Self-Trust and Inner Practices
Institutional trust is declining everywhere, and the reports documenting it don't even ask who self-employed people trust — Nola Simon knows because she asked Edelman and got blown off. Her answer starts closer to home: self-trust, built through practices most people wouldn't file under leadership — meditation begun in the pandemic, morning rituals, travel rules, and what she calls extreme noticing, from the angle of light on water to the stories people tell about their work and the things they're careful never to show. The claim underneath: the insights worth trusting start with your own noticing, formed from the inside out — and that's a version of leadership.
- →Name the gap in the trust conversation: the reports measure employees and institutions, and nobody is asking who self-employed people trust or how their stability actually works.
- →Run inner practices as infrastructure, not indulgence — meditation, rituals, and movement are how you learn your own reactions well enough to trust them.
- →Map what never changes about you — the sections you walk to in a bookstore, the glimmers that catch your eye — because those constants are data about who you are.
- →Test your noticing outward: once you can read your own body's signals, you start reading what people show you and what they're careful never to show.
- →Audit your travel and work rules the way you'd audit any system — knowing you need water, early nights, and no alcohol on the road is self-trust in operation.
- →Model leadership from the inside out: the authors whose insights hold up start with journals and their own noticing, then move outward — not the reverse.
Who do self-employed people trust?1:14
Nobody is really measuring it. When Nola asked Edelman — the firm behind the trust reports everyone cites — who self-employed people trust, they blew her off: self-employed people aren't their market, which is organizations and governments. The stock answer, that the self-employed trust themselves, is partly true but dodges the real question: their income streams, their stability, and their relationships with institutions all work differently, and the trust conversation ignores them.
Why is self-trust harder when you're self-employed?2:45
Because the role models are missing and the noise is constant. Few people work and live the way you do or hold your values in the same shape, and everyone self-employed eventually hears some version of 'why don't you just go get a job' — in Nola's case, from her own husband. Holding a course through that requires knowing what actually matters to you; for her, it's impact and having her point of view respected in action, not just working from home.
How do you actually build self-trust?5:55
Through practices that train your noticing. Nola started meditating when the pandemic began, and her version is mostly attention: what's happening in your body, your environment, your neighbourhood — where you feel fear, excitement, uncertainty, boredom. The practices don't have to look spiritual; the point is knowing your own reactions well enough that your judgment has something solid to stand on.
What do daily rituals have to do with trusting yourself?7:57
They're the stable ground. Morning coffee, the dog walk, the bookstore sections you always drift to, the glitter on water that has always caught your eye — the things that never change are data about who you are. It extends to rules for harder days: when travelling, Nola knows she needs water and swimming, early nights, tea instead of coffee, and no alcohol. Knowing and honouring those needs is self-trust functioning in real time.
What is extreme noticing?9:45
Deliberately fine-grained attention — floating in the pool watching the exact moment daylight becomes twilight, and how the changing light changes the water and how her body feels. The payoff is transfer: when you can read your own reactions that precisely, you start noticing the stories other people tell about their work, what's true versus what they wish were true, and what they're careful never to show you — including your own blind spots. That accumulating attention becomes a worldview you can make decisions from when everything is uncertain.
Where does leadership actually start?13:28
With your own noticing. The famous authors whose research Nola most respects start with journals — with what they themselves observe — and only then move outward into the world, forming opinions from the inside out. That's the version of leadership she claims for herself: knowing your own reactions well enough to move forward in a future where nothing feels certain.
“They start with their own noticing. They form their own opinions and move outward from there. That's my version of leadership.”
Nola Simon, in this episodeFull transcript (click to collapse)
I am the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast. I'm Nola Simon, and thank you for joining me today. This topic is self-trust, so there's a lot of talk about how trust itself is declining worldwide and people are in trust governments. They're not trusting organizations, they're not trusting other countries, politicians.
Religious leaders all that kinda stuff. So there's a lot of ink being spilled about the fact that employers are really the only people that, a lot of people trust, and even that's declining. So the interesting thing about this is the company that actually issues a lot of the trust reports that are referenced in these articles that are written about trust is Edelman.
And one year I asked Edelman, who self-employed people trust, and they blew me off because self-employed people are not their core audience. So they sell to. Organizations. They sell to governments, they sell to business and self-employed people, honestly, unless they really become successful and grow and become organizations themselves that are well funded are the Edelman core business.
So they blew me off and told me that people who are self-employed trust themselves, which you know that's true, but. They also trust other people as well too, but who do they trust and how does that work for them when they don't have an employer? And their interactions with organizations look different than people who are employed full-time and their income streams are different and their version of stability is different.
So one of the things I wanted to talk about is actually self-trust. So who do you trust? And honestly, a lot of times that comes with self-trust. Now that may sound easy, but honestly, self-trust can be challenging as well too. Especially when you're self-employed and you don't actually have a lot of.
Role models who are working the same way that you do, who are living the same way you do that are
maybe living out their values the same way you do. And so it becomes challenging to have that self-trust and to continue that way when you're getting a lot of noise from. Every direction. I don't know a single person who's being self-employed who hasn't had people say to them, why don't you just go get a job?
It happens all the time. Actually, one of the reasons I decided to pivot away from hybrid, remote and look at leadership more closely as this core of my business is one day my husband said to me, you could get a job and it would be work from home. And that's the only thing that matters to you. No.
Honestly, that's not the only thing that matters to me. Having impact makes matters to me, having my words, my point of view, respected, and action. And working in a way where I'm actually. Helping people create a future of work that's going to set themselves up for success. Set the people that they work up with, success, their families and industries and society.
If you are really looking whole picture, that's really what I'm looking at. The impact of what my work could be. That's what's important to me, how I do that. Will change. So yeah, a lot of times I work from home, but it's not that I'm opposed to working in person. I've always actually preferred some version of hybrid where you're meeting people in person because quite honestly, the skillset of people.
At all different levels of business and whatever you actually do for work differs whether you can actually communicate effectively in person or remotely. That really is a challenge. And so a lot of times it's easier for me to meet in person with people that I know they're. Best method of communication is actually not remote, right?
And that's an example of self-trust. Do I trust myself to understand the skillset that's involved both for me and the person that I'm working with, and whether that's actually going to be
productive. In a remote setting or an in-person setting or somewhere in between, right? So that's a version of self-trust, but it's also how do you make an impact? How do you support your family? How do you do work that you feel is meaningful, that is fulfilling, that is again, setting you up for success, both from a professional point of view, but also from a personal point of view.
How do you trust yourself? And a lot of times it comes down to what practices do you have in place to help yourself do that? So when the pandemic first started and I was feeling uncertain, I started meditating. And that was a gradual thing because quite honestly, I wasn't going anywhere anyway. And my coach happened to be certified in meditation, and so she was sharing a lot of her practices and it's why don't I try this and see what it is? And from my approach for it, a lot of it is really just noticing how do you notice what's going on in your body? How do you notice what's going on in your environment? What's going on in nature, in your neighborhood with your people. There are lots of different ways to actually notice, right?
And a lot of it is internal. How are you feeling? Where do you feel fear? Where do you feel excitement? Where do you feel
uncertainty? Where do you feel boredom? What happens when you're bored? What do you do? What never changes? What are you always interested in? What captures your attention? I am, historically, have always been. Anything that glitters draws my eye I love sparkles on water. I have a countertop that has sparkles on it.
And little glimmers like that just make me happy. So the ankle of the sun, golden, things like that. The way sun bounces off snow, the sparkles on snow, reflections, all of that kind of stuff make me happy. And it's always been like that. When I walk into a library or a bookstore, I go to the mystery section, I go to the thriller section, I go to the romance section.
Those are the areas that never really change in my life. This is what I enjoy. When I get up in the morning, I make coffee. These are my habits, these are my rituals. I take my dog for a walk.
What are the habits, the rituals that fuel you, that keep you feeling grounded in your life, that help you feel that you trust yourself? And even when you have. A different event to go to. What do you keep going? So for example, when I travel, I know for a fact I can't really keep late hours.
I know for a fact I need to have access to water because water is really good for me and I need to be able to swim. I. Drink tea on the road. I don't drink coffee. I really need to pay attention to eating healthy and, fruit and vegetables and not drinking alcohol, not doing things that are going to run me down and I need to make sure that I'm feeling safe and secure and supported.
So how do I change those for the days where I'm not actually gonna be at home? And what does that look like? All of those things help me trust myself. And again, it can be extreme noticing as well too. During the summer, I like to float in my pool. I swim a lot. I run a lot.
It's a small pool. It's just 18 foot round and it's, I run around in circle a lot, but sometimes I really just float. And I remember one day I was really just watching when daylight became twilight. And the change in the angle of the light and what changed and how it felt when you could feel the light creeping away and more dark and shadow was more apparent, and how that changed the water and how that changed how my body felt.
A lot of it's really just extreme noticing, and so when you are. Aware of your own reactions, you're aware of your own body, you're aware of where things live in your body, what's normal, what's abnormal then you actually start to pay attention to how other people make you feel as well too, right? You can start to notice the stories that people tell themselves about their work, about what's important to them, what their curiosities are.
What's true and what they wish would be true. And you start paying attention in a different way, right? And you can do this with people that you meet in person, but you can just do it with friends and neighbors that you don't necessarily see all the time. Family members, extended family, coworkers and then people that you actually don't know online, right?
What are they showing you? But what are they? Careful never to show you, right? And this becomes this focus of attention. What are you noticing and what do you pay attention to on a regular basis? And what are your blind spots? And if you're starting to pay attention to all of that. You are really forming a point of view.
You're forming a mindset. You are developing your worldview, and it helps you make decisions and move forward. When there's uncertainty, there's instability, there's an instability, and no one really has an understanding of what's going on. So you can look at what's changing, what's not changing, what has potential, what has possibilities, and how it makes you feel both intellectually, but also in your body too.
And that connection between mind and body is really important. So we think when we're talking about trust. We really have to talk about self-trust. So again, how does that show up in your life? Yes, I meditate, I walk a lot. I swim a lot. I spend time with my family. I like reading. I like reading nonfiction books, but I also like reading fiction books.
Romance books I generally love, but I do not like romantic and I actually don't like the way romance books are being written right now because there's a lot of tropes and there's a lot of rules surrounding what actually qualifies as romance. And so you start to look at something that you've always loved and what's changed about it and.
Why that's triggering you and you start to understand what's fueling that. And that also feeds into other areas as well too. And you can. Move towards what you feel are the opportunities for you and what aren't the opportunities for you right at the moment. So what other habits do you have that are integral to
how you show up in the world? And for me, it's walking in the forest. It's the swimming, like I said, the walking the extreme noticing really paying close attention and valuing my own opinion.
And that can be hard for a lot of people. Some people do it through journaling. I know a couple of different authors that you know, their, they're really famous authors in their own fields. But their practices start with journals and they do deep research. But where their research really starts is with their own noticing.
And that I think is fascinating to me because those are the people that I really value their insights because they're starting with themselves, not with what they notice in the rest of the world, right? So they're forming their own opinions and then. Sue me outwards from there, and that's my version of leadership and that's how I feel comfortable moving forward in a future where everything feels uncertain right now.
I know my own reactions and so that's my throw out to you is. How do you trust yourself and what practices do you have in place to help yourself feel more certain of your choices, your opinions, what you value and how that's gonna set you up for the kind of future that you wanna have? Both, in work and personally, I think that's a valuable exercise too.
Start with, and I'll put the the voicemail in the show notes. You can maybe call in and tell me your stories about how you actually trust yourself and what rituals and practices you create for yourself.