EPI 57 - Trust Yourself and Watch Your World Bloom

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Today's episode is just an opportunity for us to all just course correct for us to figure out again, like recalibrate our compass, if you will, to see if we are on track to see if we're following what we believe is our truest nature. Welcome to the habit within this podcast is for high achieving women 35 and older who seem to have it all together, but feel like they're constantly running on fumes, struggling to balance it all and losing sight of the woman they used to be. I'm Camille Kinsler, a former physician assistant turned transformational coach, blending science, positive psychology, and a metaphysical approach to habits, health, and vitality.

If you've ever asked yourself, why am I so exhausted even after a full night's sleep, or I feel like I'm juggling so much, but I'm just barely keeping my head above water, you are in the right place. Each week, we'll explore the real reasons behind feeling overwhelmed, trapped in the cycle of overworking and constantly running low on energy, and how to break free from the patterns keeping you stuck in survival mode. It's time to stop living on autopilot and to start feeling like yourself again.

Let's dive in. Hey, hey, welcome back to the habit within. I'm Camille Kinsler, your host.

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I am coming to you with a sore mouth. I had a dental appointment a couple of days ago where they removed mercury fillings and replaced them with, I think, composite filling. And then they put a crown on my very back molar, upper right molar.

And I don't know what they did, but my mouth is still, the right side of my face is still swollen and tender. And I have this huge bruise on my lower right jaw. I mean, it looks like somebody clocked me with their left, gave me a left hook, right in my lower left jaw.

Anyway, so I haven't been doing much talking or eating or anything, or really even sleeping because of the discomfort. It's not painful by any means. It's just uncomfortable.

And I can't open my mouth very wide. So as for the mercury fillings, I go to see a biological dentist and I've been seeing her for about 15 years. And she's been talking to me about removing all of my mercury fillings and replacing them because of the toxicity of the mercury.

I guess it slowly leaks out even if they're in this hardened form. I dislike going to the dentist so much that I was willing to deal with the toxic, the mercury toxicity just so I didn't have to have all of them replaced. However, since I've been going to her for 15 years, throughout having to have certain quadrants of my mouth numbed, I have been able to remove all the mercury.

So I have 100% mercury free. She needed to have an award or something because it feels like a really big feat. Not only to mention, it costs a lot of money to have your mercury fillings replaced.

And the reason is, is that they take such care to not increase the toxicity that you get from mercury when they're drilling it out of your mouth. So they put this dam, this like plastic dam in your mouth so you don't swallow it. Then they have this ventilation system and they cover the entire room with paper.

So any of that mercury that flies out of my mouth is then contained within that space. And then they can throw, you know, wrap up the paper, throw it away and all that. I mean, it's a pretty big deal.

And I'll let you guys know. I mean, I've had pretty consistent headaches over the past couple of years. So I'll let you know if those go away now that my mercury fillings are gone.

So this episode is not about teeth. It's not about dental hygiene. It's not about mercury toxicity.

I just want to tell you guys where I'm coming from today. And also that you'll be listening to the release of this episode during my birthday week, or I should say my husband and I's birthday week. My husband's birthday is two days prior to mine and mine is on March 18th.

So I love birthdays. I love celebrating birthdays. I love making a big deal of birthdays.

And I am one of those people who is not afraid to let you know that it's my birthday. I'm not like secretive and you've hung out with me all day. And then somebody mentions, Hey, did you know it's Camille's birthday? And then you feel really awkward because you didn't say anything or you didn't tell them happy birthday all day.

Now, I'm not one of those people I'll see. And I'll be like, yo, it's my birthday. I'm not because I want you to celebrate me.

It's because I'm celebrating myself. I just love them. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing.

Oh, I do know what I'm going to be doing this year. I'm going out to our sailboat with, um, the whole fam. And then some of our dear friends are going to come out who have kiddos.

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And I am just so excited today. I really want to go into deeper inquiry about the question of, do you trust yourself? And the reason I bring this up is because it's something that I have to check in with myself about quite frequently. And the reason why is because the world is constantly telling us how we feel, how we should think, how we should behave, how we should respond.

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And I noticed that when I don't take the moments to ask myself, is this something that I really want? Do I trust myself to make the decisions that seem a little off course from the middle? And so today's episode is just an opportunity for us to all just course correct for us to figure out again, like recalibrate our compass, if you will, to see if we are on track to see if we're following what we believe is our truest nature. So I want you to first sit with that question for a moment. Do you trust yourself? So do you trust yourself to follow through with your boundaries? And this is a huge one with me and my 13 year old who loves to push the boundaries he has since he was very young.

Do you know that saying, if you give an inch, he'll take a mile? Well, that's my kid. And this is something that I have to check in with my kid all the time. I give him these boundaries.

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He's 13 years old. He is constantly trying to push the boundaries. And he's actually done that since he was a wee little child.

And it's something that I have to say to myself, like, no, this is something that I created because it fits within my value system, the value system within my family. And it's just something that he needs to do at this stage in his life. But he is a really good at trying to convince me otherwise.

And I don't like the controlling aspect of being a parent. It is part of being a parent where we guide our children. But really, a lot of it is controlling them.

And I wish I didn't have to. I don't like to monitor everything that he does. And also, I have noticed that when I get more lax on monitoring is when I see like he's listening to a podcast that is adults talking about their mishaps in college and in high school, it's like absolutely not age appropriate for a 13 year old.

And he doesn't understand why. And I understand that too, because I used to be a teenager. And I remember bucking against what my parents said was appropriate or not.

So it's completely normal. But I know that I need to keep within my boundaries or keep my boundaries really solid when I'm talking with him. And really, it comes down to do I trust that the boundaries that I have created are worthy of upholding? And that's big, because I think it's less about him being able to talk me out of the boundary and more about my self trust within creating it in the first place.

Do you trust yourself to take a rest when you need it? And so that would look like if you come home from work, and you have all these other things that you need to do that you allow yourself to take 30 minutes or an hour to take a break. Ever since I've been working from home, I don't do this very often. It's only when I when I need it when I can trust myself that I can do it.

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I love taking my lunch break and watching an episode of something for 30 minutes, or even maybe an hour when I'm really into a series. And I love this because I can trust myself that I can turn it on, watch one episode, it's 30 minutes or an hour, and then I can turn it off and I can get back to work. And that feels really good to be able to say like this doesn't mean anything about me.

It doesn't mean I'm lazy. It doesn't mean that I'm not focused or that I'm not productive. It just means that I'm going to take a rest.

And this is the way I'm going to do it today. Do you trust yourself that when it's when you're tired that you can go to bed at 830 p.m.? Or do you trust yourself when you're at a, you know, at a weekend away with friends like I was last weekend? That's it's okay to go up to your room and take like an hour nap or to go to bed early even though everybody else is still hanging out. Do you trust that you can rest when you need to rest without it meaning that you're lazy or that you're not sociable or whatever? Do you trust yourself to say no when something doesn't align with your values, even when it feels uncomfortable? Y'all, I really want you to listen to these questions that I'm asking and really tap in with yourself because oh my gosh, like this is the work that I do.

And I still feel like this is something that I have to check in with myself quite often. Because again, we are so inundated with other people's opinions and life that it's easier to just go with the flow than to get uncomfortable by stating that this is part of your value system. I mean, one big one and again, I'm talking a lot about my kids in this episode, but a big one for us is no cell phones.

I mean, we don't have our kids don't have an iPhone. They don't have an iPad. They don't have a computer.

My kiddo has access to my Spotify, his own Spotify account from my phone. He can play some video games on the weekend and things like that. So we don't try to be overly controlling.

But at the same time, it's part of our value system that he doesn't have full access to the world wide web when he's still like, you know, getting used to free ranging around our neighborhood. It's like one of these things is why would I give him access to the entire world from my phone, but then not let him go to the mall by himself, right? No, like he needs to go out and live life and get uncomfortable and being in uncomfortable situations in the real world before he is before I believe that he should have access to all of the information at his fingertips on his phone. So we live in the city so he can ride his bike to the park.

He can ride his bike to convenience stores, the grocery store, to restaurants. I mean, he can do all of that because that's our value system is that he needs to actually experience the world before just like being, you know, singular focused on his phone. And that's a really big boundary that we've created.

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And it gets really uncomfortable, especially when other families don't have that same value system. And we hang out with them. And then all the kids are like looking over the shoulder of the kid who has the phone.

Here's a really big one. Do you trust yourself to show up for your health and being a medical provider and someone who has been brainwashed to believe a certain way within our Western medical system? This was huge for me having to show up for my health and really trust that I was making the right decisions, even though it was going against gold standard. And these gold standards were created in a lot of ways, especially when we're looking at breast health, because breast cancer and pregnancy complications are the two biggest areas for lawsuits to be brought to medical providers.

So they are extremely cautious when it has to do with those two areas to where you have to sign your life away saying that you understand all of the risks that are there because they don't want to have liability. And I also 100% believe that all of the medical providers out there or whatever 99.9% of the medical providers out there are doing what they feel is best. I do not think that they're only trying to protect their themselves from liability or doing what insurance companies say or doing what like big pharmacists.

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I don't believe that at all. So I think that is just absolutely ridiculous. No medical provider is trying to keep you sick.

However, it is part of the training and the indoctrination that it is one way it's called medical school because we learn about medicine in order to treat disease and illness. It's the thing that was taught in school, but it takes big cojones to be able to step away and say this isn't the right treatment method approach for me at this time. It doesn't mean that I won't change my mind later.

But right now I feel like I need to go this other route and try these other approaches and the complete opposite to like if you're like no 100% I believe that my medical provider knows more than I do and I want to trust them as the expert but you're you have family and friends that are like why don't you try this or why don't you try this alternative therapy or why don't you just try to meditate or whatever it is that you trust yourself enough to say no this is what I believe is best for my health. And I've discussed this with my expert medical provider and this is the direction that we're going. Do you trust yourself to show up for your well-being? And I use this word well-being a lot if you've noticed.

I love the word well-being. It basically is just this broad concept that really encompasses everything from a person's physical, mental, emotional, and social health. But I really look at it as this emotional and social component that our well-being is really where we have this sense of calm and peace from the inside out.

Is that where we feel happy, that we feel joyful, that we feel connected to the world. So do you really trust yourself to show up for your well-being? And that means that you might have to do the difficult things like turn off the news and be that friend who's like wait what what's going on oh wait I didn't hear about that latest whatever that's out. Then you have to be that friend who's like what I I don't know anything that you're talking about with whatever latest clickbait there is.

And so yeah do you trust yourself to put your well-being above everyone else's? Do you trust yourself to say like it's really important for me to live a life of happiness? And I'm not talking about positive and I'm not talking about toxic positivity here. I'm saying like this is your life you can choose to be happy or not. I fully believe that happiness is a choice and that we are addicted to pain and suffering.

And there is a way out of being addicted to pain and suffering and that is focusing on what makes us happy, what makes us feel good. Because we can look at either side of the aisle and we can try to sit there and convince somebody else of our belief system. What we believe is right and we will never move the dial or even if we will guess what there will be another problem that we'll have to solve.

It's a never-ending cycle of solving problems versus if we put that aside and we say you know what let me just focus on my well-being, my happiness. It's not selfish. It will have a massive ripple effect on everyone else around you.

And guess what? Then the world changes. I know this can sound very Pollyanna especially if you're addicted to pain and suffering but just try it. I totally invite you just to try it.

Try maybe for a weekend like what can I do to just be happy this weekend. All right so let's move on. Trust is not just about believing that you can handle something.

It's really about keeping promises to yourself right. So when something comes through to you if that's in your moment of silence and meditation in the shower, when you're driving in the car, when you're on walks or maybe in deep prayer and you have this answer that comes through to you. Can you trust yourself to keep the promise that you have to yourself? You more than likely keep the promises that you have to other people but do you keep the promise that you have to yourself? And we can go even further from what we were talking about with boundaries and rest and well-being and health and all of that and really look at your behaviors.

If you tell yourself that you're going to eat more healthy or that you're going to start an exercise regimen or whatever it might be. Do you trust? Do you have self-integrity enough to follow through with that? And please know sister that I am not pointing a finger. Like this episode is also a deep reminder for me that these are important values for me.

To have self-integrity. To really make sure that I trust myself to make decisions in my life that are going to be best and beneficial to myself, my values, my family and then thus the world at whole. And so let's just say that self-integrity is not about being perfect because yeah, I mean the truth of the matter is there are going to be times where we do not stand by our word but it's about realigning.

Realigning to our values and to our truth and to our needs. So a personal story why this first came about into my awareness a few years ago, probably seven years ago or so. For those of you who know, have been listening to this podcast, I worked as a physician assistant in a really really busy medical practice for over a decade.

It was about a hour commute both ways and I had two little kids. I was working my booty off. I was part-time parenting.

I wouldn't see my kids at all for three full days because of the time when I would leave the house and then get back from home they would already be asleep. And I was burned out. I was fried.

So I was went from you know being in my medical program to graduating and then right into a really a really busy medical practice and I loved it. And I was also completely fried. We would see so many patients in a day and at that time they didn't have breaks.

Like we didn't have a scheduled lunch break so we would eat on the go. So I was on my feet running around for 12 hours straight. And yeah and so when I got to the point where I went from working full-time to then part-time and then to being self-employed and working in my coaching practice, it took me a while to want to put my foot on the accelerator again because I honestly didn't trust that I knew when to put my foot on the brake.

And so I didn't. I delayed. I would shy away from certain commitments or even how hard I was going to push with my business and taking on new clients because I was afraid that it was going to lead me to not be able to spend time with my family.

That it was going to lead me to the point where I was drinking every night in order to decompress. That it was going to lead me to a place where I didn't have time to take care of my well-being. My physical being, my mental and emotional being, and the relationships that I have with other people.

I didn't know if I was crossing a boundary. This is one of the biggest things that I got from breaking my drinking habit forever ago. Now it seems it was back in 2009.

Is that right? Let's see. I broke my drinking habit back in like 2007 I think it was. And that was huge for me because in the morning I would tell myself I wasn't going to have a glass of wine that night and then come five o'clock I was having a glass of wine that night.

So I had gotten into the habit of breaking the promises I had with myself. I had broken that self-trust over and over and over again. And so when I ultimately decided to not drink and I didn't drink for five years, the main thing that I gained from that is I allowed myself to build self-trust again.

So even when I started like looking at how I could beef up my own private practice it still was something that I was like oh but can I trust myself? But I was able to pull on past experiences little by little and say yes I know when I can put my foot on the brake now. I know when I'll need to step back and have some a little bit of well-being refreshment. I know now when I need to step back and care for myself.

But it wasn't always that way. So over the last several years I have realized that I have the power to say no when something doesn't align that I know how to do that and I need these moments to recalibrate and to remind myself of that again because we can get lost. But I know that I have the power to do that and I know that I am good at canceling plans or actually I did a post on this recently that it really isn't about canceling plans anymore because I'm so my calendar is so precious to me.

But what I do is I trust that that past version of myself that made plans it was for a good reason that I will get something out of it that I will give something that I need to out of it and I always have a good time and that's because I trust that whatever goes on to my calendar is for my highest and greatest good. And I only know that is because I had to do the uncomfortable thing of canceling plans when I knew that it's something that I really didn't want to do. And when you cancel plans enough and they get into the uncomfortableness of canceling plans and being that person then you get really picky on what goes on your calendar.

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And I also have a you know a handful of friends that were really good at making tentative plans because we know that you know life that person that you're going to be the day that you have plans might not want to do it. Now I really try not to have too many of those tentative plans either because it is all about self-integrity and trusting myself. Do I trust myself enough to say that I want to do this with this person and if I don't time and time again then maybe I should reevaluate the friendship that I have.

And I yeah so that's the other thing is like really can you trust yourself to change your mind? Do you trust that it's okay to pivot? That if you choose to do it one way that you trust that it's not about breaking your self-integrity when you change your mind but it's really more about learning to maybe trust your instincts a little greater. So when you're when you practice this and you really check in with yourself time and time again then you're like okay no actually I really didn't want to do that. I wanted to do it for this other reason and so now I need to just pivot and change what my definition of this thing could be in order to fit within my integrity.

And here's like such a beautiful thing is like when you practice and really look at self-integrity and self-trust then it allows yourself to say can I truly trust myself to let go of things that no longer serve me? That friend, that job, the relationship, the extracurricular activities that you might have or that your family might have and that's huge. It's huge when you start just kind of tossing you know spring cleaning your life. And this is where I think it really gets beautiful that balance in self-integrity.

That self-integrity isn't just about what you said you would do. It's really truly about trusting yourself to change your mind when something no longer feels right. It's trusting that when you say no that you're honoring your energy.

It's about being flexible enough to take a step back and really re-evaluate whether you're living from this old version of you that someone who thought they had to sacrifice everything in order to succeed or they had to sacrifice their well-being in order to care for their family or they had to keep going into it and they had to keep working in a job even though they knew that it didn't align quite right. So maybe another way to view this is to really look at are you still living out of old patterns because what we tend to do is it might not really seem like it seems aligned right now but it's just the way we've always been. So you're like I don't know if that's trust or not.

I mean this is the way I've always just lived my life so it must be okay even though you're not happy even though your well-being is suffering. So maybe another way to ask this is are you still living from those old patterns? Are you still operating from a version of yourself that believes that success comes at all costs or that your workouts have always been high cardio or you've run five miles a day and so you couldn't possibly go from that to lifting weights because this is what you had done forever. You've always swam two miles or whatever it is for you but you're not willing to let that go even though you don't feel like it's helping your health.

That it's helping your vitality. That everything kind of hurts and that you're needing to get knee replacement surgeries but that's a thing that I've always done to keep me in shape physically and mentally. Or have you learned new tools along the way? Can you trust that maybe you've learned some new tools along the way? New ways of being that allow you to really balance doing what you said you would do with honoring your needs, your relationships, and your health.

So for me learning to balance self-integrity wasn't about getting it perfect every time because I do not get it perfect every time. I don't even get it perfect every week. But it's about always following through with every commitment.

It's not about following through with every commitment even if it drains me. It was really it really is truly about learning how to check in with myself. How to trust my body and my intuition and trust that it's okay to cancel plans and change direction if I need to.

If something no longer feels alive. So what self-integrity looks like? It's the willingness to evolve. It's about recognizing when you've outgrown old habits or mindsets and giving yourself permission to change course and to honor yourself.

To honor the way that you're showing up in projects and relationships for yourself and to cultivate that trust. Your kids, your friends, your family, your co-workers will see that you value and trust yourself. Trust your word.

Trust your actions. It speaks so loud. So what would happen if you chose self-integrity today? What if you showed up for yourself in a way that you truly needed by honoring your needs and your values? Do you think everything would fall into place? As always, I encourage you to take a deep breath and sit within this question.

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Do I trust myself? Do I have self-integrity? Where can I build this strength, this muscle, and trust that the answers are already within you? As always, thanks so much for tuning in today at The Habit Within. Share this episode please if it resonates. Follow me or subscribe if that's your thing.

And yeah, remember you can always follow me on Instagram too where I share more insights and reflections on living a life with more alignment. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's episode. And don't forget that there's a Bliss Break worksheet that's attached to this episode in the show notes that you can download to go deeper in inquiry of self-integrity and self-trust.

All right, see you next time. The world needs the vibrance and wisdom of a woman's intuition to help heal the world. When we learn to trust ourselves through leaning into and through discomfort, we learn to trust ourselves if in that space is our power and clarity.