"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." --Ernest Hemingway
Trust is something that is very dear to my heart. Be gracious with me as I try to explain this topic.
I find trust to be the key to my greatest accomplishments and improvements in life as well as also the most frightening thing I have to do on a daily basis.
Over time, the more I trust, the easier it gets.
This includes trusting my wife, the process of life, my clients, my abilities, spiritual things, and the list goes on.
Trust is something that must be given to all people. I used to have a pretty big guard up and radar for those that I thought I should not trust. I have had to change that and take a big step back and see that I myself have broken trust before.
We are all humans, worthy of trust.
We are all humans, who break trust.
This helps. It helps me see a bigger picture. It helps teach grace and forgiveness. It helps to observe why people break trust.
I think for me, when I break trust, its because I think I know better. I think I have it figured out. I think I have more experience. I am saying to the person, I hear you, but I don't believe what your saying. So much to the point that I think it's worth doing my own thing and then dealing with the consequences later.
I break trust based on past fear and hurt.
It's hard to gain trust, its easy to lose trust.
I gain trust from people by doing what I say I will do. By being honest about who I am and what I can deliver. I think thats a huge part that many people miss. I have learned it the hard way.
In order to be trusted, you must know who you are. The more you know who you are, the more you can be trusted.
Building up trust with others is as simple as doing small things over and over again that usually leads to larger things. But sometimes large things are all the small things.
Many time in arguments when people hurt my feelings or break trust, my human nature is to get angry. To be furious. I want to see them pay. This is not healthy. It is not really what I want. It is a reaction.
After taking sometime to look at the situation and after a person apologizes, it is so hard to just forget what happened. I don't know if we have to forget what they did.... but I have had to make the choice to book end that situation.
That was then, this is now. Not all moments are that moment. I like to think that, that moment when the person broke trust does not become their identity. I have to fight for that type of thinking.
When someone has broken trust, and they apologize and try to earn your trust back, that is step one. Its on you to trust them with that statement. Obviously there are situations where trusting someone who continually abuses you in a mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual way must be dealt with differently.
But for the most part, trust must be given again. If someone says they will do better, try better, think differently, approach it differently, everything in me kicks against that. I have the voice in my head that goes... "yea right".
That voice is a child, it comes from a place of hurt, it is valid, but it is my responsibility as an adult to challenge that voice. To take responsibility for that voice.
I have to start the trust process again. I also have to realize that when someone breaks trust, it is not a reflection of me. It is not my identity. I have found myself in situations where I think they broke trust because of a flaw on my end, because I didn't say enough or do enough. I have had to lay that burden down.
Maybe you can relate.
It is important to have trust in your life, to trust people, to trust that you can trust. I find that it is a hard pattern to break. Maybe the hardest, but the more I practice trusting people with myself, the more I find my adult voice chiming in... saying ... "YES, there you go, your trusting, you are loved, you do have people in your life who care about you, and there may be hurt and pain, but fighting for real life relationships is worth it".
I know that when I do not trust, I am isolated, alone, and feel detached. This is not what we were created for.
So today, be a person that is trustworthy, be a person who extends grace and trusts someone again. Be a person that will fight thru and grow and heal from past broken trust. Have hope that people can be trusted again. We all can change and grow and we all deserve to be trusted again and again and again.