What Happens When You Finally Trust What You Already Know

A few years into building my business, I had a moment that I’ve thought about a lot since.

I was sitting with a decision I’d been avoiding making for months.

I was trying to decide if I should narrow down my business focus from ‘goal getters’ in general (whom I loved helping even though it felt a bit vague to me) to mid-life women entrepreneurs who were avoiding their big goals (to whom I could completely relate and knew I could help).

I was worried that I had spent so much time building an audience of goal getters that shifting to this more specific audience would leave all my hard work behind. That I’d basically be starting over.

I told myself that I was waiting because I needed more information. That I wasn’t 100% sure yet.

But that wasn’t really it.

I was waiting for something outside of me to confirm the decision I was about to make. To tell me that choosing to niche down was the magic key that I had been looking for. To give me the go-ahead.

And the longer no one did, the more I convinced myself that maybe it wasn’t a good idea.

So I kept focusing on the goal getters like I had been doing and for a while, everything looked fine from the outside.

But inside, something was off.

My enthusiasm for my work began to fade, to the point that I actually began avoiding it altogether. My business was stuck and not growing.

Then one morning, I had a serious talk with myself.

I could either take a chance on myself, make the darn decision and start focusing on my ideal entrepreneurial client or I could change my business plan and drastically adjust my expectations and if I’m being honest, my happiness.

I chose to take that chance and re-niched.

And while it was scary and it felt like people were going to come out of the woodwork and ask me what the heck I was doing, they didn’t.

But it taught me something important: Self-trust is an absolute must if I was going to do big things with my business.

Unlike when I was an employee, no one was coming to give me approval. That was my own job.

I’ve had some version of that conversation with many women entrepreneurs since.

The details are always different — the offer, the client, the niche, the direction they keep almost going in — but the shape is usually consistent.

They knew. They just didn’t trust it. And as a result, they were stuck.

Where That Distrust Usually Comes From

When I dig into this with clients, we almost always end up in the same place, and it’s not a place that you might expect: the habits of an employee mindset that followed them into entrepreneurship.

In an employee role, not trusting your own judgment is often the correct instinct. You defer to your manager and you wait for approval. You run things up the chain before you act.

That’s just how most organizations are structured, and navigating them well – and keeping your job – requires learning to do exactly that.

But those habits don’t automatically switch off when you start a business.

And in an entrepreneurial context, the same thing that once protected you when you were someone’s employee now keeps you delaying decisions that only you can make.

When you are an entrepreneur, there’s usually no chain to run things up. There’s no approval coming. No one to tell you if something is a good idea or to take the fall if it doesn’t work out.

And waiting for that outside reassurance — from a mentor, a colleague, a peer who’s a few steps ahead — is one of the more common ways I’ve seen talented women stall out in their businesses without fully realizing that’s what’s happening.

They think they’re being careful or thorough.

But at some point, more research stops being due diligence and starts being a way to postpone standing behind your own decisions.

And realizing this matters more than you know.

The Part That Often Gets Left Out

One of the things I say to clients a lot, especially when they’re afraid of making the wrong move: results are just data.

We treat decisions like they’re permanent, even though most of them really aren’t.

We frame not getting the results we hoped for as a sign that we can’t make the right decisions, rather than as information-gathering.

We fear making a mistake because mistakes were the thing that could have once gotten us fired.

And so we wait, because waiting feels safer.

But I’ve noticed something important: the women who move — even when they’re not fully certain, even when they can’t guarantee the outcome — figure things out faster than the ones who keep waiting for certainty to arrive first.

When you try something and it doesn’t work the way you expected, that’s not a mistake. That’s exactly how you learn what works.

The people who build businesses that last aren’t the ones who always knew the right answer. They’re the ones who were willing to try something and find out.

Waiting doesn’t reduce your risk.

In most cases, it just delays your learning and costs you time you can’t get back.

What Trusting Yourself Actually Looks Like in Practice

I want to be clear that this isn’t a case for recklessness.

There are decisions that genuinely need more time or more information before they’re ready to act on, and that kind of discernment is worth honoring.

But most of the women I work with aren’t struggling with discernment. They’re struggling with the courage to act on discernment they already hold as their own truth.

I had a client recently who had been sitting on a pricing change for four months.

She knew her rates needed to go up.

But every time she got close to making it official, she’d find one more reason to wait.

There was always one more person to ask, one more thing to research, and one more month to see how things shook out.

When we finally looked at it together, there was nothing new she needed to know. The information had been there all along.

What she was actually waiting for was someone to tell her she was headed in the right direction.

When I’m in that loop myself, the question I come back to is simple: What does my gut tell me?

I then get quiet and I listen. I pick up my pen, journal a bit, and then I decide.

Because my intuition is usually the most honest data point I have and I’m willing to bet that it’s yours too.

Yet, it’s almost always the one we talk ourselves out of because we believe that if a decision doesn’t get the seal of approval from someone else, it’s too risky.

Trusting yourself doesn’t mean you’re always right and that everything will turn out as planned.

It means you’re willing to let your own judgment be a large part of the evidence, and you go from there.

The track record you’re looking for – the one that would make you feel more confident, more certain, and more ready – only gets built by actually moving.

Waiting keeps you stalled.

The Question Worth Contemplating This Week

If there’s a decision you’ve been sitting with longer than you’d like, I’d invite you to get honest about what you’re actually waiting for.

Are you waiting for more information — or for permission to arrive from the outside?

Because if it’s the latter, I’d like to gently point out that you don’t need it.

Somewhere underneath all the research and the second-guessing, you probably already know which way you’re leaning.

You just have to trust yourself enough to know that you’ll be able to handle the results, no matter what happens.

You don’t have to make the whole move today.

But you can take one step and then pay attention to what you learn from it, because that’s data too.

Self-trust isn’t a feeling that arrives before you act.

It’s something that gets built in the moments when you decide to take your own knowing seriously and then do something with it.

If this is the season where you’re ready to stop waiting and start moving, The Momentum Room is a space built specifically for that work. Calm accountability, no angst, and a community of women who are done letting hesitation run the show. Find out more at www.jenlaffin.com/tmr.

Jen Laffin is a Chief Momentum Officer for women entrepreneurs who are wildly capable…and also wildly good at avoiding the exact things that would uplevel their business. She is the founder of The Momentum Room and host of The Goal Getter Guide Podcast.