There was a version of me that made decisions quickly.
She had a view on things and she said it. She walked into meetings and contributed without holding back. She trusted that what she thought was worth saying.
I lost that version of myself for a period, and getting her back has been slower and stranger than I expected.
The loss of self-trust isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself. It shows up in smaller ways — holding back a thought because you’re not sure it’s right, second-guessing a decision you’ve already made, needing more external confirmation before you feel comfortable moving forward. A general quieting of the internal voice that used to say: I know this, I can do this.
Rebuilding it has happened in increments I can barely observe in real time. A moment in a meeting where I said something I would have held back three months ago. An analysis I shared with a view attached rather than just the numbers. A decision about Vedikaura I made and committed to without going back to Mohit three times to check it.
Each of those moments is small. Accumulated, they’re something.
What I’ve learned about self-trust is that it doesn’t return wholesale. You don’t wake up one day and have it back. It comes back through action — through doing the thing you’re uncertain about, and finding that you can do it, and letting that evidence accumulate until the uncertainty quiets.
The actions have to come first. The confidence follows the actions, not the other way around.
I write this partly for the people who are waiting to feel confident before they do the thing. The confidence is not coming first. You have to do the thing while the doubt is still there.
Where is your confidence rebuilding, moment by moment?