Are We In A Trust Recession?

Most people think they have a motivation problem, but motivation is just the smoke—the real fire is a total breakdown in self-trust.

When you promise yourself you will stick to a routine and quit three days later, or casually tell an acquaintance "Let's get together soon" without any intention of following through, you aren't just altering plans. You are actively training your subconscious mind to discount your own word. Every broken promise, unkept habit, and delayed alarm acts as a withdrawal from your internal credibility bank. Over time, this constant leakage creates a "trust recession," leaving you with low confidence, learned helplessness, and a chronic "I'll start Monday" loop that keeps your potential completely frozen.

In this transparent episode of the Living Lucky® Podcast, Jana and Jason dismantle the hidden identity scripts that erode self-confidence and momentum. Fresh off attending the Jason Wojo Business Conference, they explore why high-performers often fail to implement proven systems, how money creates immediate commitment pressure, and why getting out of the "gray area" of casual promises is the fastest way to restore personal integrity.

Inside:

• The Currency of Credibility: How every unkept promise to yourself or others acts as a direct withdrawal from your personal trust account.
• The Snooze Button Integrity Test: Why breaking your morning wake-up commitment leaks confidence into every other area of your life.
• The "Someday" Drift: How distancing yourself from your childhood vision convinces your brain that your personal dreams don't matter.
• Money as Accountability: Why investing real capital into trainers, coaches, or events forces follow-through by elevating your commitment.
• The Boring Runway Audit: How to survive the unglamorous middle section of progress by counting small wins instead of focusing on mistakes.

Stop letting casual excuses undermine your word. If you are ready to rebuild your internal credibility, close the gray area, and stack proof that you follow through, hit play now.

Listen to the audio, watch the official video broadcast, subscribe, and name the one commitment you will keep today.

NUGGETS

• Confidence is proof, not a personality trait. Self-confidence is built on evidence of repeated follow-through, not empty self-affirmations.
• Stop living in the gray area. Make clear, definitive choices up front—either commit 100% or explicitly decline, but stop making casual promises.
• The snooze button is a daily integrity check. Breaking your first promise of the day trains your brain to treat your own word as optional.
• Financial skin in the game drives execution. Investing real capital forces you to value follow-through and capture a return on your commitment.
• Survive the boring runway with small wins. Progress lives in the repetitive middle steps; counting what went well prevents learned helplessness.
• self trust vs motivation mindset
• how small broken commitments ruin confidence
• snooze button integrity test
• rebuilding self confidence through follow through
• learned helplessness in personal growth
• money as accountability framework
• why do I lack motivation to follow through
• how to stop making casual promises you keep breaking
• overcoming the trust recession in personal development
• how to stick to a system during the boring middle section
• counting small wins to build self trust
• why paid commitment changes execution behavior
• living lucky podcast self trust summary

Questions:

What is the difference between a lack of motivation and a breakdown of self-trust? A lack of motivation is often an emotional symptom, whereas a breakdown of self-trust is the underlying structural cause. When an individual repeatedly breaks small promises (such as hitting snooze, quitting a routine early, or making casual commitments they abandon), the subconscious mind stops taking their intentions seriously. This loss of internal credibility manifests as procrastination, low self-confidence, and a perceived lack of motivation.

How does hitting the snooze button impact personal self-trust? Hitting the snooze button impacts self-trust because it represents a failed commitment made at the very start of the day. Setting an alarm creates an explicit contract with yourself to wake up at a specific time. Reneging on that promise minutes after waking trains your brain to treat your own intentions as negotiable, leaking confidence into subsequent decisions throughout the day.

What is the "boring runway" in goal setting and execution? The "boring runway" refers to the middle phase of personal or professional growth, situated between initial excitement and final achievement. This phase is characterized by repetitive, unglamorous actions where visible results compound slowly. Maintaining self-trust during the boring runway requires shifting focus from immediate outcomes to counting small daily wins.

• The Motivation Illusion: Why your real issue is internal self-trust Jana and Jason open the episode exploring why quitting diets, delaying alarms, and breaking commitments drains your confidence bank account.
• The Cost of Casual Promises: Why "Let's do lunch" ruins your word Analyzing how making casual, insincere social commitments trains your brain to discount your own statements. Learn to make clean, definitive choices.
• The Snooze Button Leak: The daily test of personal integrity Unpacking the relationship between morning alarms and self-respect. Discover how waking up on time creates an operational baseline for executive follow-through.
• The "Someday" Drift: Why we abandon how we wanted to feel Jason explores how performance for others distances us from early dreams, teaching us that our personal goals carry zero priority.
• Conference Insights & Money as Accountability: Lessons from Jason Wojo Recapping key insights from a live business conference. Learn why putting money on the line shifts behavior and forces real accountability.
• Filtering Advice: Stop taking guidance from unproven sources Jason's take on seeking advice. Discover why learning from mentors operating at a higher scale prevents costly trial and error.
• System Resistance: Why high-performers try to modify proven blueprints Jason admits to fighting systems by claiming "my situation is different." Learn how trusting proven systems removes execution friction.
• The Trust Recession & Learned Helplessness: Breaking the failure cycle Jana explains how stacking evidence of past incomplete programs breeds distrust. Learn how to break learned helplessness by focusing on execution reps.
• Counting Small Wins: How to navigate the boring runway Wrapping up with a practical confidence-building tool. Learn how auditing what went right builds the momentum needed to sustain long-term self-trust.

self trust vs motivation, snooze button integrity test, learned helplessness reframe, money as accountability, counting small wins, boring runway momentum, bank account values audit, living lucky journals, the four-minute formula, living lucky frameworks

Transcript

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Motivation Vs Self Trust

Jana Shelfer 0:00

You may think you have a motivation problem. What if the real problem is trusting yourself? Every time we stop a diet.

Jason Shelfer 0:09

We tell ourselves we're gonna go somewhere and then just say, I don't think I can make it tonight.

Jana Shelfer 0:13

Every time we hit snooze, we are losing confidence in our own word. Today we're gonna talk about how to gain your own trust back. I'm Jason. And we are Living Lucky®. You are too. We're talking about trusting yourself, which really equates to confidence. Yes. Am I right? Self-confidence. Am I right or am I right?

Jason Shelfer 0:52

Right, Lisa Nichols. That's so funny. Am I right or am I right? There's only one option here. Yeah, and a lot of times we also see this on our calendars when we say, one day I will,

When Your Word Loses Value

Jason Shelfer 1:04

someday I will. But the the most important thing that I've seen in myself is over the long history of time is looking at where did I say, just in a casual conversation, let's get together? Or yeah, let's we've all been guilty of that. Let's do this next like next weekend. And then you let the week go by, and then you're like, I just don't feel like it today. You know, and then you come up with that, hey, I'm I I'm too busy, or you come up with the excuse. So we've committed.

Jana Shelfer 1:38

Yeah.

Jason Shelfer 1:39

We've committed in the moment, and then we've said, you know, I just I don't feel like our soul doesn't really want to do it.

Jana Shelfer 1:48

However, the minute that we don't follow through with our word, then our word is becoming less and less valuable.

Jason Shelfer 1:57

Yes.

Jana Shelfer 1:57

It's almost like we're teaching ourselves to not trust ourselves.

Jason Shelfer 2:03

Yeah, and you think about like currency, yeah. People set up trust, you know, with their bank accounts or with their finances.

Jana Shelfer 2:10

They do. I mean, they even call it a trust.

Jason Shelfer 2:13

Yeah, and this is taking your investment out. This is taking your interest in yourself out. Because we just lost credit. We lost credibility.

Jana Shelfer 2:22

It's so good. The interest in yourself.

Jason Shelfer 2:26

Yeah, we lost credibility in ourselves. So, I mean, that's that's really all it is. And it and we don't we don't call it that. We just call it, I don't feel like it right now.

Jana Shelfer 2:37

Okay, so I really I I learned this lesson many years ago when exactly the example that you just gave, when I would see a friend or even a neighbor, and I would say, you know what, we should get together. We should get together soon. Let's do lunch, let's do lunch. And really, I was like, I don't have time to go have lunch with this person.

Jason Shelfer 3:00

Uh I don't want to put my makeup on.

Jana Shelfer 3:02

Really, why did I even say that? It was just something to say. It was like a script. And and sometimes it does feel great in the moment. But I challenged myself that year and I said, if I say I'm going to do it, I will show up, then I am going to do it.

Jason Shelfer 3:20

Hell or high water.

Jana Shelfer 3:22

And it was a really hard lesson, and I learned very quickly to stop saying that.

Jason Shelfer 3:27

Yeah. It's decide right now, is this something I'm going to commit to or is it something I'm not? Yeah.

Jana Shelfer 3:34

Stop living in this gray area.

Jason Shelfer 3:35

If you're not committing to them, I'm committing to

The Snooze Button Confidence Leak

Jason Shelfer 3:38

me.

Jana Shelfer 3:38

And I find, I find sometimes with my snooze button, my alarm, I have this relationship where when I really get intentional and say, you know what? If I set my alarm for this time, I'm going to get up at this time. And if I start allowing myself to, oh, I'm going to snooze a little, or I'm going to get up a little later, or we're guilty of this. You and I totally have done this.

Jason Shelfer 4:05

I'm going to give back a little bit.

Jana Shelfer 4:06

I mean, we we've had times, periods of our life when we've been on this side of the teeter-totter. Oh, yeah. And if you really look, but even just in getting up when the alarm says get up, you'll see an overflow of how that affects other parts of our life. Am I right or am I right?

Jason Shelfer 4:23

You're 100% right.

Breaking The “Someday” Habit

Jason Shelfer 4:24

And another option in this is where are we telling ourselves that one day I will? Where are we telling ourselves that someday I will? Yeah. You know, we back when we were five, six years old, we had a dream.

Speaker 4:37

Okay.

Jason Shelfer 4:38

And we said, one day I want to, well, I want to. And it doesn't have to be the specific dream, but it has to be that experience. Like, what did you want to feel? What how did you want to experience life? And then you let things get in the way. You got busy being busy, you got busy performing, you got busy being something for someone else.

Speaker 4:57

Okay.

Jason Shelfer 4:58

And you put a distance between you and how you wanted to experience life. That's right.

Jana Shelfer 5:04

And so what you're saying then, we stopped trusting ourselves that we mattered in our dreams. We stopped trusting that our dreams even mattered.

Jason Shelfer 5:12

Yeah. And then so then we lost confidence in ourselves. Because we didn't say I was I'm going to put it on the calendar. That confidence make it happen.

Jana Shelfer 5:21

That confidence comes down to just that little, that little pivot. The people who actually do what they say, say what they do, those are the people who are more confident in life. Yeah. And they started doing that at an early age. Because somehow, somewhere along the way, they were taught maybe accountability, maybe consistency, maybe, but they learn to trust themselves.

Jason Shelfer 5:50

Yes.

Money Creates Real Accountability

Jana Shelfer 5:51

No, so Jason and I, we went to a conference this past weekend. It was the Jason Wojo Business Conference, which I really liked. Did you like?

Jason Shelfer 6:00

Yeah, it was really good.

Jana Shelfer 6:01

It was really fun. But something that he said is money equals accountability. I believe that's what he said. He said motivation equals results.

Jason Shelfer 6:14

Right.

Jana Shelfer 6:14

But money equals accountability. So when you start putting your money where your mouth is, you tend to show up better. You tend to show up differently.

Jason Shelfer 6:25

Yeah, and you can check to see where your accountability is and where you're spending your money.

Jana Shelfer 6:30

And it's so funny that you know, when it comes to trusting ourselves, uh, we often say, hey, I'm gonna start a diet on Monday. Right? We say that, but until we put money into some sort of trainer, nutritionist, you buy somebody a $10,000 trainer, you're gonna show up and you're gonna, you're gonna do the work. And you're gonna you're gonna eat a little better, right?

Jason Shelfer 6:56

You're like, I am going to get my dang money's worth out of this.

Jana Shelfer 6:59

And why is that? Because we value our money more than we value our health sometimes. And I I hate to say that out loud.

Jason Shelfer 7:08

Well, it's because we we have this thing back behind us that like I can take care of that later. You know, it's like I'll I can I'll I'll make more money, or it's we don't put it's it's just a twist in how we value it.

Jana Shelfer 7:25

It's so weird though, because you know, everyone was at this conference because we all have businesses, and everyone was at this conference because we want to up level, up-level our business, maybe take it to a new height.

Jason Shelfer 7:41

One of the things he said was don't stop taking advice from people that aren't doing way better than you.

Jana Shelfer 7:47

That is true.

Jason Shelfer 7:48

Like, stop taking advice from people that are broker than you. Stop like if you're if you want health advice, don't take someone who's on on their deathbed, you know. Uh the take we and we talked about this in a podcast. Like, don't go to a dentist that doesn't have any teeth.

Jana Shelfer 8:02

Yeah, we we talked about it in last week's podcast.

Jason Shelfer 8:04

And so he's doing some a lot of the things in his business just on a different scale than where we are.

Jana Shelfer 8:11

So uh you have to give everybody in the room credit for just showing up on a Sunday morning, correct?

Jason Shelfer 8:18

And spending the day there.

Jana Shelfer 8:19

However, the people who will actually take action, put their money there, and go home and do the work and actually invest in everything that they learned, that's that's a very few percentage of the people that were in that room. Right.

Jason Shelfer 8:38

And it's and it's always gonna be that way. And until people start putting a different value on how much they trust themselves, because a lot of times we'll tell ourselves we trust ourselves. This is what I did with Tony Robbins for years. Yeah, I know. And I was like, and the the the thing behind it was is I would say I'm different. My business is different, my life is different. I'll take the information and I'll apply it to myself the way I do. You know, like I'll figure it out and I'll I'll do my work around and I'll make it work. And it's and when I think about it in a trust capacity, it's because I didn't trust that that system was a system that worked the way I work.

Jana Shelfer 9:25

Oh interesting. That might be a different topic.

Jason Shelfer 9:29

Well, and I think what really was is that systems are systems because they work. And if you work in the system, and one of the things is that I'll tell myself, you know, I don't like systems. Yeah, but I love systems. I love a system that makes things easier.

Speaker 9:46

Right.

Jason Shelfer 9:47

It's just I didn't want to comply with the system because sometimes systems are hard to learn. And I didn't trust myself to learn the system because that's the thing.

Trust Recession And Learned Helplessness

Jana Shelfer 9:57

Okay, so I mean, seriously, you just gave me another aha moment because right now we are in a trust recession. It's not just you, this is happening all over the globe. People have stopped trusting themselves, and the reason is is because we have been inundated with programs, knowledge, ways of living our life better, ways of being our best self, ways of exploring possibility, and we've had we have evidence of how that has not worked for us. Are you with me?

Jason Shelfer 10:31

100%.

Jana Shelfer 10:32

And so the more evidence that we start stacking of why these things don't work, the more that we start distrusting.

Jason Shelfer 10:43

It's a learned helplessness that's not uh it's not a problem with anyone, and it's just the default mechanism. We start stacking that evidence of this doesn't work.

Jana Shelfer 10:51

But the problem is, is we're not doing our part. Right. We're not showing up and we're not saying and doing exactly what we have committed. Like the universe wants to provide for us, correct? 100%. And it is waiting for us to do the universe is always providing. It's waiting for us to do the work, to do the reps. Sometimes you have to do the reps. We we lose trust in the the middle section. Oh like we get excited about something, right? We get excited.

Jason Shelfer 11:25

Yes, and you can see this in almost any relationship, whether it's a relationship with your job. We get motivated, we're and we're in creation.

Jana Shelfer 11:32

And we set these goals, and then in during the runway is the middle boring part. Well, and it's also boring part is where you gain your confidence, and you gain your confidence in just taking small, incremental, baby steps, and counting your wins.

unknown 11:52

Counting your wins.

Jason Shelfer 11:53

You know, like one of the part of our the second half of our formula, yes, where it's like, what went well? Oftentimes when we're starting a new system, starting a new formula, we forget that hey, something did go right, but we immediately we're going, what went wrong? Why shouldn't I do the next baby step? Right. And if we just say, hey, what what did I do well here? How did I make one small step forward? Then I can say, okay, well, I did make some progress. Right. I trust myself to make some small progress. So now tomorrow I can make some small progress.

Small Wins And Closing Thoughts

Jana Shelfer 12:33

We have jam-packed a lot into this one podcast. So I we may continue this conversation later this week because I think this topic is so much broader than a 12-minute conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Remember, luck does not happen by chance.

Jason Shelfer 12:53

We create our luck.

Jana Shelfer 12:54

Have a great day.