Maria Arpa
This week
Trust?
Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
The Wednesday Whisper
What does it mean to have trust?
Trust in human relationships is absolute reliance on someone to do what they say they are going to do, when they say they are going to do it. If I want to partner with someone in some area of my life, we build trust by making agreements and either sticking to them or having another specific agreement for how to discuss change to the agreement. It’s often been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and we often agree to do things in good faith without examining whether we have the resources, capacity or permissions needed to carry out the agreement.
Building trust with another is based on good contracting, sensible tolerances and a clear evaluation process. This is great for collective project management and inter-dependencies. Whether it’s a couple planning a celebration dinner or a company setting a goal to increase revenue, if I agree to buy the wine on my way home and I forget or don’t bother, I make myself unreliable, or if the leadership say they are going to resource the team and then don’t keep that promise, they make themselves untrustworthy.
Before any of that, there is trust in myself. True trust is about understanding my motivations for making those agreements and understanding whether they are driven by fear that without rules no one will do anything and I won’t have the resources within me to cope with feelings of loss, loneliness or lack. Or whether the motivations are to have clarity on roles and responsibilities for a smoother relationship. Or whether it is to make conditions so rigid that failure is inevitable to feed an unhealed trauma.
Building trust in myself is the best building block for participating in life.
Maria’s Mindfulness Moment
The way I trust myself is to become more and more aware of my vulnerabilities, more able to speak about my limitations, more willing to ask for help and more willing to nourish myself. In this place I know what I can agree to and that means you can trust me more.
The Wednesday Whisper
What can you trust in yourself? What needs work?