Trust is the bedrock of a real and profound relationship. Without it, our personal and social relationships will flounder and suffer. Trust is a basic component and all-encompassing principle that governs individual existence and communal human experience.
Kill a person's trust and belief in humanity, and you kill that unique individual's participation in their personal and social roles. A throng of distrustful and cynical individuals make for a community on the brink of alienation, restriction, and endangerment.
Trust binds people and strengthens relationships. Meaningful relationships are built on mutual trust. The severance of relationships is a result of mutual distrust.
What Trust Is
Brene Brown shares Charles Feldman's definition of trust, which is "choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else." Basically, faith means being vulnerable to the will and actions of other people. By sharing something valuable and important to us with another person, we give them access to our intimate fears and weaknesses.
We give them some power over our lives because their will and actions about what we share with them might be cause for negative feelings, potential distrust, and pain. We give them the key to strengthen, hurt, or break our relationship with them.
Trust Is An Act Of Bravery
When we trust, we are forging our connection with a person. This connection comes with boundaries and mutual respect for it. Trust comes over time with the smallest repetitive actions we do. Small steps may seem insignificant, but when they all add up to something that is big and life-changing. Just because you did something reliable once or twice is not enough standard for someone to trust you.
Our smallest actions must be consistently reliable and trustworthy. To be reliable, we must be clear about our limitations so that we don't make too many promises and take on roles we cannot fulfill. We need to be real and accept the fact we can't please everyone and be everything for them. We all have limited time, money, energy, and resources to give.
Apologies And Amendments
One of the marks of trustworthiness is taking responsibility for our mistakes. We own our mistakes when we apologize and make amends for them. Furthermore, keeping confidence is another important feature of trust. What I share with you will remain only with you no matter what and vice versa.
Once you share it with other people, those people will lose an amount of trust in you because if you can do that to me, then, most likely, you can do that to others, too.
Integrity Breeds Trust
Integrity breeds trust. But what is integrity?
Integrity is doing the right thing over and over despite the difficulties. If you are a person of integrity and can influence me to be the same, then that gives me an idea that you can be trusted.
Reciprocity And Trust
Reciprocity comes with trust. If I can ask for your help and you can do the same thing with me without being judged, then what we have is a trustworthy relationship. But if I can't ask for help from you and you feel the same way towards me, then what we have is mutual distrust. Support should be reciprocal and without judgment.
Lastly, generosity. If I make a mistake, apologize and make amends, you will do your best to make allowances within reason and on account of the depth of our relationship and connection. You will try to understand my position and the circumstances of my short-comings. You will give me a chance to explain and listen to my side of the story.
Trust is necessary and very important. Without trust, a relationship won't bear fruit. People will be unhappy and feel undervalued. Life will not be meaningful, and people will sleep with hungry hearts and without peace.
