How to Rebuild Self-Trust When You've Lost It (and Why Your Original Idea Was Probably Right)
I nearly lost my spark because I stopped trusting myself, and the irony is that I didn't even realise it was happening until I was already deep in the pattern, generating endless options but taking absolutely no action on any of them.
For three months, I used ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas for my business, and it seemed smart at the time- fast, efficient, clever, like I was finally keeping up with how modern businesses are supposed to operate- and I was generating twenty, thirty different options for every decision, each one feeling almost right but never quite spot on, and every time I'd save another document titled "Maybe this one?" or "Possible idea v3" I'd tell myself I was making progress, that I was being thorough, strategic, smart.
Then one day I looked at my desk, at the stack of notebooks and the folder full of digital documents, and I realised something that made my stomach drop: I hadn't actioned a single one, not one idea in three months of constant brainstorming, and that's when I understood that the tool wasn't helping me move faster or make better decisions—it was keeping me stuck because I was still doing the same thing I'd always done when I didn't trust myself, I was just outsourcing it to a different source.
The Real Problem Wasn't the Tool
Let me be clear about something before we go any further: AI isn't the problem, ChatGPT is a genuinely powerful tool when you use it intentionally, and I'm not here to tell you to abandon technology or go back to some romanticised version of "doing it the old way". That's not what this is about.
The problem was why I was using it, because I wasn't using it to enhance my thinking or speed up execution or explore possibilities I hadn't considered, I was using it to replace my thinking entirely because somewhere along the way, through a combination of life getting messy and confidence getting shaky and comparison becoming constant, I'd stopped trusting my own judgment about what was right for my business.
And when I finally put down the AI and went back through my old notebooks- my original brainstorming tool, the one I'd used for years before I decided it wasn't sophisticated enough- I found something that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time: many of the ideas were already there, written in my own handwriting months before I'd ever asked ChatGPT for help, simple and clear and actually quite good, but I'd convinced myself they needed to be bigger, cleverer, more polished, more like what I imagined a "successful" business strategy should look like.
I hadn't needed better ideas, I'd just needed to trust myself enough to act on the ones I already had, but I'd lost the ability to do that, and I hadn't even noticed it happening.
How We Lose Self-Trust (and Why It Happens to the Most Capable People)
Self-trust doesn't disappear overnight in some dramatic crisis of confidence, it erodes gradually, so slowly that you don't notice it's happening until you're standing in the wreckage wondering how you got here, and it often happens to the most capable, accomplished people because the very things that make you successful- your ability to analyse, to consider multiple perspectives, to learn from others, to adapt- can become the things that undermine your trust in yourself when life gets complicated.
It happens when life gets messy and your confidence gets shaky, because when you're going through something hard- a crisis, a loss, a period of instability that shakes your sense of who you are and what you're capable of- trusting your own judgment starts to feel risky, like you can't rely on yourself to make good decisions anymore because look what happened last time you trusted yourself.
It happens when comparison becomes constant and self-doubt creeps in, because when you're always measuring yourself against others, scrolling through their highlight reels and their "here's exactly how I did it" frameworks, you start believing that everyone else knows better than you, that their way must be right and yours must be wrong, that if you're struggling it's because you're not following the right strategy or implementing the right system.
It happens when you're in survival mode and reactive decisions become your norm, because when you're just trying to keep your head above water—working with clients you don't actually like, taking projects you don't want, saying yes to everything because you need the money or the validation or the proof that you're still viable—you stop making strategic choices aligned with what you actually want and you start just reacting to whatever comes at you.
It happens when you've been burnt by trusting yourself before, because maybe you made a decision that didn't work out the way you hoped, maybe you trusted your instincts and they led you somewhere painful, and now you second-guess everything because what if you're wrong again, what if your judgment can't be trusted, what if everyone else can see something you can't.
And it happens when you're exhausted, overwhelmed, or burnt out, because when you're running on empty your confidence is always the first thing to go, everything feels harder than it should be, every decision feels impossible, and reaching for external validation or frameworks or tools that promise to tell you what to do feels like the only way to keep moving forward.
This is what happened to me. After eleven years of trying to conform to what I thought a business owner should be instead of who I actually was, followed by a two-year family court battle that pushed me to rock bottom emotionally and financially, by the time I was trying to rebuild my business I didn't trust myself at all, and so I reached for tools that promised to help me think better, decide faster, be smarter, not because I genuinely needed them but because I'd stopped believing in my own judgment and I thought outsourcing my thinking was safer than trusting myself.
The Wake-Up Call
The wake-up call came when I realised I was generating endless options but taking absolutely no action, because here's the thing about not trusting yourself that nobody tells you: you never feel ready to act, there's always another option to explore, another framework to try, another expert to consult, another tool to use, another version to refine, and you tell yourself you're being thorough, strategic, responsible, but really you're just avoiding the moment when you have to trust yourself enough to make a decision and commit to it.
You're constantly gathering information but you're never actually deciding anything, because making a decision requires trusting that you know enough, that you can handle whatever happens, that your judgment is sound enough to bet on, and when you don't trust yourself those things feel impossible, so you stay in research mode forever, convinced that just a little more information will give you the certainty you're craving.
That's when I knew something had to change, because I could see the pattern clearly now—I'd spent three months "working on my business" but I hadn't actually built anything, launched anything, committed to anything, and if I kept going like this I'd spend the next year in exactly the same place, still gathering options, still waiting to feel ready, still outsourcing my thinking to tools and frameworks and other people's strategies instead of trusting myself to figure out what was right for me.
How I Started Rebuilding Self-Trust
Rebuilding self-trust isn't about flipping a switch or having one breakthrough moment where suddenly you believe in yourself again, it's a gradual process of learning to listen to yourself again, of practising small acts of trust until they start to feel natural instead of terrifying, and here's what actually worked for me when I was deep in the pattern of not trusting myself.
I went back to basics in the most literal way possible. I put down the AI, closed all the tabs full of frameworks and strategies, picked up a pen and my battered notebook, and I asked myself the simplest questions I could think of: who am I, what do I actually do, who do I want to help and why does it matter, and I didn't let myself reach for any external tools or references, I just sat with the questions and wrote down what came up, no filtering, no judging, no "but that's not sophisticated enough," just me and my own thinking trying to reconnect.
I stopped gathering options and started deciding, even when it felt terrifying, because I gave myself a deadline and said "choose one idea and act on it by Friday," and the key was that it didn't have to be the perfect idea or the most profitable idea or the most strategic idea, it just had to be one that felt right enough, because the goal wasn't to make the best decision, the goal was to prove to myself that I could make a decision at all and survive whatever happened next.
I asked for outside perspective from a human who actually knew me, because here's what I realised: there's a huge difference between asking AI to generate possibilities and asking a real person who understands you and your work to reflect back what they're seeing, so I reached out to my business coach and said "I think I've been diluting myself, I think I've been overcomplicating things, can you tell me if I'm right?" and she confirmed it immediately, she could see what I couldn't see from inside the mess, but the key is that I asked someone who knew me, not an algorithm generating generic possibilities.
I started small instead of trying to rebuild all my trust at once, because I knew that if I tried to make some massive decision to prove I trusted myself again I'd probably just freeze, so instead I made tiny decisions, low-stakes experiments, small bets that wouldn't destroy me if they didn't work out, and each time I trusted myself on something small and it worked out okay—not perfectly, just okay—I built a little more confidence for the next slightly bigger decision.
I reconnected with past evidence of times when I had trusted myself and it had worked, because when you're deep in self-doubt you forget that you've successfully trusted yourself hundreds of times before, so I went back through my history and remembered that at sixteen I was boldly building businesses based purely on instinct, that I'd made pivots in the past that seemed risky but turned out to be exactly right, that my instincts had been spot-on multiple times even when they seemed unconventional or other people questioned them, and the evidence was there, I just needed to remember it existed.
And I practised listening to my body instead of just my overthinking brain, because your body knows things before your conscious mind catches up, so when I was considering an option I'd pause and ask myself "how does this actually feel?" and I'd notice whether it felt expansive or contracting, energising or draining, light or heavy, spacious or tight, and learning to trust those physical signals became a shortcut back to trusting my judgment because the body doesn't lie the way the anxious mind does.
The Lesson About Tools, Frameworks, and Outside Help
What I learnt through all of this, and it's important because I don't want you to think I'm saying "never use tools" or "all frameworks are bad" or "you have to figure everything out alone”. That's not the lesson at all.
Tools, (some) frameworks, and outside help aren't bad, they're incredibly useful when you're using them to enhance your own thinking rather than replace it, because AI can absolutely help you brainstorm when you already have clarity on what you want and you're using it to generate options you can then evaluate against your own criteria, and frameworks can give you useful structure when you already know your vision and you just need a roadmap to get there, they're scaffolding not the building itself, and coaches and mentors can provide invaluable perspective when you're too close to something to see it clearly, they reflect back what you already know but can't access alone.
But none of these things can tell you what's actually right for you, only you can do that, and the problem isn't the tool or the framework or the outside help, the problem is when you use them to avoid the work of trusting yourself, when you're constantly reaching for external validation or answers because you don't believe your own judgment is good enough.
How to Know If You've Lost Self-Trust
If you're reading this and wondering whether you've lost some self-trust along the way, here are the signs I wish I'd recognised earlier in myself: you constantly second-guess your decisions even after you've made them, you gather endless information but struggle to actually act on any of it, you rely heavily on frameworks or tools or experts to tell you what to do instead of using them to enhance what you already think, you feel paralysed by choices because none of them feel "right enough," you dismiss your own ideas as not good enough or not sophisticated enough before you've even tested them, you look to everyone else for validation before you're willing to move forward on anything, and you have this persistent feeling that everyone else knows better than you do about what's right for your business and your life.
If most of these feel familiar, you've likely lost some self-trust along the way, and that's completely okay, it's not permanent, it's not a character flaw, it's just something that happened because life was hard or you got burnt or you spent too long trying to be what you thought you should be instead of who you actually are, and the good news is that self-trust can be rebuilt, I've done it, my clients have done it, you can do it too.
How to Start Rebuilding Self-Trust Today
You don't need a complex plan or a twelve-step framework to start rebuilding self-trust, you just need to start practising it in small ways, because self-trust is like a muscle that atrophies when you don't use it and strengthens every time you do.
Start with one small decision today, something you've been overthinking or researching or asking other people about, and just make a choice—not the perfect choice, not the most strategic choice, just a choice—and then act on it before you can talk yourself out of it, because the act of deciding and moving forward is what rebuilds trust, not the outcome of the decision.
Notice where you're outsourcing your thinking, because awareness is always the first step, so pay attention to what tools or frameworks or people you're relying on to tell you what to do, and ask yourself honestly "am I using this to enhance my thinking or replace it?" and "what would happen if I trusted myself first and used this tool second?"
Go back to pen and paper before you reach for anything else, because there's something about the physical act of writing by hand that reconnects you to your own thinking, so before you Google something or ask AI or text a friend for advice, write down what you actually think first, what does your instinct say when you're not filtering it through what you think you should say or what would sound smart.
Practise asking yourself "what do I actually want?" instead of "what should I do?" or "what would work?" or "what would be most strategic?", because those other questions keep you in your head analysing options, but "what do I actually want?" requires you to check in with yourself, to listen to what's true for you even if it doesn't sound impressive or make logical sense.
Look for past evidence of times you trusted yourself and it worked, because when you're in self-doubt you genuinely forget that you've done this before, so actively remind yourself of decisions that worked out, instincts that were right, pivots you made that seemed scary but turned out to be exactly what you needed.
And start small, build gradually, because you're not going to rebuild complete trust overnight, but each small act of trusting yourself—and seeing that you survive it, that you learn from it, that you're capable of handling whatever happens—builds confidence for the next slightly bigger decision.
Your Original Idea Was Probably Right
What I wish I'd known when I was drowning in thirty AI-generated options, constantly second-guessing myself, convinced I needed something cleverer or more sophisticated or more like what successful people do is that your original idea was probably the right one all along.
You didn't need it to be bigger or cleverer or more polished, you just needed to trust yourself enough to act on it without waiting for perfect clarity or external validation or proof that it would definitely work, because that proof never comes before you start, it only comes from starting.
The ideas were already there—in your notebooks, in your instincts, in that quiet voice you've been ignoring because you thought it wasn't sophisticated enough—you just needed permission to believe in them, and that's what self-trust really is: giving yourself permission to believe in your own judgment, not because you'll always be right but because trusting yourself and learning from it is how you grow, whilst outsourcing your thinking to tools and frameworks and other people's strategies keeps you stuck in endless research mode.
If you're struggling to trust yourself right now, if you're caught in that pattern of endless research or second-guessing or looking for validation before you'll let yourself move forward, I want you to know that rebuilding self-trust is possible, and sometimes you just need someone in your corner who believes in you until you can believe in yourself again, someone who can reflect back what you already know but can't see clearly from inside the mess.
Because your instincts are still there, they haven't disappeared, they're just buried under layers of doubt and overwhelm and other people's opinions and frameworks that were never designed for someone like you, and the work we do together—the quietly disruptive work of building a business that's actually yours—starts with learning to trust yourself again, to listen to what you actually want instead of what you think you should want, to make decisions based on what feels aligned rather than what looks impressive.
Because the most quietly disruptive thing you can do in a world full of formulas and frameworks and "proven strategies" is to trust yourself enough to do it your way.
About the Author: Becky Benfield-Humberstone is a business coach for founders who've built businesses that feel like cages. She works with quietly ambitious entrepreneurs who are done playing small and ready to build something that feels unmistakably theirs. Based in the UK and working with clients globally via Zoom, she brings 25 years of business-building experience and an uncommon ability to see solutions in impossible situations.
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