Who Are You When You’re Calm? Rethinking What It Means to Trust Yourself

How often do we label ourselves as "tired" when, in truth, we’re simply... calm?

We live in a world that celebrates hustle, high energy, and being “on” all the time. We’ve been taught to associate productivity with performance, momentum with value, and energy with trustworthiness. But what if the most powerful version of you doesn’t live in the peak—but in the pause?

Let’s challenge that belief together.

The Calm Conundrum In recent coaching sessions, I’ve noticed a recurring thread: people are deeply uncomfortable with calm energy.

It’s not just that we’re unfamiliar with it—it’s that many of us don’t trust it. We dismiss it, label it as unmotivated or unproductive, and feel pressure to “snap out of it.” But what if we paused long enough to actually examine what calm means?

The truth is, calm isn’t the absence of motivation. It’s a different nervous system state—one that we’ve often been taught to fear, avoid, or override.

Conditioned for the Climb From a young age, many of us internalized the idea that we’re only valuable when we’re doing. That being high energy equals being effective. That if we’re not busy, we’re falling behind.

So what happens when your body slows down? What happens when your nervous system starts asking for stillness instead of stimulation?

If you’ve linked calm with being unproductive or unreliable, your body may go into a stress response—not because you’re actually stressed, but because calm feels unsafe. And what’s the quickest way we’ve learned to re-ignite that energy?

Caffeine. Criticism. Self-judgment.

We use our inner critic as fuel. And it works—until it doesn’t.

Redefining Trust: Calm as a Place of PowerThe question isn’t just “how do I get my energy back?”The question is: Can I trust myself when I’m not at 100%?

Can you allow your calm energy to be enough?

Can you let stillness be productive?

Can you give yourself permission to exist without earning your worth through constant motion?

These aren’t rhetorical questions—they’re invitations.

Because the version of you that’s calm might actually be clearer, wiser, more intentional. But you’ll never meet her if you’re always sprinting away from her.

Try This: A Nervous System Experiment This week, I invite you to run a small experiment:

• The next time you feel low energy, ask yourself: Is this exhaustion—or is this calm?

• Rather than rushing to fix it, sit with it. Let yourself notice how you show up.

• Ask: What if this version of me was trustworthy? What would that change?

You might be surprised by the answers.

Your calm is not a weakness.

It’s not a flaw.It’s not something to push through.

It might just be the doorway to a more sustainable, more compassionate, more authentic version of you.

So I’ll leave you with this:

Who are you when you’re calm—really? And are you willing to meet yourself there?