to wait to feel like we trust ourselves before we do anything that requires self-trust.
We want the confidence first. The certainty. The feeling that we’re absolutely making the right choice and won’t regret it later.
Which would be lovely.
And please let me know if you figure out how to arrange that, because most of the time, it doesn’t seem to work in that order.
Sometimes you make the decision while still feeling unsure.
Probably most of the time, actually.
You say what you think even though you can feel yourself wanting to soften it. You keep the time you said you needed even while a little voice in your head starts listing all the more productive things you could be doing. You let someone help while also knowing you could probably do it faster yourself.
And then afterward, you have something you didn’t have before.
Evidence.
And evidence matters because trust is hard to think your way into.
Usually, you start believing you can count on yourself only after you’ve watched yourself do something that gives you a reason to believe.
I heard myself. I responded. And I let the answer stand.
Which is different from waiting around to become a person who magically trusts every thought, feeling or instinct you have.
That’s not what I mean by self-trust anyway.
Sometimes what you hear is fear. Sometimes you’re tired or irritated or reacting to something that has nothing to do with the decision in front of you. Sometimes wisdom means asking somebody you trust, praying about it or admitting you need more information.
But there are also moments when you know enough.
You know you’re exhausted. You know you don’t have capacity. You know you keep saying you don’t care when you actually do. Or you realize you’ve handed the same decision back to everybody else so many times that you barely notice yourself doing it anymore.
And eventually, there’s a choice.
Not the choice that fixes everything.
Just the one sitting in front of you.
This is where we can make change much harder than it needs to be.
One small choice suddenly has to prove you’ve completely transformed.
You say what you actually think once and now, what... you’re supposed to have a strong, well-articulated opinion ready for every conversation?
You protect one hour for yourself and suddenly we need boundaries in every category of life, effective immediately?
And if you manage to leave the dishwasher alone one time, surely by tomorrow you should be evolved enough to stand there peacefully while your kid puts the cereal bowls face up and lines the forks across the bottom rack between the plates.
That defies basic physics, yes. But expecting one good dishwasher moment to mean you’re suddenly completely evolved is a tremendous amount of pressure to put on yourself.
Maybe the choice doesn’t have to carry all of that.
Maybe today it just means you notice your hand reaching in to rearrange everything your kid just loaded... and you don’t.
That’s it.
Tomorrow, you may absolutely rearrange the dishwasher.
I mean, look, nobody said we were going to nail this overnight.
But today you have one tiny piece of evidence that the familiar response isn’t the only one available to you.
And then there’s another one.
You pause before saying yes. Or you give an answer and resist the urge to immediately explain why for the next ten minutes.
A few moments like that and now you’ve got something to point to.
Oh. I can do this differently.
I can hear myself without immediately overriding what I heard.
And that’s why the tiny choice matters.
It takes something you’ve been noticing and thinking about and makes it real enough for you to actually experience.
Even just once.
So if there’s something you’ve been recognizing lately, the question doesn’t have to be:
How do I change my life?
Hello… that’s enormous.
Maybe it’s simply:
What is the smallest honest choice I could make here that lets what I already know about myself matter?
Not forever. Not perfectly.
Just here.
Because sometimes self-trust doesn’t arrive as a feeling that tells you you’re finally ready.
Sometimes the choice comes first.
And then, little by little, you have actual evidence that the next time a moment like this shows up, you don’t have to automatically answer the way you always have.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Ep. 70: The 10 Minutes After You Speak Up: When Discomfort Doesn't Mean You're Wrong →