What is self-trust?

In my last article, I talked about the growing importance of self-trust as the relationship between individuals and organizations is changing. I also introduced how I myself realized that my self-trust was weak and began to search for ways to have self-trust.

What is self-trust? Literally, it means to trust oneself, but what is the difference between the state of trusting oneself and the state of not trusting oneself? When we think about what is the difference between self-trust and self-credit, it can become unclear. In this article, I will talk about what self-trust is.

A question from an employee

First, let’s define self-trust.

Definition of self-trust (Ochiai’s idea):
To put unconditional reliance on oneself.

It’s a very simple definition. I myself like this definition very much because I feel confident that it is simple yet essential.

“Unconditional” means, in layman’s terms, “any situation, any time”. It doesn’t mean in a particular situation or when a particular condition is met. The opposite of unconditional is conditional. Therefore, “unconditional” means that there are no conditions attached whatsoever.

There was an experience that made me deeply aware of this meaning. After a meeting with a client, I was having dinner with Ms. N, an employee who was working on a project with me, and she asked me a question.

“Do you trust yourself, Bunshiro-san?”

In the meeting with the client, we had been discussing human relations and mutual trust in the workplace, so it was natural that the theme of trust would come up, but I was a little surprised that the question was directed at myself.

“Yes, I do. I have trust in myself. I’m somewhat confident that I can do it if I put my mind to it.”

It was then that Ms. N said this to me.

“Would you say the same thing if Bunshiro Ochiai was not the president of Alue, did not come from BCG, and did not have a graduate degree?”

It was a frightening question, and one that gave me a lot of insight. It was a question that made me realize that the answer was “No”. It was clear to me that my confidence in myself was based on the fact that I had studied until graduate school, that I had been able to become a full-fledged consultant at BCG, and that I had started my own company and grown it to a certain level.

My reliance on myself at that time was not unconditional, because those conditions were there. It wasn’t self-trust. (More on this in a future article, but conditional belief is called self-credit.)

A clue was in the ISHIKI(consciousness) management

Through the conversations with my friend Mr. K mentioned in the previous article and with the employee Ms. N, I realized that my self-trust was weak and asked myself, “What is self-trust? What is self-trust? How can I learn to have self-trust?” These were questions that I had been asking myself for many years.

In a previous article, I mentioned that we had been working as a team on a 1000+ hour quest project on the topic of ISHIKI(Consciousness) Management. As a result of my own questioning, what is self-trust, and what are the mechanisms that create self-trust, were also explored in that project.

Finally, I found a clue about self-trust in the ISHIKI(Consciousness) Management. It was a valuable discovery for me. I was aware that my self-trust was weak and that it had a negative impact on me in some situations, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

I was in a situation where I was aware that my self-trust was weak, and I was also dimly aware that this could have a negative impact in some situations, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Finally, in the midst of all this, I had an idea that I was questing for in that project. It was a valuable discovery for me. It was as if I had seen a new moment of daylight coming out of the darkness, yet the light was still faint and I was not sure if the sun was really rising.

From that day on, I would rely on that ray of light and begin to implement it in my own life. That ray of light was “to perceive myself as I am.”

What we think is not all that we are. Sometimes what we think and what we feel are different. For example, this applies to situations where we have negative feelings that we don’t really want to do something, but according to the expectations, customs and rules of the people around us, we think we should do it.

Alternatively, what we hope for from the bottom of our hearts might be different from our thoughts as we try to deal with the problem in front of our reality.

In my example, there was a delay in the timing of my decision to withdraw from a new business.

Although I sensed deep down that the business was not taking off well and that the members who were involved in it did not necessarily have enough energy, I made various logical assumptions about the legitimacy of continuing the business and delayed the decision to withdraw from the business due to various concerns and fears, such as consistency with the past history of the business and my own statements, promises to shareholders and others, and how the members would feel when I withdrew from the business.

At that time, “what I was thinking was almost everything about me”. I wasn’t able to fully capture my deepest wishes and what I was unconsciously feeling.

To perceive ourselves as we are is to perceive not only what we think with our minds, but also what we feel with our hearts and physical senses, such as our emotions, five senses, and intuition, without denying or ignoring them.

In the example of the business withdrawal I mentioned earlier, I was in a situation where the following things kept coming to my mind and then disappearing.

What I was thinking about in my head (thoughts)
▼This business is one that I started with a lot of passion, and I want to fulfill my original intention.
▼ I have told our shareholders the story of how we will accelerate our growth through this business, and I want to fulfill that promise.
▼ I have been talking to the members of the business unit about the promise of this business, and I want to be consistent in what I am saying.
▼ The current state of the business is not necessarily as we originally envisioned, but we do have a hypothesis that pivots the business, and events have shown that it will work (the logic is somewhat valid).

What I’m feeling in my heart (emotions, physical sensations)
▼ I don’t want to change my mind about what I have said to shareholders and members of the business unit, because I feel that my consistency will be questioned. I am afraid of that.
▼ When a business that I started with a lot of passion is withdrawn, I feel as if I am somehow denying myself.
▼ I often feel uncomfortable when I have to confirm or report on the progress of my business.

What I intuit (intuition)
▼ What I want to do from the bottom of my heart is to provide choices for many people (this business is one form of it, but it is not the only form).
▼ I want to create an environment where each member of the division can work energetically while being connected to their own subjective truth (this business was one form of this, but there is currently a gap between this ideal and the current situation).

Some of these elements are incompatible and contradictory to each other. And because it is very painful to keep incompatible and contradictory things inside of us, we tend to unconsciously choose one of them and ignore or pretend that one of them is not there.

In my case, what I am thinking in my head often takes precedence, pushing what I feel in my heart and what I intuitively perceive into the shadows. This was also the same in this case.

To perceive ourselves as we are means to perceive all of these incompatible and contradictory elements without denying them. It’s about allowing ourselves to think that way, to feel that way, to allow and accept the contradictions.

When we get used to the feeling of perceiving everything without denying it, we then become aware of, “Who is perceiving all of this? This is the meta-self. In other words, you realize that there is indeed a self here and now that captures all the conflicting elements.

A sense of perceiving oneself as one is, from the perspective of the meta-self

I call it self-congruence, which is the perception of the self as it is, or all the conflicting elements within the self, from the meta-self. The meaning is that the self as it is and the self in consciousness are in agreement.

And accumulating self-congruence will lead to self-trust.

Self-congruence is a moment-to-moment feeling, a feeling of “perceiving all elements within us as they are in the here and now moment,” and while it is different from the “unconditional reliance” of self-trust, they are closely related to each other.

By accumulating a sense of self-congruence in each moment, “being able to be self-congruent at any time = being able to see ourselves as we are at any time” leads to self-trust.

Always able to self-congruent.
↓
Always be able to perceive ourselves as we are.
↓
Self-trust (unconditional reliance on oneself)

Self-trust = Σ Self-congruence.
(Σ means “total sum.”)

Since I realized this, I have been making an effort to be self-congruent. In particular, when I feel conflicting sensations or emotional ups and downs, I have tried to grasp what is going on inside of me by self-congruence.

Nowadays, I have a sense that I can be self-congruent at any time, and as an accumulation of these sensations, I have a sense that my self-trust is of a different quality than before. I felt like I had found a satisfying answer from the bottom of my heart to my own questions about self-trust.

Here are the quests of the day. (If you’d like, please share your thoughts in the comments.)

・What situations, if any, have you found yourself in where contradictory elements existed side by side, where your thoughts and feelings did not match, or where your intuition did not match your thoughts?

・If you can become self-congruent and perceive all the conflicting elements as they are, what kind of sensations and emotions will you have?

Bunshiro Ochiai