The Trust Factor
In the Power of Solitude I mentioned trust as a very important factor to opening yourself to emotional sharing with anyone - to building real relationships that ease the pang of loneliness. Since thinking about it more, I realize that there is a very strong truth to that statement. But the truth is not in the ability to trust others - but in the ability to trust our own judgment about others - the ability to trust ourselves.
Trust, like other values-related words such as love and respect, carries a lot of baggage, and its meaning for us changes over time. In fact, over time each of us develops a unique relationship with trust, just as we develop unique relationships with the people in our lives.
It may seem odd to think of having a relationship with a word or a concept, but that is how I have been thinking of it the last few days. And consider the impact, the simple weight of the word and all it implies! There is so much emotion and meaning, such rich context and depth — such complexity!
How do you feel about trust? Does it make you happy, sad, fearful, angry, joyous, elated? How do you react to its presence or absence? Do you miss it when it’s not there? Do you welcome it when it comes into your life? Do you— and I’m quite serious in asking this question — trust it? And how do you invite it from other people or from yourself — or do you?
When trust is betrayed, especially when it’s betrayed repeatedly, it becomes difficult to trust at all, difficult to trust a relationship with trust. It sounds odd, but I am beginning to believe that it’s very possible to distrust trust!
There’s just one person in your life with whom you’ll spend every second of every minute of every day and night of your entire life: yourself. If you don’t trust yourself, if you don’t trust the advice you give yourself, the decisions and choices you make and have made in the past, your selection of your life’s paths, your ideas and dreams and aspirations — then you will find it difficult to trust others, and even more difficult to win their trust in return. And when you don’t trust yourself, you’ll find that you continually play smaller than you really are, that you don’t let your natural brilliance shine, and that you are afraid to show the world who you are and what you can do.
Now that I recognize this as a main issue in my life, I am going to begin trying to determine how to correct it.
But let me ask you - what is your relationship with trust?
