Trust Is Dangerous

“Trust is to human relationships what faith is to gospel living. It is the beginning place, the foundation upon which more can be built. Where trust is, love can flourish.” -  Barbara Smith

It is emotionally painful when someone you look up to utters the words to you “I don’t trust anyone” when you have placed your trust and faith in them. As you listen to these words it makes you wonder with all the passion, compassion and care you had placed into that individual the person was just pretending to be your well-wisher.

You see trust is extremely powerful. A simple definition of trust is belief “that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc.”  Another definition that I read says “firm belief in the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; confidence or reliance.”

Let me simplify it further trust means faith, hope, confidence thus it is a powerful act, emotion and word.  What is the point if there is no trust in a relationship? This could be relationship in terms of such as work, friendship, family, government and love. The relationship is gone if there is no trust.

Even though trust is important and extremely powerful, at the same time it can be considered to be dangerous.  Trust allows you to form relationships with others be it at work, with service providers, business deals, your career, family and friends. The danger part of trust is that you have to take the risk to believe the other person or party will pull through for you.

Yes, in life you will come across incidents where someone will break your trust. Depending on how attached you get to the pain of the trust being broken you may decide not to trust anyone anymore. That emotion of mistrust unconsciously you will pour into different parts of your life such as your career, business, intimate relationships, friendship and family ties. That mistrust will in the long run will cause you to sabotage your own life but you will blame others.

“People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.” - Shannon.L.Alder

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states “Trusting requires that we can, 1) be vulnerable to others (vulnerable to betrayal in particular); 2) think well of others, at least in certain domains; and 3) be optimistic that they are, or at least will be, competent in certain respects.”

You can easily take the heartache of someone breaking your trust and unknowingly or knowingly damage your own behaviour. In turn, this leads to your own failure and then you wonder why you are not successful in your life. Trust is the foundation of success.

“A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.” - Harold MacMillan

My name is Rohit Bassi and I am the founder of In Learning. My mission is about sowing the seeds of passion to help you outperform yourself by enhancing your core critical skills of communication, leadership and collaboration. I have delivered workshops to the likes of Oracle, Harley-Davidson, Emirates NBD, Emaar, Alshaya, Baskin Robbins, Mazda and many more. Please feel free to contact me via rohit@in-learning.com or call on +971-(0)55-553-2275.