Trust

It's no secret that the world is a weird place right now. 

I was talking to a friend on the weekend about trust. How hard it is to trust the world and lots of the stuff in it.

Gone are the days where we answer phones without knowing who is calling. Gone are the days where we can open an email and click on a link without overthinking it. Gone are the days where the people that we meet look like their online photographs! Gone are the days where we believe that people actually write the blogs that they claim are their writing! (I am writing this, I promise.)

Trust is a huge problem and I predict that it is only going to get worse! 

In a world full of machines and algorithms,
our intuition is our secret weapon!

Trusting ourselves is the power we need. We need to stop outsourcing our power and the authority of our body's vibes to biometric gadgets. 

I sat with a young mother a few months ago who was using an app to tell her how long and which breast she should feed on! While a machine can provide us incredible data, I am super concerned that this comes at the expense of our natural instincts. Losing touch with our bodies is way more of a concern for me than any link that anyone can send me!

Listening to ourselves and others will become the superpower of the future. Self-trust comes from noticing, honouring, and understanding ourselves. Before you can trust anyone else, you’ve got to trust yourself. 

Learning to trust myself was a big job. I constantly made promises to myself that I couldn’t keep. Kidding myself that I was going to get up early, eat better, save money, and I didn’t! I had to learn to understand myself and be honest about what was important. Breaking promises to ourselves dent our relationship with ‘us’.

When your relationship with yourself is strong, you feel safe using your intuition. Intuition is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. But if you keep ignoring it, dismissing it, or second-guessing it, it gets weak and unreliable. 
Start small. 
Trust yourself to know when you need to eat. 
Trust yourself to know when you need a break. 
Trust yourself to know when someone’s talking crap. 

When you don’t trust yourself, you’re using energy to constantly doubt your decisions, to seek validation from others, to worry about whether you’re doing the right thing. That’s energy you could be using for actually living your life.

Trusting others comes from noticing, honouring and understanding others. Trust and energy are intimately connected. When you don’t trust someone, you’re constantly on guard. You’re using energy to second-guess, to watch for signs, to protect yourself. It’s exhausting.

When you’re in relationships, personal or professional, where trust is solid, you can relax. You can use your energy for creativity, for growth, for joy. You’re not wasting it on worry and vigilance. 

So how do you actually build trust?

Be consistent. 
Do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it. If you can’t do something, communicate that as soon as you know. Don’t wait until the last minute and then act surprised.

Be honest. 
If you’ve made a mistake, own it. If you don’t know something, say so. If you’re struggling, ask for help. Honesty builds trust faster than anything else.

Be reliable.
Show up. Be present. Listen properly. Follow through on commitments. 

Be vulnerable.
This one scares people but vulnerability builds trust like nothing else. When you admit you don’t have all the answers, when you share your struggles, when you let people see the real you, that’s when real trust begins.