If you've ever broken your own promises, abandoned your needs, or talked yourself out of what you know is right for you, you are not alone, and today's episode is for you. Because the truth is, you cannot create the life you want without rebuilding trust with the one person who goes everywhere with you. Yourself. But why did you lose faith in yourself in the first place? And what can you do to get it back? Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, Sarah Hope, where spiritual wisdom meets practical tools in short, bite-sized episodes. These are tasters, not deep dives, meant to spark curiosity, help you discover who you truly are, release what holds you back, and rise into your best self. Have you ever felt stuck, inconsistent, overwhelmed, unable to follow through? I know I have. I mean, I'm pretty sure most of the population has. And who do we blame? Usually ourselves. It's an I problem. I am lazy. I'm unmotivated. I'm not capable. I have something wrong with me. The truth, though, is that it's almost never because of those things. It's usually because there is a crack in the foundation of self-trust. So today I want to walk you through why that happens, how it quietly erodes your sense of safety, and how to rebuild it through small, loving steps that expand your freedom in ways you can actually feel. So let's start with what self-trust actually is. It is not perfection. It is not pushing harder. It's not forcing discipline through shame. Self-trust is a quiet, steady belief that your feelings matter. You'll listen to your inner guidance and faith that your inner guidance system isn't going to lead you astray. It's knowing that you'll follow through on the promises that support your well-being. It's knowing you won't abandon yourself the moment things get hard or uncomfortable. That inner safety, that trust is the root of everything else. Your intuition, your confidence, your consistency, your sense of being grounded and capable. But sometimes we lose that inner safety. And it typically doesn't happen overnight, right? It erodes slowly in the small everyday choices we make or don't make for ourselves. Often it's the result of patterns we don't even fully notice. Maybe you've overcommitted again and again, saying yes to work, family, social obligations you don't have the capacity for. And each time you back out or push through resentfully, a little piece of trust in yourself quietly erodes. Or maybe you've ignored the early signs of burnout, insisting you could handle just one more late night, one more extra task, one more stretch beyond what your body and mind could really hold. And when you eventually hit a wall, it's like that foundation cracks just a little more. Sometimes it's subtler than that. Your gut tells you no about a project, a relationship, an investment, and you override it to please someone else, to avoid conflict, or to keep the peace. Later, when the outcome confirms what your intuition was trying to tell you, you feel that sting. I knew better, but I didn't trust myself. I didn't go with my gut. All of these moments, big and small, are what break self-trust. They teach your nervous system that it's not safe to rely on yourself. And they create these internal loops of shame, self-doubt, and anxiety that keep us stuck. Now, here's something I really want you to hear. Your lack of self-trust is almost always the reason why you rely on painful motivators. We all have places where our fear is louder than our courage, when our cravings or comfort seeking overpower our loving self-discipline, where we don't fully trust ourselves to do what's right for us. So we compensate. We use shame, pressure, fear, comparison, guilt. We use all these old painful motivators we've leaned on for most of our lives. And the problem is every time we use pain to motivate ourselves, we create more stored pain, more insecurity, more unworthiness, more fear, which then makes us even more dependent on painful motivators to feel safe. It becomes a loop, one that feels impossible to break. But here's the good news the more you increase your self-trust, the more freedom you experience. This is where the phrase discipline equals freedom actually becomes true. Not discipline from fear, not discipline from pressure, but discipline sourced from love. Yep, it all goes back to love. Love for yourself, love for every part of who you are. One of the most powerful ways to rebuild self-trust is by keeping your agreements, both the big ones and the tiny ones, everything in between. Every agreement you make is ultimately with yourself. And when you keep an agreement, the automatic reward is an increase in self-trust. When you break an agreement, even a small one, the automatic consequence is a decrease in self-trust. And this is where most of us get tripped up. We think the little things don't matter. The being a little late to meet a friend, saying, we'll exercise three times a week and only get in one, you know, prominging us, promising ourselves we'll meditate or journal or rest and not doing it. But the part of us responsible for self-trust is like a five-year-old child. To an adult, breaking a small promise might seem insignificant. But to a child, it matters deeply. If you've ever, you know, been a caregiver, a parent to a child, you know this. Making a promise to a kid is sacred. Breaking it is one of the worst things that you can do. If you've ever had a little kid look up at you and say, but you promised. I mean, it breaks your heart into a million pieces. And we're doing that to ourselves repeatedly when we break these agreements we've made to ourselves. When you develop the habit of making small, doable agreements and keeping most of them, no one is perfect, most of them, your self-trust expands in remarkable ways. In the four agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz says the first and most important agreement is to be impeccable with your word. He writes, Your word is the power you have to create. Your word is the gift that comes directly from God. Through the word, you express your creative power. It is through the word that you manifest everything. Everything. You create your reality by how you speak, by the agreements you keep. So let's talk about the five steps you can take to begin re-establishing self-trust. First, start by naming what is actually breaking trust. What moment, pattern, or season is creating the disconnect? Maybe it's overcommitting, like I mentioned before, saying yes to way more than you know you can do. Does that resonate? Do you keep abandoning your own boundaries, failing to protect yourself even when you know better? Have you stopped listening to yourself? That first step is just naming, acknowledging what it is you're doing that's breaking trust, that's breaking agreements. Second thing, I know I'm a broken record about this, but stabilizing your nervous system is a must. It is so hard to make real sustainable change when we are dysregulated. Even three minutes of morning breathing, doing a body scan, meditation, you know, just checking in with what you actually need can remind your mind and body that it's safe to show up for yourself. Third, be conscious when you make agreements. Get real with yourself. You know, remove the pressure cooker. Stop demanding impossible productivity or setting massive expectations that guarantee you will fail. Your life does not need to feel like a series of hoops to jump through. It needs space to honor your limits, your pace, and your energy. You might remind yourself that you don't have to perform to be worthy. Gosh, as I say all of that, I am speaking to myself because this is me. I'm really good at boundaries when it comes to relationships, you know, families, friends, social obligations. Um, I don't sign up for too many school, you know, things. I'm good about that. But oh man, when it comes to work, I overcommit like crazy. It's very hard for me to uh even be realistic because I get so excited and enthusiastic. But this is part of the task is becoming very aware of when we give our word, if we actually are being realistic, if we are in integrity, even in casual ways. So we want to only make agreements when one, you truly believe you can keep them. I mean, in a realistic, real-world kind of way, you know, or at least you're 99% sure you can keep them. And two, they are created in complete alignment, motivated by love. Love, not guilt or fear or pressure, but love. If something feels like a giant, highly likely to induce guilt because you probably won't be able to keep it agreement, don't make it an agreement, make it an intention. Agreements are promises, intentions are desires. You can have big dreams and stretch goals. Just don't tie yourself trust to that kind of massive leap. Keep your agreements to baby steps and let your intentions hold the bigger vision. So here are some examples. The morning routine trap. Instead of saying I'm going to meditate for 20 minutes every day, ask yourself, is that actually realistic for the season of my life? Maybe the conscious agreement is actually, I will sit for three minutes every morning on weekdays. Or similarly, the workout, you know, promise, right? Instead of announcing you'll go to the gym five days a week, check in with your actual schedule and energy. A conscious agreement might become I will move my body intentionally twice this week. Really, what we're looking to do is to double check if we're overcommitting. So, in another capacity, you know, before you say yes to a friend's request or you volunteer for a project, ask yourself, do I truly have the capacity for this or will I resent it later? Remember, a conscious agreement comes from honesty and love, from true alignment and desire, not people pleasing or guilt or pressure. Fourth, fourth step, track your agreements. You are already tracking them unconsciously. Your nervous system feels it every time you keep one and every time you break one. So the opportunity here is to bring that into consciousness. I know so many people resist time systems or lists because discipline once felt like punishment. But when the discipline is loving and the tracking is meant to support your freedom, everything shifts. If an agreement isn't important enough to write down or track, it's not important enough to make. Get your agreements out of your head and onto paper, like David Allen teaches in getting things done. Just create a simple system, keep it trustworthy, and let it hold your word with integrity. This is about bringing your promises out of your head and into reality. So here are some examples for this. You know, put it on your calendar. Literally schedule in the agreements that you want to make to yourself, like that three-minute meditation, like the midday walk, or giving yourself one hour every week to do whatever you want. You know, be creative, read a book, clear out your inbox. It doesn't matter. Tracking, actually putting it on the calendar makes it real, not aspirational. Another way to do this, uh, let's talk about lists. I love lists. I am a list maker. One tiny shift that completely changed my relationship with self-trust is that I stopped pretending my never-ending to-do list was something I'd actually accomplish. Instead, I split it into two lists. One labeled to-do with the things that I really actually needed to get done that day. And the other list, I labeled a wish list. I mean, that's what it is anyway. How many times do you actually finish everything on the to-do list? If it's often for you, congrats because I know that is not the way it is for me. And it used to be that every time I finished a day and that to-do list wasn't done, I would feel shame. And so much pressure. I would start going into all of these stories about how I would never get everything done and what would that mean. I get so stressed. Now, I usually have two to three things on my to-do list every day that I get done 99% of the time. And the rest, anything else I can accomplish is just gravy. Another version of list making is at the end of every day to write down everything you did get done. So instead of kind of preempting and writing what you want to do, you wait until the end of the day and you write down everything you accomplished. It trains your brain to notice success instead of failure. That said, it's worth pointing out that there is research that shows that there is equal utility in doing something called cognitive offloading, writing down everything you did not accomplish that day that you had wanted to. Not to shame yourself, but to effectively close the open tabs in the browser of your brain. And you know, the other bonus to that piece is that it also helps you notice where you're really overcommitting. I mean, if you consistently have 10 things on your not done list, that is very clear evidence that you are putting too much on your to-do list. You know, so you can play with doing uh one of these or both. Um another example, doing a weekly check-in. So every Sunday you ask yourself, which agreements did I keep, which did I break? And do these agreements that I've kind of put forth, do they still fit my life? How you view this is really important. It's not punishment, it's not failure, it's data to help you step into the next week with a more conscious, more aligned plan. Final step: deliver on your agreements or renegotiate in good faith. Life happens. Things come up. We get overwhelmed or tired or pulled in a different direction. It's going to happen. We don't keep, no one keeps 100% of their agreements. So the key is not perfection, it's responsibility. If you can deliver, deliver. And if you can't, renegotiate as early as possible. Not an hour after you've missed the deadline, not after someone is already upset. Renegotiate the moment you know you're out of integrity. Own it. Apologize if needed. Take responsibility for your side of the agreement. This is how we build trust with others and with ourselves. So let's do some examples. The morning routine. You told yourself you were going to meditate for five minutes each morning. Delivering looks like meditating for five minutes. Renegotiating looks like, ah, my alarm didn't go off. I'm running late. Okay, I will do deep breathing for two minutes because I want to honor the spirit of the agreement. Or the night before, you notice you're going to have an early morning with the kids. So you say to yourself, tomorrow is going to be packed. Instead of sitting for any length of time, I'm just going to commit to one mindful breath before I get out of bed. That's renegotiation, not abandonment. The other example, moving your body, right? You made a small agreement to take a 20-minute walk three times a week. Delivering looks like doing exactly that. Renegotiating looks like, let's say on Tuesday, you see rain in the forecast for the rest of the week. Instead of ignoring your agreement or saying, yeah, I guess I just won't do it this week, you consciously say, This week, my agreement is stress stretching. I'm going to swap walking for two short yoga videos. Your body still gets movement. Your self-trust stays intact. So let's summarize. To rebuild self-trust, do these five things. One, tell yourself the truth. Notice and name when and why you're breaking your agreements. Stop bypassing what's real. Start naming what you feel. Honesty is the first doorway to trust. Number two, regulate your nervous system. Deep breathe, meditate, heart center. Consciously come home to yourself. Number three, only make conscious agreements that are completely aligned and doable. Choose alignment over shoulds. Start with micropromises, tiny commitments, just two minutes of meditation, one glass of water, three deep breaths. Make them so small, they're almost impossible not to keep. Restoring consistency by doing something small and steady every day creates a foundation of reliability. It's a place where your inner self learns. I can count on me. I keep showing up for myself in small ways every day. Number four, track your agreements, put them on the calendar, write them down, make lists, check in every week to hold yourself accountable. And number five, which was honestly a game changer for me, either deliver or renegotiate. When you break trust, because you will, acknowledge it and choose again. Preferably, notice if you're not going to be able to deliver and immediately take action to either make it happen, renegotiate it into something doable, or apologize, either to someone else or to yourself. Repair builds trust faster than perfection ever could. And why is all of this so important? Because when your self-trust grows, everything changes. You stop second-guessing yourself, your decisions get easier, your intuition gets clearer, your consistency becomes natural, you stop outsourcing your inner knowing, your life becomes calmer and more grounded, and your goals start to feel possible, even exciting. This is the foundation for stepping into the energy of a new year, especially the energy of a horse year, of a number one year, which are all things we'll talk about in a couple of weeks. Movement, freedom, aligned action. That is what 2026 is all about. Thanks so much for listening today. If someone came to mind as you listen to this episode, please share it with them. That's how we grow this community of healing and rise together. And if this is the work you want more of, or if you want support applying it in your life, that is exactly what we are doing inside my membership that opens January 1st. I cannot wait to share all the details with you next week. Until next time, remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you're meant to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.