Whom do you trust? Family? Friends? Co-workers? Strangers?

In my opinion, our ability to trust is a direct reflection of our quality of life and within that our quality of performance at work. I am not an expert who has spent decades studying and researching trust. I am an active observer of what allows people and their organizations to succeed.

Let us look at some areas where trust is required. Our personal romantic relationships require trust. Being open and vulnerable is not easy and even less so if trust is not present. Based on several online discussion groups older daters who have had their hearts broken to have a much harder time trusting. I wonder does this affects other areas of their lives.

Not as in-depth as romantic relationships yet our friendship requires a level of trust. Many of us have different types of friends and I assume that brings with it different levels of trust.

For me in sports, trusting your belayer in rock climbing must be absolute. What is interesting here is we may trust someone absolutely and that might not even be a friend. Does this imply emotional fear is more potent than physical fear?

Now we get to business. It is often discussed that contracts are only as good as our trust of the other party to stay within the four corners of the document as agreed.

Marketers require trust so that people will buy products especially online. Can you say counterfeits?

For salespeople, trust is a significant portion of their bread & butter.

We know from countless surveys that trust in business, government, and all sorts of other institutions are at historic lows.

An interesting statistic for me is Japan has about 13,000 attorneys. America has over 1.3 million. Do you think we have problems communicating?

One reason trust has gotten so low in my opinion is as a society we have come to value money over life. How does that relate to trust? In other words, our institutions have stopped giving a crap about us as human beings. Companies study in detail how long you will stay on the phone to resolve a billing issue. When you hang up in disgust, they feel they won the money battle. They don’t truly care that you despise them.

Government is so divided not much gets done. I am someone who believes in government, yet it is hard to trust they have our back.

With identity theft and an assortment of other online crimes, one accidental miss clicks and we could be f*cked.

Sometimes I find it so stressful to deal with the clogged bureaucracy that surrounds our lives I understand homeless people who are presumable emotionally vulnerable, to begin with, who find it easier to just check out of the rat race.

Well, hopefully, I have not bummed you out too much. In my mind, it is vital to see the reality of our lives to address the challenges with a positive outcome.

As a firm believer in rainbows and unicorns, I trust good things are possible.

As a former world-class rock climber taking risks the scale of which many people find hard to grasp. I assure you there was a deep process that went into those adventures and the fact I am here to discuss it with you suggests I did a lot right.  The same holds true of my success in business. Being positive and upbeat does not mean we should not see the reality of our situation no matter even if it is dire.

Let’s discuss confidence and how it relates to trust. Belief in ourselves to me is the foundation of most all good things. Yet so many of us need to battle our own chattering minds second-guessing everything. Like self-love, I find my confidence is highest when I am in the present. All those past mistakes fade away, those future worries are not here yet. At this moment I and confident and therefore can feel good about trusting in situations with others.

This is where coherence and wisdom come in.

When we engage all our brain which includes, our memories, our senses, our knowledge, our experiences, and all that gets integrated into a point of view. Our confidence in our ability to trust goes up. I am not suggesting we blindly go ahead. Based on something one of my spiritual teachers suggested is to match the energy of the person I was learning to trust. Go no further on a limb than they do, yet do not lag behind either. We both have equal amounts of “skin in the game”. I am a huge believer in people having “skin the game”. It doesn’t have to be exactly the same, for example, sometimes someone puts in cash while the other puts in their time. For years I have gone to networking events where I hear folks say to me “Let’s, Partner”. I have learned the hard way, which means you bring me a business I will try to do a job. No skin in the game.

Not every path we start down is our path. Why do we judge ourselves so harshly when we discover we started down the wrong path? Failure is the BEST learning tool we have STOP fearing it. I have developed some terrific friendships with people I started to “partner with” no money was made, yet I gained a friend and a possible future valuable resource. By not being attached to a specific outcome I gained, just not what I expected.

It is easier to trust when we remain open. Not easy yet vital to our success.

As I have been saying for years in my public talks as well as in private discussions collaboration is one of the most important skill sets of the new or next economy. Yet I find we do it poorly. My feeling is when we do not have a level of perceived control, we are uncomfortable leading to failure of the attempted collaboration.

Trust requires us to leave our comfort zone. Painful yes, yet in the end generally a growth experience for us.

In my opinion, we are all collectively going through very trying times. Those of us who do our best to at least belly up to the bar of change and grow will thrive more than those avoidant souls.

So please do your best to trust, new people and new situations. Your future success most likely rides on you trusting in a thoughtful meaningful way.

To support yourself in this vital endeavor actively meditate, spend time in nature, pray or any of the practices we know scientifically bring about brain coherence which wisdom supports your confidence in trusting others.  

We specialize in working with organizations who want to want to collaborate and partner with other organizations that will match skin in the game. Trusting each other one mutually acceptable step at a time.

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