Why You Don’t Trust Yourself (And What Control Has to Do With It)

Issue 176, July 17, 2026 ✨ Higher Power Coaching & Consulting ✨

I have a quote taped to my bathroom mirror. It’s been there for years. The paper is faded. It’s covered with water spots. At this point, it’s held together as much by tape as by paper.

I keep it because it reminds me of one of the hardest truths I’ve ever had to learn:

“It’s a delusion that the outside world could
give us satisfaction if only things went our way.”

Another way of saying that is this:

There is no external solution to internal pain.

For years, I believed that if I could just get enough things under control, I’d finally feel peaceful.

If people behaved differently…

If work became easier…

If my relationships improved…

If everyone would just do what made sense…

Then I’d finally be okay.

What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t really looking for control. I was looking for safety.

Control feels like safety, but it isn’t.

This is something I’ve come to understand much more deeply over the last several years. When we try to control other people, predict every outcome, prevent disappointment, or manage everyone’s emotions, we’re usually trying to protect ourselves from discomfort.

We believe that if we can make life predictable, we won’t have to feel anxious, rejected, disappointed, guilty, or afraid. In other words, we’re outsourcing our sense of safety to circumstances we don’t actually control.

That’s exhausting.

It’s also impossible. You can’t control how your spouse loads the dishwasher, how your coworkers communicate, whether someone appreciates your efforts.

You can’t control whether your adult child follows your advice, traffic, the economy, or other people’s opinions.

You can influence some of those things.

You can make requests.

You can have conversations.

You can set boundaries.

But ultimately, you cannot make other people behave the way you want them to.

And here’s the part that surprised me. Even if they did, you probably wouldn’t feel the lasting relief you imagine because the discomfort wasn’t really about the dishwasher, your child, or your coworker.

It was about how unsafe you felt when life wasn’t unfolding the way you wanted.

We spend so much energy trying to “carpet the world.” 

I say it like that because one of my favorite proverbs is this (I believe it’s Chinese):

“It’s easier to put slippers on your feet than to carpet the whole world.”

When I first heard that years before recovery, I thought I understood it, but I didn’t really get it. Now I get it, and I think it’s profound. In fact, this idea has become so central to my work that I built an entire module of my curriculum around it.

Most of us spend enormous amounts of emotional energy trying to “carpet the world.” We want people to become more considerate. We want situations to become more predictable. We want everyone around us to make choices we approve of, and we want life to stop surprising us.

Meanwhile, we’ve spent very little time figuring out what our “slippers” actually are. What helps me feel grounded? What helps me return to myself when I’m disappointed? What allows me to stay connected to myself when someone else doesn’t behave the way I’d hoped?

Those are very different questions. They’re also the questions that build self-trust.

Self-trust isn’t believing life will go your way.

Many people think self-trust means becoming confident you’ll always make the perfect decision. I don’t believe that’s true.

Self-trust is knowing that even when life doesn’t go your way, you won’t abandon yourself. You’ll stay. You’ll listen to yourself and honor what you hear. You’ll take your own experience seriously and won’t dismiss it because “it’s just easier.” You’ll remain connected to your values instead of letting someone else’s emotions become the deciding factor in how your respond to life.

That’s what gives you confidence in your decisions. Not certainty, but connection to yourself.

This is one of the biggest shifts in my work over the past several years. People often come to me wanting help with boundaries. What they discover is that boundaries become much easier once they learn how to stay connected to themselves under pressure. Because when you can hear yourself clearly, decisions become clearer too.

Here’s what this looks like in everyday life.

I’ve coached many women who have adult children. They’re generous, loving, wise, and they desperately want to help. So they offer advice. LOTS of advice. Usually unsolicited.

What often happens?

Their children pull away. They stop listening. They become defensive.

Then something fascinating happens. As these women begin focusing less on managing their children’s lives and more on staying grounded in their own, they naturally stop offering advice every time they think of it.

And over time, many of those same adult children begin asking for their mothers’ opinions. Nothing magical happened to the children. The mothers changed where they were investing their energy. They stopped trying to control another person’s decisions. They started trusting that they could remain okay even if their child chose differently. Ironically, that often gave them more influence, not less.

A question worth asking yourself

Where are you spending energy trying to change someone else’s behavior because you believe it will finally help you feel okay?

What might change if you became just as invested in creating internal safety as you’ve been in managing external circumstances?

You don’t have to stop caring about people. You don’t have to become detached or indifferent. You simply begin shifting your attention from controlling life to staying connected to yourself within it.

Because the goal isn’t to make life predictable. The goal is to trust yourself enough to handle whatever life brings. And that kind of self-trust doesn’t come from carpeting the world. It comes from putting on your own slippers.