The self-trust formula™
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 8 years of coaching hundreds of high-achieving men and women, it’s this:
Most of them didn’t struggle because they lacked clarity. It’s not because they didn’t know what to do.
It was because they didn’t trust themselves.
And self-trust isn’t a personality trait you either have or don’t.
It’s a practice. A skill you have to build. A relationship you cultivate with yourself over time. It takes self-honesty, accountability, and self-leadership.
If you’re anything like me, maybe this wasn’t modeled to you growing up, so it’s hard to figure out how to build your self-trust and learn to listen to your intuition.
That’s why I created The Self-Trust Formula™
After years of working on this myself, and taking clients through their own empowering journeys, I created a simple 6-part framework that will help you hear yourself more clearly, honor what you already know deep down, and move through life in alignment with your values instead of making decisions based on your fears, conditioning, or “shoulds.”
Today I want to walk you through the formula, explain why it works, and share what it’s looked like inside real client transformations.
The Formula: Values → Needs → Priorities → Boundaries → Desires → Actions = Self-Trust
This framwork compounds with each step, each one reinforcing the next.
I highly recommend mastering each step before moving to the next.
Let me break it down.
1. Values: The foundation
Most people make decisions from a place of pressure or fear:
What if I make the wrong choice? What if this isn’t “right”? What if I disappoint someone? What if I fail? What if they get mad at me if I say no?
Values cut through all of that.
They anchor you in the why beneath your choices. They help you filter out what belongs to you…and what’s just conditioning, people-pleasing, or a learned survival response.
Living by your values removes the guesswork, it gives you a clear framework to use for decision making, and removes emotion from the equation.
Example Value: Health
Example Decision: I’m tired, should I get take-out on my way home?
Example Process: Health is a value so I’ll stop at the store to buy a healthier option instead. OR Health is a value, but so is Pleasure, and tonight enjoying my meal is more important to me than prioritizing my health.
When a client gets clear on their values and in turn, starts making confident, intentional decisions— their life starts gaining momentum in alignment with their most authentic self.
2. Needs: Your non-negotiables for stability
Needs are the piece most people skip. Especially high-achieving women who learned early that being low-maintenance, adaptable, or “easy” made life smoother for everyone else.
A lot of my clients come to me with no idea what their needs are (I;ve been there too, I get it).
But unmet needs are the fastest route to resentment and self-doubt.
Needs are:
what keep your nervous system regulated
what help your body feel safe
what allow you to make grounded decisions
what fuel your ability to show up with clarity
This includes emotional needs (support, quiet, encouragement), physical needs (rest, movement, nourishment), relational needs (space, honesty, depth), and practical needs (money, time, order).
When clients get honest about their real needs, what needs they can meet themselves, and what needs they prefer to be met by others, their clarity returns. Their resentment drops. Their intuition gets louder.
Self-trust becomes possible when your needs are met consistently. Knowing and asking for what you need is crucial to learning to trust yourself.
3. Priorities: How you structure your life around what matters
If values & needs are your foundation, priorities are your structure.
Priorities take your values and needs and translate them into how you spend your time, energy, and attention.
This is the step where women often unravel, because they realize:
their life isn’t aligned with their values
their schedule doesn’t support their needs
their actions are not reflecting their priorities
they’re prioritizing chaos, expectations, or survival over themselves
Priorities don’t just create structure; they create more capacity.
Saying no opens up more room for the right yes.
4. Boundaries: The protector of your priorities
You can know your values & priorities but still violate them daily if you don’t have boundaries.
Boundaries protect what matters. They conserve your energy. They teach your nervous system:
You are safe to honor yourself.
I teach clients to create boundaries that are rooted in personal ownership—not demands on other people.
5. Desires: The truth-tellers
This is the piece most people skip—because desire can feel uncomfortable, indulgent, or even threatening.
But desire is how your intuition speaks.
It’s how you access your deeper knowing.
It’s often your Highest Self whispering to you about what you’re capable of.
When clients allow themselves to listen to their desires, their whole life starts to unfreeze.
6. Actions: Where self-trust becomes momentum
The hardest part is taking daily actions that align with your values, choosing your priorities, and upholding boundaries to keep yourself on the path toward your deeper desires.
And this is where most of my clients come to be feeling the most fear.
So we work with tiny decisions first. Low-risk, low-stakes acts that signal to your brain:
I can choose something for myself and nothing terrible happens.
Momentum builds from there.
Self-Trust: The result and the ongoing practice
The most important part of this framework is to show up for yourself & keep promises to yourself. it won’t be perfect (far from it), and you’ll probably have to re-align yourself now and then, but over time if you stick with it, you’ll teach yourself an invaluable lesson:
I can rely on myself.
Why It Works (The Neurobiology + Human Behavior in Real Terms)
The Self-Trust Formula™ works because it speaks the language of your body, not just your mind.
Here’s what I mean:
Psychologically:
It reduces cognitive dissonance: the gap between what you say you want and how you behave. When those two align, your brain stops flagging your decisions as “dangerous.”
Neurologically:
Living authentically is good for us. Values and boundaries regulate your nervous system. When your nervous system feels safe, it becomes easier to access intuition, clarity, and creative problem-solving.
Behaviorally:
Small decisions create repetition; repetition builds identity; identity creates consistency. Most people try to change their life through force. Self-trust changes your life through integrity.
This is why the clients I work with often say things like:
“I didn’t just make a career change… I became someone who trusts myself enough to create the life I actually want.”
What This Looks Like in Real Clients
Here are a couple stories (personal details left out for privacy):
✨ The corporate leader who rebuilt her entire career with integrity
When she came to me, she was successful on paper but completely out of alignment. We used her values as a compass, her boundaries as protection, and her desires as direction. Within eight months, she left an unhealthy work situation and launched her dream business.
✨ The client who left a 20-year business to open a yoga studio
She’d been burned by a previous coach and felt completely disconnected from her intuition. Through our work together, she learned to trust her inner voice again. She closed her old business, healed from the betrayal, and opened a studio that now thrives.
Across every story, the pattern is the same:
When women start trusting themselves, their lives become clearer, calmer, and more aligned. Not because they force change—but because they stop abandoning themselves.
You don’t need another personality test, another prediction, or another Tik Tok tarot reader telling you what to do.
You need a relationship with yourself that you can count on.
That’s what this work is about.
Subscribe if this spoke to you, I’ll keep sharing tools, stories, and thought-provoking questions here that help you cultivate a deeper sense of self-trust, at a pace that feels right for you.
xo Courtney
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If you want support in implementing the Self-Trust Formula™ into your own life (paired with other tools like Astrological Archetypes), I open a limited number of 1:1 coaching spots each quarter.
Apply here to get on the waitlist and be the first to know when enrollment opens!
1 sources cited below
Nervous System Regulation & Clarity
Porges, Stephen W. The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
Siegel, Daniel J. The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician’s Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Viking, 2014.
Cognitive Dissonance & Value Alignment
Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957.
Harmon-Jones, Eddie, and Judson Mills, eds. Cognitive Dissonance: Reexamining a Pivotal Theory in Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2019.
Needs, Motivation & Psychological Wellbeing
Maslow, Abraham H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50, no. 4 (1943): 370–396.
Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior.” Psychological Inquiry 11, no. 4 (2000): 227–268.
Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum Press, 1985.
Identity Formation Through Small Actions
Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. New York: Avery, 2018.
Fogg, B. J. Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.
Self-Efficacy, Congruence & Self-Trust
Bandura, Albert. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1997.
Rogers, Carl R. On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
