What If You Trusted Yourself a Little More?

There’s something about September that feels like a chance for a new beginning.

The slower pace and heat of summer start to fade, routines return and our thoughts naturally turn to what comes next as we head towards the end of 2026. But what if, before deciding what comes next, we stopped and asked ourselves how much we actually trust ourselves to make that decision?

Your thinking at this time of year might be:

What’s next? What do I still need to achieve? What do I need to change?

But what I’ve come to realise is that this line of thinking can so easily add to those feelings of not being ‘good enough’. Before we know it, we’ve added even more pressure and even more things to our already overflowing to-do lists.

I never want anyone to feel they are not good enough, because I know from personal experience how damaging that thinking can be.

So perhaps, before we start looking at what comes next, we should look back at where we started.

Courage comes before confidence

The Chinese New Year in February brought us the Year of the Fire Horse, and with that came lots of talk about having the courage to make big moves, take action and fulfil our biggest goals and dreams.

At the time, I remember talking to my WBN members about confidence and moving forward like never before. But during that same conversation and reflection, something became really clear to me:

It isn’t about waiting to feel confident. Courage comes first.

It’s about having the courage to start, and allowing confidence to grow as we take action.

It’s making the decision. Having the conversation. Trying something. Saying yes. Or sometimes, saying no.

Something that took courage for me this year was making the decision not to continue with a collaboration that I genuinely loved being part of.

That probably sounds strange. Why walk away from something you enjoy?

I was working alongside women I respected, doing something I loved and together we were able to deliver something bigger than any of us could individually. The women involved had also become friends, which made the decision even harder.

But continuing with the collaboration meant putting my own business and goals on hold. I had been willing to do that for a period of time, but eventually I had to recognise that continuing wasn’t the right decision for me.

So I said no to continuing.

It meant letting other people down, and that was difficult. But it also meant prioritising myself, my own business and the things I wanted to build.

Sometimes courage isn’t about starting something new or making a big leap forward. Sometimes it’s having the courage to stop doing something you love because you know it is no longer right for you.

That experience taught me a lot about trusting my own decisions, even when they aren’t easy ones to make.

Recognising the evidence

For far too long, I could easily recall everything I’d planned to do and hadn’t got done, rather than recognising everything I had achieved.

We work hard in our businesses and keep moving forward, often so quickly that we don’t fully digest what has gone before – how we’ve grown, what we’ve learnt and all the things we’ve handled along the way.

So I’d love you to stop for a moment and take stock of what you have done this year that has taken courage.

Gather the evidence of the choices you’ve made, the things you’ve achieved and the decisions you’ve taken.

If you’re struggling to recall them, perhaps you have:

• set a boundary
• changed direction
• spoken up
• tried something new
• stopped doing something that no longer felt right
• asked for help
• trusted a decision that other people didn’t understand

And then ask yourself:

What has that taught me about myself?

Perhaps you’ve discovered that you’re stronger than you thought. Perhaps you’ve proved that you can face difficult situations. Perhaps you’ve realised that you can make decisions you once wouldn’t have trusted yourself to make.

This kind of self-awareness isn’t about looking for faults or finding something else to criticise.

It’s about appreciation and gratitude for the growth we’ve experienced.

Every time we act without having absolute certainty and discover that we can handle what follows, we create more evidence that we can trust ourselves.

Shutting out the noise

Over the summer, I’ve been talking a lot about following our own path and defining success for ourselves.

But both of those things require something else:

Trusting ourselves enough to make our own decisions.

Something I feel I’ve finally started to conquer over the last six months is shutting out the noise.

What do I mean by that?

Every day we’re exposed to messages that can trigger us into thinking a certain way. It might be an email, something we overhear, a conversation we have or, most likely, something we see on social media.

And depending on our mindset at that particular moment, one thought can very quickly become another and another.

I’ve become much more conscious of managing what I allow into my world.

If someone’s social media consistently makes you feel worse about yourself, you don’t have to keep following them. You can fill your feed with people and things that inspire you, make you think, make you smile or simply make you feel good.

The same applies beyond social media.

The conversations we’re part of and the people we spend time with can influence how we feel and think. That’s not about surrounding ourselves only with people who agree with us, I actually think hearing different perspectives is incredibly valuable.

It’s one of the things I love most about WBN.

Other people can help us see something differently. We can bounce ideas around, hear experiences we hadn’t considered and get a much more rounded view of a situation.

But ultimately, other people can give us perspective. They can’t make our decisions for us.

That final decision has to be ours.

What does September look like for you?

Are you feeling refreshed, raring to go and overflowing with ideas?

Or are you already feeling tired and overwhelmed by what feels like an uphill battle?

Being realistic about what we can actually do is something I’ve become much more conscious of.

In one of our recent WBN discussions, one member pointed out at the time, that while there might technically be around 16 weeks of the year remaining, once she took out planned trips and other commitments, the amount of time she genuinely had available was closer to 10 or 11 weeks.

I thought that was such an important observation.

Because is it always about chasing the next thing?

Or can we stop and say:

Actually, I’m happy with where I am. I’m happy with the level of work and commitment I have, and I’m not looking to take on more right now.

I’ve always been someone who would cram as much as possible into my time and say yes to as much as I could.

It led me to burnout on more than one occasion.

Self-care was something I talked about. It appeared on my vision board. But actually committing time to it was a different story.

My September will be a combination of:

• self-care
• time with family
• working in and on my business
• taking a girly trip away

Notice my business is in there – but it isn’t at the top of the list.

It has taken me far more years than I care to mention to finally be able to say that I am my first priority.

Like so many women, I want to be there for everyone else and do my best at everything I take on. But I’ve finally realised I can’t do that if I don’t properly look after myself too.

So what comes next?

When we take the time to look honestly at where we are, what we’ve learnt and what we genuinely have capacity for, we can make much more conscious decisions about what comes next.

And it isn’t necessarily:

What do I need to do better?

Or:

How do I need to change?

It’s about asking:

What kind of business and life – or perhaps life and business – do I actually want?

That’s where realignment comes in.

And realignment will look different for every one of us.

It might mean:

Keep going.

Do less.

Finish something.

Start something.

Let something go.

Protect what is already working.

The point isn’t constant improvement.

It’s conscious choice.

And your answer might be that you’re exactly where you want to be.

If that’s the case, that’s absolutely fantastic.

Celebrate it.

Join the conversation

Over the summer we’ve introduced discussion topics into our WBN Online Networking sessions on the fourth Thursday of each month.

If anything I’ve written here has resonated with you, you’re very welcome to be part of our next conversation on Thursday 24 September at 1pm.

We’ll be thinking about three questions:

Recognise: Where have you already shown courage this year, and what has that taught you about yourself?

Reflect: Where do you trust yourself more now than you did at the beginning of 2026?

Realign: Knowing what you know now – and considering the time you genuinely have available – how do you want to use the rest of 2026?

Maybe September doesn’t need to be about asking what else you should have achieved by now.

Maybe it’s an opportunity to recognise the courage you’ve already shown, notice how much more you’ve learnt to trust yourself and decide – on your own terms – what deserves your attention next.

What might you do differently if you trusted yourself a little more?