October 14, 2025 • 15 mins
What if the voice you’ve been taught to question is the one that’s been trying to lead you home all along?
In this episode, I trace the through line of my work and my why: self-trust. From the “performance grids” of corporate life to a quiet stairway moment that changed everything, I unpack the shift from external authority → internal authority and how we rebuild trust in ourselves—especially when feedback, systems, or expectations pull us back into doubt.
You’ll hear:
- how conditioning trains us to trade knowing for approval
- the 2011 “stairway pause” and what it awakened
- a story from this week about mentor feedback & choosing whose authority matters
- the diamond as a symbol for pressure → presence → power
Takeaway: You can’t create a life you love while doubting yourself. Self-trust isn’t a roar; it’s a steady returning.
→ Join The Porch Light community here and continue this conversation.
→ Explore Coaching with me here.
With love & light,
Cynthia
Please rate and review with your honest opinion. Subscribe and share with your colleagues especially if you have worked with me and found value in the work we’ve done together.
Connect with me in my favourite places, LinkedIn and Instagram and my website is: https://www.cynthiajamiesoncoach.ca/
Make it a great week!
Cynthia Jamieson 🧡🌱
Leadership coach for high-integrity leaders who want to thrive without proving or burning out | Ex-HR Exec | ICF PCC Coach | Podcast Host | Intuitive Intelligence® Method Guide
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Cynthia (00:02):
Welcome back to an episode of the podcast Uncharted
and Unfiltered, A Journey Backto You.
I am your host, CynthiaJameson, and I'm so pleased you
are here.
I feel like I'm on fire today.
And here's what I want to talkto you about.
I want to pose a question.
(00:24):
What if the voice that you havebeen taught to question is the
very one that has been trying tolead you home all along?
I have been sitting with thatquestion a lot lately.
Over the last month, I've beenreally working with and being
curious about and honing in onmy why.
(00:45):
And what I keep finding overand over and over again is that
at the core of it all isself-trust.
Every story, every lesson,every chapter of my almost 60
years on this planet, in thisbody, from corporate boardrooms
to coaching circles, frombreakdowns to breakthroughs, has
(01:07):
been teaching me the samething.
You can't create a life youlove if you continue to doubt
yourself.
Because doubt, even when it'sdressed up as humility, is still
a way of saying someone elseknows better than I do.
(01:28):
When I look back, I can seewith such clarity how early it
started.
I was taught, like you were, totrust the systems.
Education systems, corporatesystems, religious systems,
familial systems, all of them,all the systems, more than
(01:48):
myself.
And those systems trained us totrade our knowing for approval,
for validation.
In school, we were rewarded forthe right answer, not the real
one.
In corporate life, we werepraised for composure, not
truth.
We created systems thatmeasured people by numbers and
(02:12):
performance grids.
I remember sitting in those HRcalibration meetings, listening
as someone's entire year wasreduced to one sentence in a
spreadsheet.
And something inside of mewould ache because I knew we
were missing the soul of it.
(02:33):
They all rewarded compliance,not inner authority or
creativity or talents, althoughwe could talk about that.
And what I have been learning,my life's work, is how to cross
that space between externalauthority and internal
(02:56):
authority, and trust the onethat I was taught to doubt, me.
Because it's not just unsafe tospeak your truth in those
spaces, it's often unsafe tobelieve it.
And I want to take a momenthere and acknowledge for any of
(03:17):
you that have been there, I seeyou.
I know what it's like, becauseI was inside of those grids too.
My worth, my effort, myleadership, my humanity, all of
who I was compressed into arating box that someone else
defined.
But still I adapted because mybeautiful brain made meaning of
(03:41):
that experience and told me astory that wasn't the truth.
But I believed it anyway.
So I learned to be even morepolished, productive,
predictable, to earn trust byoverperforming, to stay safe by
staying agreeable.
(04:01):
It's the slow erosion ofself-trust that happens so
quietly, you don't even noticeuntil one day you do.
For me, one of those moments,although there have been many of
them, came in November 2011.
I'd just come home from work.
(04:23):
Nothing extraordinary.
It could have been any day, butas I walked the stairs of my
split-level home, something mademe stop.
It was like I was outside ofmyself, looking down at my own
self and my own life.
And when I turned my head, Isaw my husband sitting in the
(04:43):
recliner doing absolutelynothing wrong.
And honestly, by anyone'sstandards, there was nothing
wrong with my life either.
And yet, something inside ofme, as clear as day, whispered,
This isn't it.
At the time, I didn't havecompassion.
(05:04):
Not for him, not for me.
I judged, I blamed.
I tried to make everyone elsesee what I saw, to wake them up,
to change them.
But I was the one being calledto change.
That pause on the stairway wasthe beginning of everything
(05:25):
shifting.
It was my soul saying, youcan't keep living this way by
someone else's rules ordefinition of what a good life
looks and feels like.
It's time to trust yourself.
I started asking real anduncomfortable questions to my
(05:46):
husband, to my kids, to myself,what's next?
What do I want really?
And as much as I wanted othersto fix it, to make it easier,
the truth was clear.
If someone needed to change, ifsomething needed to change, and
it did, I it wasn't going to bethem.
(06:06):
If it was to be, it was up tome.
So I stopped trying to controland started to listen.
I stopped judging and startedto feel.
And less than a month later, myhusband and I sat down and
agreed to part ways.
It wasn't dramatic or bitter.
It was quiet.
(06:27):
It was honest, necessary.
It was the first time in a longtime that I had trusted myself
that much.
And now I understand compassionfor others and for myself.
And I understand that judgmentis often a cover for fear.
(06:52):
And I understand the cost ofstaying still when your soul is
asking for movement.
Even in the darkest moments,there's always been that sliver
of light, the remember, thereminder, to remember that
there's something within me thatstill knows the way.
(07:15):
That moment on the stairwaywasn't just about my marriage.
It was a mirror of every placeI'd silenced myself to keep the
peace.
Every time that I traded truthfor belonging, presence for
performance.
And what I see now is that thejourney has never been about
(07:36):
achievement, the titles, themoney, the role.
It's never been about any ofthat.
It's been about alchemy,pressure, becoming presence,
tension, becoming truth, grit,becoming clarity.
Self-trust is not a one-timedecision.
(08:00):
It is a daily devotion, apractice of remembering and
returning.
And lately, it's been callingme to look even deeper.
Just this week, I received somefeedback from one of my mentors
who I love working with, andI'm so grateful for the
(08:21):
feedback.
And as I heard it, I could feelthe tension within me rise.
That old tug of war betweenexternal authority and internal
authority.
You know the feeling?
The one that says, Do I changeto please them?
Or do I stay true to what feelsright for me, even if it might
(08:43):
be hard?
So I didn't rush.
I sat with it, the discomfort.
I walked with it, I ran withit, literally, out on the trail.
And feeling into the edges ofthat discomfort.
My old wiring lit up that partof me that still wants an A plus
(09:03):
in someone else's book.
And what I realized is that Ineeded to remember whose
authority matters more?
When feedback comes, it's aninvitation, but it's not an
order.
The real question is (09:20):
what do I want to do with this?
What are my reasons?
And do those reasons, do thosewants come from love or from
fear of what someone else mightsay or do or think or feel?
And that's the moment.
That's the moment whereself-trust either grows or
(09:43):
erodes.
And it's so fascinating to me.
The symbol that keeps revealingitself to me is the diamond,
formed through pressure, refinedby time, radiant from within,
regardless of who sees it.
The diamond doesn't matter ifit's under your boot or in a
(10:05):
beautiful jewelry case, it'sstill the diamond.
It's the perfect reflection ofthis path that I'm on, this
alchemy of grit into clarity,compression into coherence,
truth revealed through light.
That's what inner authorityfeels like for me.
(10:28):
Coherence, alignment, thatquiet audacity to live your
truth, even when it'sinconvenient.
Because when your values, yourvoice, and your actions are one
and the same, you don't have toforce power.
You become it grounded,radiant, dare I say, unshakable.
(10:54):
But pressure doesn't destroyyou, it reveals you.
I can look at my life and seethat that's what has happened.
The very heat we try to escape,those dark moments, those dark
nights is often what brings ourbrilliance to the surface.
(11:17):
Every time I choose alignmentover approval, I polish another
facet of my diamond.
Every time I pause beforereacting or act from love
instead of fear, I becomeclearer, not harder, clearer.
I've said this so many times onthe podcast, you always know it
(11:37):
by how it feels.
And so maybe today, this is theinvitation for you to pause
before you seek permission, tonotice when you feel pulled to
perform, to please, to prove,and instead to ask yourself hand
on heart, what do I know to betrue right now?
What feels good and right?
(12:00):
Not because it's easy, butbecause it's honest.
Because that's what self-trustis.
It's not a roar, it's a quiet,steady returning to the truth
that's always been inside ofyou.
It feels like freedom.
My truth is not fragile, but myknowing is my compass, and my
(12:25):
light, your light, is enough.
So if this conversation spoketo you, moved you, showed you
something, I would love to hearwhat stirred inside of you,
inside of the Porch Light, theFree Be the Light community.
It's a space where we practicecoming home to ourselves
together.
(12:45):
And if you're ready to godeeper into this kind of work,
to rebuild that unshakable trustin your own knowing, you will
find the link for one-on-onecoaching in the show notes.
I promise you, it is the bestgift you could ever give
yourself.
And I've come here to servethose souls, those who are ready
to turn their grit and theirgrace and more grit again and
(13:09):
again into clarity, confidence,and self-trust that shines from
within.
The path is simple, but it'snot easy.
The path is from pressure topresence to power.
And together we walk it throughreflection, embodied practice,
and intuitive recalibrationuntil calm becomes the baseline.
(13:33):
So until next time, myinvitation is to you to keep
coming home because the worlddoes not need another version of
someone else.
It needs the most trustingversion of you.
Take care.
I love you all.
Have a great week.
Welcome back to an episode of the podcast Uncharted
and Unfiltered, A Journey Backto You.
I am your host, CynthiaJameson, and I'm so pleased you
are here.
I feel like I'm on fire today.
And here's what I want to talkto you about.
I want to pose a question.
(00:24):
What if the voice that you havebeen taught to question is the
very one that has been trying tolead you home all along?
I have been sitting with thatquestion a lot lately.
Over the last month, I've beenreally working with and being
curious about and honing in onmy why.
(00:45):
And what I keep finding overand over and over again is that
at the core of it all isself-trust.
Every story, every lesson,every chapter of my almost 60
years on this planet, in thisbody, from corporate boardrooms
to coaching circles, frombreakdowns to breakthroughs, has
(01:07):
been teaching me the samething.
You can't create a life youlove if you continue to doubt
yourself.
Because doubt, even when it'sdressed up as humility, is still
a way of saying someone elseknows better than I do.
(01:28):
When I look back, I can seewith such clarity how early it
started.
I was taught, like you were, totrust the systems.
Education systems, corporatesystems, religious systems,
familial systems, all of them,all the systems, more than
(01:48):
myself.
And those systems trained us totrade our knowing for approval,
for validation.
In school, we were rewarded forthe right answer, not the real
one.
In corporate life, we werepraised for composure, not
truth.
We created systems thatmeasured people by numbers and
(02:12):
performance grids.
I remember sitting in those HRcalibration meetings, listening
as someone's entire year wasreduced to one sentence in a
spreadsheet.
And something inside of mewould ache because I knew we
were missing the soul of it.
(02:33):
They all rewarded compliance,not inner authority or
creativity or talents, althoughwe could talk about that.
And what I have been learning,my life's work, is how to cross
that space between externalauthority and internal
(02:56):
authority, and trust the onethat I was taught to doubt, me.
Because it's not just unsafe tospeak your truth in those
spaces, it's often unsafe tobelieve it.
And I want to take a momenthere and acknowledge for any of
(03:17):
you that have been there, I seeyou.
I know what it's like, becauseI was inside of those grids too.
My worth, my effort, myleadership, my humanity, all of
who I was compressed into arating box that someone else
defined.
But still I adapted because mybeautiful brain made meaning of
(03:41):
that experience and told me astory that wasn't the truth.
But I believed it anyway.
So I learned to be even morepolished, productive,
predictable, to earn trust byoverperforming, to stay safe by
staying agreeable.
(04:01):
It's the slow erosion ofself-trust that happens so
quietly, you don't even noticeuntil one day you do.
For me, one of those moments,although there have been many of
them, came in November 2011.
I'd just come home from work.
(04:23):
Nothing extraordinary.
It could have been any day, butas I walked the stairs of my
split-level home, something mademe stop.
It was like I was outside ofmyself, looking down at my own
self and my own life.
And when I turned my head, Isaw my husband sitting in the
(04:43):
recliner doing absolutelynothing wrong.
And honestly, by anyone'sstandards, there was nothing
wrong with my life either.
And yet, something inside ofme, as clear as day, whispered,
This isn't it.
At the time, I didn't havecompassion.
(05:04):
Not for him, not for me.
I judged, I blamed.
I tried to make everyone elsesee what I saw, to wake them up,
to change them.
But I was the one being calledto change.
That pause on the stairway wasthe beginning of everything
(05:25):
shifting.
It was my soul saying, youcan't keep living this way by
someone else's rules ordefinition of what a good life
looks and feels like.
It's time to trust yourself.
I started asking real anduncomfortable questions to my
(05:46):
husband, to my kids, to myself,what's next?
What do I want really?
And as much as I wanted othersto fix it, to make it easier,
the truth was clear.
If someone needed to change, ifsomething needed to change, and
it did, I it wasn't going to bethem.
(06:06):
If it was to be, it was up tome.
So I stopped trying to controland started to listen.
I stopped judging and startedto feel.
And less than a month later, myhusband and I sat down and
agreed to part ways.
It wasn't dramatic or bitter.
It was quiet.
(06:27):
It was honest, necessary.
It was the first time in a longtime that I had trusted myself
that much.
And now I understand compassionfor others and for myself.
And I understand that judgmentis often a cover for fear.
(06:52):
And I understand the cost ofstaying still when your soul is
asking for movement.
Even in the darkest moments,there's always been that sliver
of light, the remember, thereminder, to remember that
there's something within me thatstill knows the way.
(07:15):
That moment on the stairwaywasn't just about my marriage.
It was a mirror of every placeI'd silenced myself to keep the
peace.
Every time that I traded truthfor belonging, presence for
performance.
And what I see now is that thejourney has never been about
(07:36):
achievement, the titles, themoney, the role.
It's never been about any ofthat.
It's been about alchemy,pressure, becoming presence,
tension, becoming truth, grit,becoming clarity.
Self-trust is not a one-timedecision.
(08:00):
It is a daily devotion, apractice of remembering and
returning.
And lately, it's been callingme to look even deeper.
Just this week, I received somefeedback from one of my mentors
who I love working with, andI'm so grateful for the
(08:21):
feedback.
And as I heard it, I could feelthe tension within me rise.
That old tug of war betweenexternal authority and internal
authority.
You know the feeling?
The one that says, Do I changeto please them?
Or do I stay true to what feelsright for me, even if it might
(08:43):
be hard?
So I didn't rush.
I sat with it, the discomfort.
I walked with it, I ran withit, literally, out on the trail.
And feeling into the edges ofthat discomfort.
My old wiring lit up that partof me that still wants an A plus
(09:03):
in someone else's book.
And what I realized is that Ineeded to remember whose
authority matters more?
When feedback comes, it's aninvitation, but it's not an
order.
The real question is (09:20):
what do I want to do with this?
What are my reasons?
And do those reasons, do thosewants come from love or from
fear of what someone else mightsay or do or think or feel?
And that's the moment.
That's the moment whereself-trust either grows or
(09:43):
erodes.
And it's so fascinating to me.
The symbol that keeps revealingitself to me is the diamond,
formed through pressure, refinedby time, radiant from within,
regardless of who sees it.
The diamond doesn't matter ifit's under your boot or in a
(10:05):
beautiful jewelry case, it'sstill the diamond.
It's the perfect reflection ofthis path that I'm on, this
alchemy of grit into clarity,compression into coherence,
truth revealed through light.
That's what inner authorityfeels like for me.
(10:28):
Coherence, alignment, thatquiet audacity to live your
truth, even when it'sinconvenient.
Because when your values, yourvoice, and your actions are one
and the same, you don't have toforce power.
You become it grounded,radiant, dare I say, unshakable.
(10:54):
But pressure doesn't destroyyou, it reveals you.
I can look at my life and seethat that's what has happened.
The very heat we try to escape,those dark moments, those dark
nights is often what brings ourbrilliance to the surface.
(11:17):
Every time I choose alignmentover approval, I polish another
facet of my diamond.
Every time I pause beforereacting or act from love
instead of fear, I becomeclearer, not harder, clearer.
I've said this so many times onthe podcast, you always know it
(11:37):
by how it feels.
And so maybe today, this is theinvitation for you to pause
before you seek permission, tonotice when you feel pulled to
perform, to please, to prove,and instead to ask yourself hand
on heart, what do I know to betrue right now?
What feels good and right?
(12:00):
Not because it's easy, butbecause it's honest.
Because that's what self-trustis.
It's not a roar, it's a quiet,steady returning to the truth
that's always been inside ofyou.
It feels like freedom.
My truth is not fragile, but myknowing is my compass, and my
(12:25):
light, your light, is enough.
So if this conversation spoketo you, moved you, showed you
something, I would love to hearwhat stirred inside of you,
inside of the Porch Light, theFree Be the Light community.
It's a space where we practicecoming home to ourselves
together.
(12:45):
And if you're ready to godeeper into this kind of work,
to rebuild that unshakable trustin your own knowing, you will
find the link for one-on-onecoaching in the show notes.
I promise you, it is the bestgift you could ever give
yourself.
And I've come here to servethose souls, those who are ready
to turn their grit and theirgrace and more grit again and
(13:09):
again into clarity, confidence,and self-trust that shines from
within.
The path is simple, but it'snot easy.
The path is from pressure topresence to power.
And together we walk it throughreflection, embodied practice,
and intuitive recalibrationuntil calm becomes the baseline.
(13:33):
So until next time, myinvitation is to you to keep
coming home because the worlddoes not need another version of
someone else.
It needs the most trustingversion of you.
Take care.
I love you all.
Have a great week.
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