Originally posted on Facebook HERE
Late post this week. We drove back from a business meeting in Chicago today. While we’re gone, we have people stay at our house for us and take care of the property and our dog. This weekend we turned the keys over to someone we had met briefly twice before and found through the internet. Not anyone who was a friend or family at all before this weekend. We’ve used in home dog sitters for years, and she came from a site we’d used in the past with success. She had good reviews there, we felt good about her when we met in person and we booked her to mind our house and our dog while we were away. Basically turned over everything we own. That’s a lot of trust. It turned out great, but every time you trust someone new there’s a little trepidation. Trust can be a funny thing. Once you feel like someone has betrayed your trust, it certainly affects your relationship with them from that point on – but doesn’t it really affect all your relationships from that point on? Aren’t you a little less likely to trust anyone after you’ve been burned? There are just times in our lives when we have to put trust in people we met not that long ago, certainly it happens daily in my business as a financial advisor. If you need a medical procedure, you’re sometimes placing your life in the hands of the person performing it on you after maybe one or two brief conversations. But at other times we won’t even trust someone we know to return something small like a book, a rake or an appliance they need. They say trust is earned, whoever “they” are. We certainly can earn people’s trust by our actions. Actions will show our integrity. People notice people who have strong integrity because they stand out. Laurie and I are generally trusting people I think. We will base our trust on instincts at times. The more you deal with someone who shows they’re to be trusted, the easier it is to trust them. And that can lead to disaster if you misread a situation and put your trust in the wrong person. Confidence men can be very convincing. Ted Bundy for example, played on all sorts of emotions to make initial contact with him look safe. Sometimes our trust can be torn apart by a person we love, too. A couple other terms that use the word trust are “trust, but verify”… and “blind trust”. Pretty much polar opposites. Blind trust is trust with a faith so strong you feel no need to ever think about being betrayed. “Trust, but verify” might not be a bad idea in many cases. If you feel something’s wrong, if you’re seeing things that just don’t seem right – I’d say verification might be a damn fine idea. In the meantime, stand tall in your own life with integrity. Be that person for the people in your life who they can trust. Every time. Be willing to extend that trust to others as well, but listen to your inner voice. It’s so great to have people you trust in your life. It’s one of the worst feelings to have that trust be used against you.
