Trusting Yourself When No One Else Can See the Vision

In leadership, we often talk about building trust with others.

We talk about trust within teams, trust between leaders and employees, and trust with customers and clients.

But another kind of trust receives far less attention.

The ability to trust yourself.

I learned this lesson in September of 1998 on a winding mountain highway heading into Bella Coola, British Columbia.

At the time, I was 23 and working in sales.

I had decided to make a trip to Bella Coola, a remote community on British Columbia’s central coast. The decision didn’t make much sense to many of the people around me.

My boss told me it wasn’t worth going.

No finance company would approve customers in such a remote location, he said.

Then there was the highway.

Before leaving, my former father-in-law, a veteran long-haul truck driver, warned me repeatedly about the dangers of the drive.

He told me there were no guardrails.

He told me the drop off the edge was thousands of feet.

He told me he had once jackknifed a semi on that very highway.

In all his years of driving across Canada and the United States, he considered it the worst road he had ever travelled.

By the time I started the journey, my anxiety was through the roof.

Yet something inside me kept saying the same thing.

Go anyway.

It wasn’t logic driving the decision.

It wasn’t certainty.

It was intuition.

A quiet inner voice that told me I needed to trust myself.

As I navigated the steep switchbacks, I questioned my decision more than once.

I didn’t have much money.

I didn’t know if the trip would be successful.

I wasn’t even sure I could make it down the mountain without having a full-blown panic attack. HELLO ANXIETY!!!

But I kept going.

One corner at a time.

One kilometre at a time.

One decision at a time.

Eventually, I reached the valley below.

Not only had I survived the drive, but over the next four days, I knocked on eleven doors and sold ten vacuum cleaners.

By the end of the trip, I had generated more than $7,000 in sales.

At twenty-three years old, it was one of the most successful weeks of my career.

Looking back, the biggest lesson wasn’t about sales.

It was about trust.

Not trust in the road.

Not trust in the market.

Not to trust in what other people believed was possible.

Trust in myself.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that self-trust is often the foundation of leadership.

When we don’t trust ourselves, we constantly look to others for reassurance. We second-guess our decisions. We wait for permission. We look for certainty before taking action. I have lived every one of these emotions. Each one very personal for me.

The challenge is that leadership rarely comes with certainty.

There will always be people who see risks we don’t see.

There will always be reasons not to move forward.

There will always be voices telling us why something can’t be done.

Good leaders listen to those perspectives. Great leaders consider them carefully.

But ultimately, they must make their own decision.

That requires self-trust.

Not arrogance.

Not believing you’re always right.

But believing that you can navigate uncertainty, learn from mistakes, and handle whatever comes next.

I’ve discovered that some of the most important decisions in my life and career were made long before I had evidence they would work out.

Starting a new role.

Moving to a new community.

Launching a business.

Pursuing a dream. Running half marathons across Canada.

Writing a book.

At some point, every meaningful journey requires a leap of faith.

And that leap begins with trusting yourself.

The people around me weren’t trying to discourage me.

They were sharing their experiences, opinions, and concerns.

But sometimes leadership requires us to listen to all the information available and still make our own decision.

Sometimes the path forward isn’t obvious.

Sometimes there are no guarantees.

Sometimes the people around us cannot see what we see. Or feel what we feel, or can hear that still small voice whispering in our hearts.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right either.

The leaders I admire most have the ability to listen carefully, gather information, assess risk, and then trust themselves enough to move forward.

Self-trust isn’t blind confidence.

It’s the belief that regardless of the outcome, you can handle what comes next.

When we trust ourselves, we become more decisive.

We become more resilient.

We become less dependent on external validation.

And perhaps most importantly, we become more trustworthy to others.

Because people tend to trust leaders who trust themselves.

Not because they have all the answers.

But because they are willing to take responsibility for their decisions.

The road to Bella Coola taught me something I have carried with me ever since:

Sometimes the greatest act of trust is trusting yourself enough to take the first step when nobody else can yet see the destination.

Can you think of a time when trusting yourself led you somewhere others thought was impossible?

Photo by Byron Johnson on Unsplash 📷