Building Trust With a Wandering Mind

Oct 02, 2026

Maybe others can do it, that trick, that hack, that system.

I'm just not sure that I trust I could.

We said that fast, almost in passing, a thought that just goes through and moves on. But there's something in that way of thinking and that way of considering ourselves that's worth slowing down to pay attention to.

The Run From Failure

It can be all too easy to feel defeated before we even start. We read about that new hack, some trick, some tip. Maybe we try it. A few days later, we lose it. Throw ourselves against the wall. Nothing seems to stick.

Wallowing in whatever comes, running on whim, on deadlines, we stay at the mercy of the seas, hardly sailing on our own terms.

Until that next idea comes by, and maybe that one will work. So we harness that new spark of interest and go with that, and go fast and go hard. Can't let that seemingly negative energy of past failures catch up to us.

We run as fast as we can, hoping that maybe, just maybe, we'll cross some horizon into the place where things finally click.

We can do what we wanna do, do it on our own time without guilt, be on top of what matters, engaged when and where we are needed. That promised land. Ha. Maybe this time I'll get there.

And of course, we find that it doesn't exist, except that it seems to for others. So defeated again, we wonder, why can't we get there ourselves?

What Trust Actually Is

There's trouble hiding in this cycle. It's the run itself, the run from previous failures, that can create troubles.

We can look at that distrust of ourselves with disgust and lose sight of how important that feeling of distrust itself is, and how much we need it to carry ourselves forward.

Trust is this developing sense that something will keep behaving as it has been such that we can rely on it.

It's vital. It's the thing we build. It's what makes our worlds. It's the very land we're seeking, that sense that we can trust ourselves and trust ourselves across time.

Trust is not willed into being. It's a feeling grown from experience. In a conversation on trust, decay, and retooling with Michael Porter in an earlier episode, trust turned out to be something that we tend, something we rebuild rather than something we simply have.

It can grow, it can strengthen, much like a muscle.

Starting Where We Can Lift

When we lift weights, we don't begin at three hundred pounds. That leads to injury, and that's what we do to ourselves when we ignore our current state of trust and dive straight into the next great idea.

But what if instead we started with ten pounds?

Maybe do three sets of six. That's fine. We sense it. Where are we now? Ah, I can do this. And over a few days, it gets easier. We might even find we've got some energy to spare.

Now maybe we do three sets of seven. Hold there for a while. At some point, we're doing three sets of twelve, and we're ready to add weight.

Go up five percent, ten percent. Drop back to three sets of six and begin again.

Beginning with where we are doing this helps us build the muscles from where they are.

Now, that small return teaches us something, about the mind caught in the pull of the moment, something the mind finds hard to believe.

Setting Things Down

We can put a thing down and pick it up later because the moment is singular. We can only do one thing at a time while the waves of the moment crash and carry us here and now.

To do anything well, we need to be able to set other things aside. That setting aside is a kind of message in a bottle to our future self.

It says, "Can you pick this up for me? I can't do it now." It asks us to trust that whoever finds will pick that up, that future self, decide with their own agency whether it's good to do, and in that deciding, honor and care for the self who sent it.

What I'm talking about here is being able to send an invitation to our future selves and say, "Hey, can you make a visit here?"

If they can do that, they can pick up with where we left off and then maybe send another invitation going forward. Doing that strengthens this muscle over time. It's a tall order.

At the beginning, there is no trust. There's only that 10 pounds and a sense that we can maybe lift it.

Distrust as Messenger

So we hold on to that distrust because that feeling itself is important.

Emotion is a messenger. If we don't listen to it, we risk injuring ourselves. Maybe 10 pounds is too much. Maybe we don't set that thing for tomorrow. Maybe it's not a visit, maybe it's a consideration. Maybe it's for an hour from now, 10 minutes from now.

Listening doesn't mean we only do whatever the feeling says. Being tired doesn't mean we only crash onto the couch. We might instead make a small visit to the work while we're tired, feeling the exhaustion there fully as we maybe nudge something forward, resting in that tension itself. Sometimes the session is a slog, goes nowhere.

A Trust We Garden

Sometimes a wave forms slow. Sometimes it gets fast. Even when nothing seems to happen, that visit can be the node that carries momentum from one session into the next.

In that practice of listening, the distrust can begin to shift. Oh, I can continue a thing.

Ideas form between sessions. I can put something down and pick it up later.

That land of trust, that growing confidence to carry ideas across our past, present, and future selves, that place of agency turns out to be something we garden, grown over time.

So here's a small rep to try:

Pick one thing you don't quite trust yourself with yet and ask, what is its ten-pound version? Maybe its five-pound version.

Small enough that you sense, "I think this is right there. This is about where I can do it." And return to that version a few times across a few days before you add any weight.

Maybe it's about the dishes, maybe it's about a report you have to write, maybe it's whatever it happens to be.

Alongside that rep, have a reflection. Consider the things you already trust yourself to do, the ones you don't, and of the ones you trust, ask, "What is it that I do trust here? How did that come to be?"

Of the ones you don't, ask, "What do I not trust yet? What small risk could I take to grow it?" We begin with where we are and move from there.