I believe I can touch the sky…

We have all heard that the way to succeed in life is to just believe in yourself. By show of hands…how many people think that’s a load of bullshit? Good…I see that I’m not alone in this.

Why is it such crap to just say “Believe in yourself”? Because MOST people simply don’t, or have other issues and reasons that keep them from believing in themselves.

Trusting yourself and your own heart, if you’ve been hurt in anyway, is one of the hardest things to do.

See, when we run into a situation and come through it with pain and hurts, we do something really kinda interesting. We stop trusting our own judgment and the feelings in our heart.

It’s not real difficult to understand why we do this. See, we like to believe that we are right in our decisions and choices. It’s human nature to want to be right. Hell…we will fight like animals in order to be right. So when it all comes crashing down and we can’t deny that we were wrong, well, it makes us doubt our own core and heart. If this happens in a great enough degree or a great amount of times, our brain starts to learn that the heart and spirit can’t be trusted with decision making.

Once we enter into a lifestyle of not trusting our own heart and self, it becomes SO much easier to not trust other people. We also start to hesitate and doubt in any situation where we are the responsible decision maker. ESPECIALLY if those decisions involve relationships, love, or other people. Matters based on the heart start to become situations that people come to fear. We pull away, or build walls, or even “hit back first”.

But in all honesty, believing in yourself is REALLY the only way to have a great life. However, we need to do some prep work to get you to the point where your life CAN be good because of your heart.

The first thing you need to do is to clean out all the garbage that you’ve been holding on to. All the past relationships and “failures” that weigh your heart down. You should try to start looking at every “failure”, not as a negative, but rather as a “not meant to be”. The ONLY failure that you can have in this life is to not learn from mistakes that you and /or others make. If something ends, and even if it ends badly or painfully, it’s not a failure, if you learn from it.

So take all your crap and throw it out the window. Stop holding on to them like keepsakes and let’s start thinking in the right direction. The right direction is forward, with the best direction being the here and now.

Next, let’s come to an agreement. You, your heart, and your feelings are NOT bad things. Granted, they may have been naive and inexperienced, but they are not bad. Inexperience changes, that’s why we keep learning. The problem now becomes, how do you get back to a place where you CAN trust your heart and believe in yourself?

That’s the REAL issue. It’s not a matter of just saying you believe in yourself, it HOW do you get back to that point. We have ALL started out trusting ourselves. There’s not a person born that starts life not trusting themselves. So, we ALL can do it. Right?

The easy advice…start with small things. The BEST way to start building trust in yourself is to start keeping your word on EVERYTHING. It seems that basic honor and integrity doesn’t hold for most people anymore. You say you’ll call later tonight, and then are just too tired. Sorry! You are teaching yourself that YOU can’t be trusted. If you commit to something, regardless of how big or how small, YOU MUST KEEP THAT COMMITMENT! Trust me…it gets easier the more you do it. Then, your brain will relearn trust in yourself.

The hard advice…well, when it comes to those really big decisions of the heart. The ones where the potential for hurt and pain are the greatest…you just might have to take a leap of faith in yourself and trust. I’m not going to say that it’ll be easy or that you might not get hurt. But YOU decide to trust yourself and if you get hurt, don’t worry, you will survive and more importantly you will learn. The more experienced your heart becomes, the more wise it will be.

Don’t be afraid to trust your heart. Oftentimes it’s smarter than you think.


One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley. A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was not a mark or a flaw in it. Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.

Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, "Why your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine."

The crowd and the young man looked at the old man's heart. It was beating strongly, but full of scars, it had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in, but they didn't fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. In fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing. The people stared -- how can he say his heart is more beautiful, they thought?

The young man looked at the old man's heart and saw its state and laughed. "You must be joking," he said. "Compare your heart with mine, mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears."

"Yes," said the old man, "Yours is perfect looking but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have given my love - I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart, but because the pieces aren't exact, I have some rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared.

"Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away, and the other person hasn't returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges -- giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too, and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?"

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with trembling hands.

The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the wound in the young man's heart. It fit, but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges.

The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man's heart flowed into his. They embraced and walked away side by side.

- By Walter Wangerin