Who Is the Judge, Who Is the Jury, in a Courtroom of Your Own Making?

Before you try to change your life, find out who you have secretly appointed to approve it.

Her phone in hand, the laborious debate about a decision she was considering for herself had already begun holding court in her mind. She was retired from teaching now, forty years given to elementary school children — and yet here she stood, thumb hovering over the button that would book the solo trip to the Greek islands she had dreamed about for fifteen years.

Somehow, in an instant, that dream became a courtroom scene in her own mind. Who was the judge, who was the jury, who was the prosecutor?

Well, actually, no one. This was all invention — the fabricated weight she gave the moment while simply trying to click a button that would take her one step closer to the Greek islands.

No one was in the kitchen with her. And yet it was suddenly very crowded.

Her sister’s voice arrived first — “isn’t that a little selfish, spending that kind of money on yourself” Then her late mother, unbidden as always:” what will people say, a woman your age traveling alone?” Her daughter’s voice slipped in next, gentler but no less loud: “are you sure that’s safe, Mom?” And somewhere underneath all of it, an old, half-forgotten version of her pastor’s voice, reminding her that a woman ought to be useful before she is ever permitted to be happy.

None of them had said a single word. They were three states away, or twenty years gone, or simply imagined for the occasion. But she stood in her own kitchen, in front of her own decision, running a full trial in her head — defendant and jury foreman both, convinced before the verdict came in that guilt was the only reasonable outcome.

She set the phone down without booking anything.

This is not really a story about travel.

It is a story about who gets a vote in a decision that was never actually theirs to weigh in on.

The scale of the courtroom does not seem to matter much. It can convene over something as consequential as a solo trip, or over something as small and faintly ridiculous as what happened to me one morning before I’d even had coffee.

I caught myself not wanting to tell ChatGPT that I’d slept badly and hadn’t followed through on my plan to interrupt my morning routine. You see, the night before I made a pact with a chatbot! And truly, automatically, I did not want to disappoint it. Mercy me.

Now don’t get caught up in the fact that I have conversations with ChatGPT. If that sounds strange to you, it’s only because you haven’t used the software yet. It is amazingly useful in all aspects of daily life, but for now, in this article, I’ll discuss how, when, and why I chose to give it authority — even though it is fake. And maybe you will recognize a pattern of politely choosing to hand over your own authority to others in the guise of being palatable…….. For their sakes, certainly not yours.

It seems to me there is something bigger here than my having a conversation with a chatbot. And lawd knows , the fact that I did not want to disappoint it is rather revealing about the depth of the habit of pleasing someone else — the habit, my friends, of handing over our beliefs or our authority in every subject area of our lives.

We quietly decide that certain people know more about our own lives than we do, based on nothing more than their role, title, gender, credentials, confidence, or position — preachers, teachers, husbands, doctors, therapists, coaches, grown children, experts, even technology. I think you know this happens more often than any of us would like to admit.

They rarely take our authority outright. More often, we hand it to them, quietly, and then forget we ever did.

You've done this too, probably this week

Once someone has been appointed, the arranging begins. Choices start bending around their imagined response: will they approve, will they think you failed, will they be disappointed, will they think you are foolish.

Without realizing it, you stop asking what you think, and start trying to pass an inspection nobody officially ever scheduled.

So it is worth asking, honestly. Who are you still reporting to, even when they are not in the room? Whose disappointment still changes your behavior? Whose voice shows up uninvited the moment you try to make a decision? Who have you quietly decided knows more about your own life than you do — and what title, role, credential, gender, or relationship is it that makes you doubt yourself in the first place?

Here is the central problem: sustainable change is nearly impossible while someone else still holds the final word.

A woman can retire, leave a marriage, move across the country, begin again, set a boundary, or declare herself free — and still, underneath all of it, be waiting for permission, approval, or reassurance. She has changed her circumstances without reclaiming her authority. And the second one is the part that actually holds.

None of this means ignoring wisdom or growing suspicious of everyone who offers an opinion. Advice is not authority; expertise is not ownership; support is not supervision; accountability is not submission. You've done this too, probably this week

Listening, learning, and reconsidering are all still available to you. You can do every one of those things and remain, at the end of it, the person who decides.

But naming the problem is not the same as solving it. Knowing you appointed ChatGPT as the judge of your morning does not automatically make you trust your own judgment tomorrow. Insight is not the same as evidence, and evidence is what self-trust is actually made of.

Trust in another person is never built by declaring it. It is built the slow way — YOU showed up,YOU meant what YOU said,YOUcame through, and eventually YOU stopped needing to brace yourself around her. Trust in yourself works exactly the same way, and most of us have simply never bothered to collect the evidence, because we were too busy sending the case file to someone else for review.

Start small enough that it feels almost embarrassing. Today, notice one moment where you already knew what was true before you asked anyone — which route to drive, whether you were actually hungry or just bored, whether that email needed an apology or didn’t. Let it count. Do not wait for a decision large enough to feel dramatic. The muscle does not build on the big ones first.

Do that again tomorrow. And the day after. Not as a resolution, which is a promise made to an imaginary supervisor, but as a habit of paying attention to the moments you were right before anyone else weighed in.

Eventually the evidence accumulates the way it always does, quietly, until one day the reflex to check with someone else simply does not fire. Not because you decided to be brave. Because you finally have a track record, and it is yours.

Back to that kitchen, and that phone, and that trip that had waited fifteen years. No one officially appointed a sister, a mother, a daughter, or a pastor to approve it. She did that herself, without realizing it — which also means she was the one who could undo it, the moment she saw it clearly.

Removing the appointment is the first step. Filling the vacancy with your own tested judgment is the second, and it is the one most of us skip.

Before you try to change your life, find out who you have secretly appointed to approve it. Then start building the only file that was ever going to hold up: the one on yourself.

Now if this feels overwhelming, don’t fret. I actually put all of this together in a tidy recource booklet for ease of living with yourself as you begin to learn to trust your own inner compass. It’s called Building Trust With Yourself. It is available via the PERKS page for paid subscribers. Now if you want to snag this for yourself AND! take advantage of my 20% discount on annual subscriptions, you can do that here:

PS- the marvelous BREAKTHROUGH gathering is usually held via zoom for paid members EVERY Tuesday. This week, it is being held on Thursday, July 30 at 7PM EST. Look for an email on the same day with the new zoom link. It turns out having my grandson Grant over for a few days required a little respite!

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.