Creating Trust

Trust – hard to earn easy to lose. I’m currently reading Stephen M R Covey’s “The Speed of Trust”. Have you ever noticed how a particular book “finds” you? Someone recommends a book about Italy, when you’ve just started to think about a trip there, or a book about Divorce is on the best seller list when you are trying to figure out how to extricate yourself from an unbearable situation. Or a book crosses your path on how to deal with a lack of Trust.

Covey’s book on Trust reached me at just the right time. It takes a lot of reflective inner searching to know when to give up on someone and when you just “know” that they cannot be trusted. It hurts. You feel like you’ve given it your open-hearted best efforts, but let’s face it, we are just human. We too, have our frailties, we are constantly bruised by our interactions. We do not need to keep hitting our head against the wall, and giving away our freedom to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

Preserving a positive relationship with a colleague or family member,  of not rocking the boat, and knowing that this person would not or is not willing to share the life-preserver is painful. It is difficult for anyone who does not perform at this survival level, to understand how some only behave at this level. We expect more of ourselves and more of others. But some people are not capable of this; they are vulnerable in their lack of confidence, their anxiety, their borderline honesty. All we can do is what does not come naturally to us, and that hurts the most.

We watch our back and cover our butts.

How do you behave when you know that you are being thrown to the wolves?

I highly recommend The Speed of Trust. It will surely provide you with tools and strategies to stay honest and live with integrity.