How to Become Genuinely Trustworthy to Yourself...Questioning the Persona

Hi David, I've broken so many promises to myself that I don't think I trust myself anymore. I'm not a trustworthy person, and honestly I feel like I have lots of proof to back this up. How do you become trustworthy again? Okay, so this is an important question, so let's break it down here, see what's going on with this. A lot of people who struggle with procrastination inevitably come to the point where they feel, I am not trustworthy, I'm an untrustworthy person, and there is all this evidence to point to, all these promises that are made and reneged on and not followed through with, right? So it seems like the evidence that, well, I am untrustworthy is very, very clear. So what should you do? Well, really the conventional advice that we get for this is, well, you know, really take it seriously now, really try harder, try to mean it more, try to force that trust into place, and that doesn't work. Okay, it doesn't work. What we need here is a little bit more insight, and I think I can offer some insight in this, so stick with me on this here if you've had this issue, right? I'm not the most eloquent explainer, but don't click onto the next video yet, just give me a few minutes, and at the end, if you think this advice sucks, write a really bad comment below, so stay with me for a minute, because this could be helpful. So trustworthiness, so people who procrastinate get to the point where they think I'm not trustworthy, right? Now, wouldn't it make sense if a person was untrustworthy? Wouldn't you imagine that they wouldn't care that much about trustworthiness, right? Wouldn't that make sense? Like they're not doing it, so really you think, well, they don't really care much about trustworthiness or reliability, but yet what we see time and time again with it is they care deeply about it. It bothers them greatly that they're this untrustworthy person, so they think. So that doesn't make sense, right? If they were truly untrustworthy, why would it bother them so much? Here's the thing, right? The problem with procrastination is that far from not caring about being trustworthy, people who struggle with procrastination have a very, very deep attachment to being trustworthy, and that's the thing that catches them out, right? Because what it involves is we develop this persona, this idea that I must be this trustworthy person. We wrap our identity around it. So this is what Jung calls a persona, right? We develop this thing, I must be trustworthy. Now, really what that means is I must be this perfect person. I must not be human. I must show up and never fail, and there can be no nuances in it. I must do exactly what I say at all times. Not as a value, but as an identity. The problem with the persona is though, right? So I have this persona of I'm going to be trustworthy, and Jung talks about it. It's every persona develops its counterpart of the shadow, right? So what's the shadow to trustworthy? Untrustworthy. Now, because that threatens the identity, we push that out of awareness. Don't want to look at that. Don't want to even think about that as a possibility for us. Not allowed. That's in the bad room, officially. The problem is it gets pushed out of awareness, gets repressed, gets denied. Anything we push back out of awareness like that comes in, comes back, you can't get rid of it. So the problem isn't necessarily this untrustworthiness. It's this unhealthy attachment or this understanding we have, this persona around trustworthy. So we have to start there with that. It's like, well, what do we mean actually by being trustworthy? And really what it means, if you look at the fine print is I must always show up. I must be perfect at all times. Unless I'm trustworthy, I'm going to withhold things from myself. I'm going to not allow myself to have fun. I'm going to be strict with myself, be really harsh with myself because it's so important that I must be trustworthy. And it's that attempt to stick to that attachment that creates this thing of untrustworthiness. It's creating all this evidence that we're finding. So in effect, what we realize is the problem is our understanding of what it means to be trustworthy. So what is a better way to think about trustworthiness? Trustworthiness really means boundaries. Okay, so you have a different understanding of what it means in terms of your productivity. You're doing whatever it is you want to do. How can I start to implement trust in that in a different sense? It doesn't mean showing up perfectly at all times. It means having boundaries with things. Okay, if I don't do it today, I'm not going to torture myself with it. That's a form of trust. A much healthier form of trust that actually leads to much more productivity really. Trustworthiness means being human. It doesn't mean being perfect. It means I'm going try and engage with this in a healthy way, but I'm not going to use it to torture myself. That's what real trust is. I'm not going to wrap my sense of self-worth around doing this. That's a much deeper thing to be trustworthy around. Not using these goals that we set for giving ourselves grades in life. We're sort of living in a perpetual state of feeling like we're in school. How did I do today? Scoring myself all the time. If something comes up where you can't do the goal, it becomes a referendum on your self-worth as opposed to getting an insight through reflection. So, okay, I wonder what happened there? Because no, no, no. Untrustworthiness. Completely not allowed. Don't look at that. Creates more of it. Pressing it out of awareness. So, in effect, what I'm saying is that maybe the controversial way of thinking about this is to be truly trustworthy, you must embrace and acknowledge the fact that you have the capacity to be untrustworthy, which means I'm human. There will be times when I don't do what I said I would do. The persona cringes at that. It's like, oh, get it away from me. I want to know about it. But that's what it means to be truly trustworthy. It means, Jung would say, you're integrating the shadow. You're not denying it anymore. Of course, I have the capacity to be untrustworthy. Of course, there are times when I may not do the thing that I said I would do. But then what do I do with that? That's where the real trust comes in. It's like, well, I'm not going to torture myself. I'm not going to attack myself. I'm going to support myself. I'm going to have boundaries with things because I'm aware that I have the human capacity to do that. It's the persona that we develop around being trustworthy. And that's why we get so attached to it. It's like, I must be. I must be trustworthy. I must be trustworthy because really what we're talking about is it's not about activities we're doing or goals we're doing. It's an identity. It says something about me and my value as a human being that I must be this trustworthy individual. So effectively, what you do is you redefine what it means to be trustworthy because the one we have currently, the persona version that most of us inherited through conditioning and all sorts of things means being perfect and never being allowed to be human, which means there are many times when you're going towards a goal and you're trying to be consistent with it, when something legitimate will happen and it means you can't do the thing. Now, does that mean you're untrustworthy? No, it means you're human. It means life is complicated. That's what it means. When trustworthiness is really just a judgment and it's a judgment that doesn't help you move forward with your life. So okay, instead of going into that self-attack, we look at nuanced things. I wonder what happened there. Curiosity around it. I wonder why I was resistant to doing that. It could be a boundary issue with other things and there are too many demands placed on you and you couldn't do it. Maybe you were overwhelmed. These are all valid explanations that don't require any label about being trustworthy. But when you can really, here's how you would really know you're actually trustworthy. When you notice that you're not attacking yourself anymore, the trust really goes to the true self. I am going to protect the true self. I'm not going to attack it anymore. That's the thing where your loyalty really lies to you, not this persona. Instead of defending the persona, we start to defend the real self, which is I'm a human being. I have inherent value. I'm good enough. That's the thing that we need to trust towards. So now if you're developing that, now you really can say you're trustworthy. You no longer take it as my trustworthiness is dependent on whether I do X, Y, or Z, and do X, Y, or Z perfectly at all times. That's not how I'm going to determine my trustworthiness anymore. Now the funny thing is, once you drop that old persona version of trustworthiness, you redefine what it means. You're no longer afraid of the shadow aspect anymore that haunts us. What happens? Very, very naturally, you start to, the evidence for trustworthiness shows up. You actually find yourself engaging more with it because it's no longer this high stakes referendum on your identity and your self-worth around whether or not you do the thing or you don't. So actually when all that pressure is taken off it, and it's not this referendum, it's just engaging with the task. That's all it is. You drop your shoulders. That's all it is. That's all it ever is. That's all it's ever going to be. It's not going to be this big, massive thing. This interesting thing is when you stop, when you overcome procrastination, and you realize, okay, I'm noticing things are getting done. Things are consistently being done. You don't really want to have this amazing sense of how trustworthy, how wonderful I am, and that I'm distrustworthy. The right kind of reaction to have is, yeah, I notice that's happening now. There's no bells and whistles. There's no big pats in the bag even necessary for it. It's just, yeah, that's what's happening. That's useful. That's it. That's about all. It shouldn't really be that life-changing, and it shouldn't be condemning for you when you're not living up to that. So we don't have to condemn ourselves. We don't have to go crazy with congratulations over it. It's just, yeah, it's just the next thing that's happening. I notice that's happening now. It didn't come through discipline, forcing myself, bullying myself. It just came through insights, understanding how it all works, and then that's the result. So just watch what you're attached to. Do I need to be this trustworthy person? Well, let's be real about what that means. It means being perfect at all times and never failing to do anything that I say I'm going to do. Always following through, always following through, and never allowing myself to entertain the idea that I'm human. Replacing that with a sense of loyalty and trustworthiness towards your true identity, your true self, your inherent value as a human being, and then watch what happens. So if you stuck with me, I hope that that's insightful, and I hope that you haven't heard that explained like that anywhere else or in too many places, because my experience has been that people tend to look at trustworthiness, yeah, you just have to mean it more, right? Commit harder or get real about how fake you're being to yourself, right? It's like none of that helps. None of that really helps anything. So I hope that this is maybe if the first time you've heard anything like this, it'll kind of make you realize there's a little bit more going on to it than meets the eye. So I'll leave it there. Hope that's a useful concept. And again, as always, you can find me, links to my site are below, and my book on procrastination, and if you want to work with me one-to-one, you can do that. You can reach me below. Have a great day, and I will talk with you guys very soon. Bye for now.