Trust – Hand-in-Hand

All healthy, significant, and useful relationships are built on trust – the ability to rely on, count on, depend on, confide in, or have faith in someone else. And generally, we have only one chance at getting it right. The trust factor affects both our ability to make new relationships and keep the old ones. What kind of relationships? – with parents, friends, coworkers, spouse, and children.

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” – Stephen Covey

Trust involves challenges. Trust too easily, you get burned; trust too little, you stand alone. You’ll find it hard to have faith in somebody you don’t know. How do you know who to rely on, especially someone you don’t know? How can you depend on someone without evidence?

Rules you may apply for trust:

• Once someone gives you trust, you must not betray it
• Big or small, it’s a matter of integrity of keeping your word
• Depending on the intimacy of the relationship, it’s a matter of having nothing to hide
• Trust is reciprocal. The more one trusts, the more one can be trusted; give it, earn it
• Ultimately, when you trust somebody, you can then love them

You clearly need to know who you can trust and who you cannot. Once somebody betrays your trust, you should most certainly feel skeptical of the relationship in the future. Is this an isolated, one-time mishap or a behavioral pattern? One way to determine if you can depend on someone is to observe the depth to which this person is “I” or “me” focused. The more empathetic two people are in a trust-based relationship, the more they are committed to the success of the relationship and not just their own personal interests.

Trust requires a leap of faith and depending on the kind of relationship, it may necessitate some degree of verification. Trust is the key stage in building successful true, meaningful, and functional relationships. As outlined in Only Human: Guide to our internal Human Operating System (iHOS) and Achieving a Better Life, trust is Stage 2 on the relationship path and the gateway to a committed relationship. Without trust we will never move forward with our true, meaningful, and functional relationships.