The Secret to Trusting Yourself
The quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us of something often overlooked during times of turmoil. Focusing on outer difficulties, insecurities, uncertainties, and negativity can distract us from what is truly essential. Like a clock ticking in a storm, we need to remain focused and centered on what is necessary, what makes us whole, and what remains steady even amid the commotion.
If you’ve ever watched a thunderstorm pass by from the safety of your room or porch, you can live in the space that lets you see the flashes of light, hear the thunder, and watch the pools formed by the heavy rain. The darkness and the veil of rain keep us from seeing clearly, yet the outline of what is there is occasionally illuminated by the bolt of light from the sky. There is illumination even in the darkness. Our goals, dreams, and destiny are still there, only hidden and obscured by the storm. They may seem gone, but the flashes assure us they are not.
The fear and darkness may seem to engulf us, at best, making the present and future worrisome. This is when helplessness is often the most available feeling. The path leading to a better place can be overlooked, forgotten, or lost—but it is there and available. We can train ourselves to have an inner shift. As Thich Naht Hanh has offered: “The only way out is in.”
We recently studied the character strength profiles of people who trust themselves and the universe to support them. Character strengths are positive traits or qualities that individuals possess, contributing to their overall personality and behaviors. These strengths include qualities such as courage, empathy, perseverance, honesty, and kindness. They play a significant role in how people interact with others and navigate life’s challenges. Identifying and nurturing these strengths can enhance personal well-being and improve relationships.
Various frameworks, such as the VIA classification, categorize character strengths, enabling individuals to understand and effectively leverage their unique strengths. The identification of character strengths represents a significant advance in the field of positive psychology, ranking as one of the most important developments in the science of psychology overall.
We wanted to learn from those who have inner and outer trust, even during times of significant uncertainty, which of these strengths they possess as part of their signature (top) strengths. What we’ve learned is that they regularly experience inner peace and tend to maintain a unique character strength profile.
We gathered information from 16,716 individuals, representing a highly diverse global population from over 50 countries, including both male and female participants, as well as non-binary individuals. While the 18-44 age range was the most represented, respondents were also represented throughout the upper end of the life span. We learned a great many things, but what piqued our interest is that those who trusted themselves and the universe had significantly more inner peace than those who did not. For this group, their emotional character strengths of gratitude, love, and hope were truly exceptional. Having these strengths promotes inner and outer harmony through the experience of peace. We dubbed these three strengths the ‘Harmony Triad.’
This is important because these emotional character strengths are those that we have many ways to teach. Of the three, gratitude is one of the most well-researched of them all, and it is this strength that brings us to the way that can lead us to shelter during a storm.
The secret to learning to trust yourself is to cultivate a path of gratitude toward inner peace. Gratitude is the lowest-hanging fruit in positive psychology because it involves something that has already occurred or is happening. This means we don’t have to fabricate, manipulate, or invent those experiences. In most cases, they’ve already happened and are stored in our memory. But there is a trick to retrieving them. There is a mental hack that helps reveal them for review.
If I ask you how yesterday was, your brain does the equivalent of a Google search through its default mode network (DMN). This autobiographical review process focuses on the most common experiences to derive the answer. If yesterday’s experiences were mostly average, you would report that yesterday was so-so, even if some very good things happened. It’s a little like asking Google how to cook corn. You’ll get a billion answers in half a second, but they’ll be based on the most common answer. However, if you ask how to cook corn on an open fire grill, you will get a very specific response tailored to your needs.
If you ask yourself what three experiences of gratitude you had yesterday, your brain, like Google, searches differently. It finds what you are looking for, retrieves it, and brings it forward out of your memory. This retrieval, savoring, and harvesting of positive emotions, facilitated by gratitude, helps you feel better in the moment. People who develop a gratitude practice change their DMN over time, so they are more likely to recall those feelings that were positive.
Political, social, financial, ecological, and mental health storms surround us daily. Learning how to trust yourself by shifting your perception to one of gratitude gives you access to something that reminds us of the inner change we can make. As Thoreau has taught us, “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
Try this now. Think of the last 24 hours and three experiences that you have gratitude for. For most, this will prompt a deliberate shift in how you think and what you focus on. As you find these three events, take a moment to savor the experience.
The challenges that face us won’t go away overnight, but we don’t have to devote all our attention to them.