3 Simple Shifts To Building Trust In Your Decision-Making as an Entrepreneur
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 hours ago
- 8 min read
Mike Wiley Jr. is a licensed Clinical Therapist & Mental Coach for professionals across sports, business, and entertainment. He is the founder and owner of MadeMind Wellness & Performance, a private practice specializing in therapy, coaching, and consultation services promoting mental health, improved work performance, and core values integration.
All day, every day, entrepreneurs are making decisions. From the moment they wake up to the moment they end their day, scenarios are presented, options are pondered, and choices are selected. Some of the actions they choose are productive, some are dysfunctional. Some of the actions they take propel progress, some stifle it. Some choices are the product of thoughtful planning and reflection, while others are made impulsively, with little to no information or purpose.
The point is this: whether made consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or reactively, with purpose or amid uncertainty, successes and failures for entrepreneurs are shaped by their choices. That’s why, for entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders of people, decision-making is not just any skill; it’s a core life competency essential to building and sustaining long-term success in personal and professional endeavors.
Success is a reflection of our decision-making
If success truly is the sum of our choices, then both the quality of those decisions and the trust we place in our ability to make them matter greatly. For entrepreneurs and business owners in particular, developing trust in your overall judgment, evaluation processes, and decision-making abilities is key to becoming the type of principled, decisive leader capable of taking their business to the next level.
For the current and aspiring entrepreneurs reading this article, consider this question:
How much do you really trust your decision-making?
And to take it a step further:
How does someone even learn to trust themselves more?
Are you a person who fully trusts your own judgment, or do you often find yourself second-guessing, overthinking, or relying on external feedback and validation? Do you ever read these articles about ‘the importance of confidence and self-belief’ and think, “Okay, I know they matter, but how do I actually build them? What does that even look like?”
No matter where you fall on the spectrum, you’re in the right place.
Trust is built through combining its ingredients
Here’s what most people don’t realize: trust and self-belief aren’t singular traits you either have or you don’t. They aren’t “either-or” or “this-or-that” binaries. They are composite compounds comprised of habits, thought patterns, experiences, repetitions, and beliefs developed over time. And like any compound, its overall integrity at a macro level depends on the strength of the individual components on a micro level, meaning entrepreneurs seeking to increase trust in their decision-making should focus on the process of improving the individual components of trust themselves.
The good news? Developing a process for increasing trust in your decision-making as a business leader doesn’t need to become rocket science, nor should it. In fact, it simply requires identifying a few of the individual components of trust and building systems for gradually improving your understanding and performance in those areas.
3 high-impact strategies to boost trust in your decision-making
1. Embrace radical accountability
To begin, start by embracing the idea that you have full ownership over your life and professional decisions, your mindset, your emotions, your choices, and the results they produce. True confidence comes from feeling a sense of complete control. If you’ve never initiated an internal conversation about what it might look and feel like to take full control of your life, it’s likely you may be unfamiliar with operating within the feeling of absolute responsibility. As successful entrepreneurs and business owners are aware, at the end of the day, it’s on you as the leader to make things happen. This is especially important for those of you earlier in the journey as the “Director” of each department of your business, with a staff of one (I’ve always found it funny to label yourself a CEO when you’re the only employee).
If you’ve ever struggled with the results of past decision-making, inexperience, indecisiveness, or trusting your process, it may even initially seem counterintuitive to “accept blame” and take full accountability for your decisions, especially when you may have lacked the necessary experience or control necessary to perform at a higher level.
To be clear, radical accountability is not about accepting blame for failures. It’s about assuming responsibility.
Radical accountability isn’t about blaming yourself for every misstep or hardship. It’s about recognizing that, even when circumstances are out of your control, for whatever reason, the power to respond effectively is always in your control. And that’s where real power lies.
Feeling stuck in a negative mindset? You can choose to read a book that challenges your thinking, seek therapy, or explore practices like mindfulness or journaling. Struggling with emotional reactivity? There are countless resources, coaching, courses, and articles that can help you regulate your responses, process your feelings, and rebuild emotional control.
How does this relate to business and better decision-making? Well, remember “entrepreneur” is no more than an identity you embody, a hat you wear while on the job, but the development of the person underneath that identity is what truly counts. A byproduct of developing your personhood is improving your performance as a professional.
As you take more and more radical accountability of your growth journey as an individual, specifically taking ownership of your personal development, life no longer feels like something “happening” to you; it becomes something you create and design. Business is no different. By applying this mentality to your professional approach, failures quickly stop being viewed as setbacks, instead transforming into lessons and building blocks.
This is why developing a mindset of radical accountability is the first and perhaps most important step toward reinforcing self-trust.
Remember: Even when you have no direct control over a situation, you can always influence outcome probabilities in your favor by controlling how you prepare, interpret, and respond.
2. Live through your values
Your values are the internal compass guiding your decisions and priorities. Ideally, values should serve as your ‘filter’ for processing information, navigating relationships, structuring your lifestyle, and making business decisions.
There are several ways to identify your values. Some are easily identifiable by the things you enjoy and how you prefer spending your time and resources, while others remain hidden below the surface, uncovered once you recognize the feeling of something missing in your personal or professional life.
When our personal and professional lives are fulfilled, it’s often because we’ve found ways to integrate values we aspire to live through into our present reality. When you're unclear about your values or worse, living out of alignment with them, life and business can feel unfulfilling or off track.
One of the reasons living through your values naturally reinforces confidence in your decision-making is that as you begin to do so, and observe your life and business gradually align with your intended reality, trusting your ability to create the type of business you seek becomes easier to fathom. In a nutshell, living through your values creates a bridge between your intended, desired reality and the present moment. This is how you bring your best life and business identities to life.
So, ask yourself: What are the values you aspire to live by?
Start in your personal life, and work from there. Maybe the values you seek are more connection, creativity, integrity, or adventure. Maybe they include more structure, planning, and intentionality. Take some time to truly think about who you are as a person in the present, as well as who you’d like to become over time. Next, do it again, but this time from the context of who you are as a professional and who you’d like to become. Think about where your business is currently and where you’d like it to get to over time, identifying the values that are most likely to help get you there.
Whenever you notice a gap between your aspirational and actual, lived values in the present, build a plan to close the gap. That’s your starting point. Brainstorming practical strategies for integrating your aspirational values into the present moment is where the real work begins.
For example, if you value family but rarely see your loved ones, how can you restructure your schedule to create space? If personal growth is important to you, what small investments in books, classes, and time for reflection can you make today?
Again, living through your values is about bringing the aspirational aspects of your ideal life into the present. As you begin to act in alignment with your core beliefs, the gap between who you are and who you want to become starts to close. That’s what you want. And with that comes a powerful byproduct: trust in your ability to successfully and consistently act in your own best interests and desires, an integral skill all entrepreneurs must master to maintain progress and integrity over time.
One thing is for sure: entrepreneurs who know who they are as people and are intentional in their personal development are more likely to trust their ability to build sustainable, thriving businesses.
3. Give yourself grace
Self-trust isn’t built in a straight line. Setbacks, mistakes, and off-days are inevitable. The difference between those who bounce back and those who spiral towards negativity often isn’t how they handle success, but how they characterize shortcomings and failures. When it comes to developing and maintaining confidence and self-belief in your decision-making, how you treat yourself when you’re down often matters more than how you do when you’re up.
Giving yourself grace means recognizing that failure is not a verdict, it's feedback. It’s a chance to learn, refine, and grow. If perfection is the bar, you’ll always fall short. But if growth is the goal, then every misstep becomes valuable information, a lesson instead of a loss.
When you miss a target, it often isn’t because you weren’t trying hard enough. More likely, you lacked the right tools, experience, or context. Grace helps you recover faster, extract lessons, and re-engage your efforts with more energy and clarity. It’s about reorienting your focus toward what can be done moving forward, where you still have power to create positive change. Outside of extracting a valuable lesson, nothing more can be done about something that’s already happened.
Additionally, learning cannot be maximized in a state of anxiety. Beating up on ourselves for not knowing how to do things we were never shown often does nothing more than reduce our learning capacity, along with the other negative mental, emotional, and physiological effects it may have on our overall health.
Think of it this way: Would you trust someone who berates you every time you fall short?
Probably not. The same applies to the relationship you have with yourself. Trust is built when you show up consistently, even when things don’t go perfectly. There’s an old saying that we are often our worst enemies. What’s often missing from that statement is the reality that, through training, commitment, and repetition, we can also become our best friend.
You do not have to accept your thoughts at face value. Challenge yourself to be positive, or at the very least neutral, and don’t accept negativity simply because it was the first thing that came to mind. Give yourself grace. Practice loving yourself more. Learn to view life as a series of lessons, not losses. Celebrate your moments of shortcomings as the opportunities you’ve created for yourself to gain further growth, clarity, and development as a person.
Final thoughts: Simplicity builds momentum
Learning to trust yourself more can be a lifelong process, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming or confusing. And although, as an entrepreneur, you may face the prospect of repeatedly making consequential decisions daily, you can become the type of business professional who thrives in that reality nonetheless.
You don’t need complex strategies or endless self-help tools. Remember, greatness is nothing more than a lot of small things done well. Take responsibility for your life, live by your values, and show yourself compassion when things don’t go as planned.
With these three shifts, you’re well on your way.
Read more from Mike Wiley Jr.
Mike Wiley Jr., Clinical Therapist & Mental Coach
Mike Wiley Jr. is a Clinical Therapist and Mental Performance Coach dedicated to helping elite athletes, entrepreneurs, and business professionals unlock their full potential--both personally and professionally. For more than a decade, Mike has guided individuals from diverse backgrounds in mastering coping strategies, strengthening emotional intelligence, and creating meaningful lifestyle changes rooted in their core values. His expertise spans work with top performers across the NFL, FIBA, NCAA, and the entertainment industry. Past clients include professional athletes and coaches, lobbyists, law enforcement, physicians, attorneys, business owners, investment professionals, and anyone else living life while performing under pressure.
