And that was the whole point.
I was standing at the S-gates at SEA-TAC, boarding pass in hand, about to fly to France. Alone. For five weeks.
And the loudest thought in my head was: I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.
I felt like just a woman at a gate, doing a thing she’d never done, with zero certainty about how it was going to go. The Instagram version of this moment would have me teary-eyed and empowered. The actual version had me thinking: I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.
That’s what self-trust actually looks like. Action before certainty.
Here’s what preceded that moment at the gate: planning. Saving. Conversations with my husband — who, for the record, said what he always says: go do what you want to do. And he meant it; he always means it.
So if he wasn’t the obstacle, what was?
My family had opinions. They were worried about my safety, abut my being “irrational.” A woman, alone, in another country, for over a month. It didn’t compute for them.
And then there was the layer underneath that — the one that’s harder to name. The societal expectation that a woman doesn’t just do something like this. Especially without a reason other people can understand and approve of.
There is no rule anywhere that says you can’t travel alone. No law, no policy, no fine print. But there is a set of expectations so deeply embedded that they feel like rules. And when you bump up against them, the discomfort is real.
I felt it. Standing at that gate, it was surreal. My doing this– traveling international, alone for 5- week was sureal.
That’s the part that gets missed in conversations about self-trust. We treat it like a prerequisite — something you need to have before you act. Get the confidence first, then book the trip. Feel ready, then make the move.
It works the other way around.
I didn’t feel ready. I felt like “we’ll see what happens.” And I went anyway. The self-trust was built somewhere en route (probably over the Atlantic).
This is what I teach in coaching. Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings drive your actions. Your actions create your results. That’s the framework — Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, and Results. We are each a study of one, and the only way to learn what you’re capable of is to run experiments.
You can think about the trip for years. You can research the destination, save the money, read the blogs. But you will not know what it feels like to trust yourself until you’re standing at the gate, scared, thinking “I don’t know,” and boarding the plane anyway.
So here’s my question for you: where are you waiting to feel ready?
What’s the thing you keep circling — the conversation, the boundary, the decision, the change — that you’ve put on hold because the timing doesn’t feel right, or the people around you aren’t sure, or you haven’t yet become the version of yourself who does that sort of thing?
You might already be her. You just haven’t boarded yet.
If you’ve been circling a change — in your finances, your career, your sense of what’s possible for you — I’m running a 90-minute Wealth Mindset Reset workshop where we dig into exactly this: the gap between where you are and what you want, and the thoughts keeping you stuck at the gate. You’ll leave with a specific plan to close that gap.
Reminder: as part of the benefits offered at Logan Health, employees get free coaching sessions. You can book a coaching session here.
Or, if you are not a Logan Health Employee, you can book a consultation to talk about working with me here.
