The Quiet Authority of Your Own Knowing

There’s a quiet power in not making other people’s perceptions your gospel. Opinions fly fast. Some are soft suggestions, some are dressed up as truth, some land like sucker punches. But none of them actually live inside your bones. You do.

When we outsource our sense of reality - when we start calibrating our worth, our choices, or our stories to someone else’s lens - we give away the steering wheel. Self-trust isn’t about pretending to have it all figured out. It’s about recognizing that you are the one living inside your life, not observing it from the cheap seats.

Other people can misread you. They can project, misunderstand, minimize, or idolize. Their interpretations belong to them, shaped by their histories, their fears, their hopes. Not yours. Your job isn’t to control their perception. It’s to stay rooted in what’s real for you.

However, we also need to be uncomfortably honest with ourselves around some of the feedback we receive. Maybe, despite all the noise, there’s a kernel of truth worth acknowledging, and maybe there isn’t.

Staying rooted in what’s real for you can look like:

• Saying no without needing to defend why.

• Naming your truth even when it lands quietly.

• Letting go of the need to “fix” someone’s misunderstanding of you.

• Choosing what matters to you over how it looks from the outside.

Self-trust grows in the moments where you stand still while someone else tries to hand you their version of who you are. It’s the calm exhale when you realize: their story isn’t your story.

You’re allowed to hold your ground. You’re allowed to be the authority on your own life.