A friend once said, regarding my Twitter, “I like how Visa says he’s going to do something, then immediately does it.” It’s actually an ADHD coping mechanism. If you ask my friends from my teenage days, they’ll tell you I was unreliable, full of shit, and that you couldn’t trust anything I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was true for me both internally and externally. I was a casual bullshitter by default. I would say things to make things go away, and then I would forget what I said. At some point I got into several tangled webs that led to people getting angry and upset with me. I hated myself for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This took years<\/em> to fix, and my attempted solution to the problem was overkill. I tried to impose tyrannical order on my chaotic whirlwind self. I made some progress, and I also made myself utterly miserable \u2013which I felt like I deserved, for being a lousy person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A thing I understand intimately \u2014 which people who are still struggling are often surprised to hear, because they assume I’m a natural \u2014 is that when you’re wack, your mechanism for fixing yourself is also wack. It’s like looking for your glasses when you can’t see without your glasses. You need to be able to focus in order to learn how to focus. It’s a cruel joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The broad question of “how do you rebuild trust that is lost”, I had to deal with that, internally. After all, I had a long history of betraying my own trust! There’s evidence! So how can I trust myself? I don’t know. I beat myself up over every failure, then locked that painful core away under layers of jokes and apathy. I tried to avoid making any promises at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think on retrospect I’m lucky that, underneath ALL of that, in the core of cores, I did still have a love for literature and music. I’ve said earnestly that I’d give my life for musicians<\/a>. I would. I think that’s the light that saved me \u2013 the non-coercive, shining spirit of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But okay, even if I believe that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, I still have to walk my way out. And the way to do that, when you have zero sense of balance, proprioception, muscle control, blah blah blah, is to put one foot in front of the other, firmly, and then do it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what that looked like, for me, is announcing “I’m going to drink a glass of water now,” and then drinking it. Hey, look, I just did 1 thing that I said I was going to do. “I’m going to do 10 pushups now.” Hey, that’s 2 things. And I slowly earned my trust back, 1 step at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This process had all sorts of wonderful second-order effects. It’s like how you “just” wanna play basketball with your friends, then you end up quitting cigarettes, eating healthier, sleeping better, etc, all “just” to boost your game. Then once you do that, you realize that actually, living healthy feels great! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, a cute vestigial remnant of this whole process is that I still announce what I’m about to do before I do it. It’s like a little ritual I have for myself. Every time I do what I say, I build trust in myself, I build self-respect (which I didn’t have until\u2026 25? 27?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n It still actually surprises me a little bit. When something I say will be done, gets done. When you’ve spent a lifetime making shit up (it all started with “I will do my homework”), it starts to seem like magic. What I say will happen, happens? It’s like magic. I’m a magician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, I still make mistakes. I underestimated how long it would take me to get my ebooks published and updated. But I no longer think “ah, fuck, I’m a fucking bullshitter and nothing I say has any meaning”. I now think, ah, I made a mistake, I must recalibrate & renegotiate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I’m finding is that there’s a sort of “economy” to it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, as I write this, my ebooks<\/a> are currently “in the red” relative to my projections. but that’s okay \u2013 because my youtube videos <\/a>are coming along beautifully. I’ve been publishing 1 every single day for almost a month. Joy to the world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess this is just to say, if you feel like you don’t trust yourself, I feel you. I know how wrong it sounds when someone says, “Well, just start believing in yourself,” like b*tch, you have evidence that you’re not to be trusted!!! I know. The thing is to build the tiny wins. You can do it. \u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n\n\n If there’s interest, I may eventually update this post with more specific examples of things I’ve done. Heads up, though: most of my attempts at building some sort of system failed, and I don’t think I actually have a particularly good one, even now. It’s like learning to draw \u2013 you just keep sucking<\/a>, and you suck a little less every time you try.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust Bankruptcy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019ve had to declare trust bankruptcy in yourself (I\u2019ve been there), the way out is to start with really small wins. \u201cI\u2019m going to drink a glass of water now\u201d \u2192 do it. Trust is built like courage: lots of little baby steps<\/a>. Eventually you can do cartwheels & backflips<\/p>\n\n\n\n