Trust: The # 1 Issue In Living, Relating, Working & Even Sleeping.

Trust: The # 1 Issue In Living, Relating, Working & Even Sleeping.
By
Bill Cottringer

“Trust is the secular version of religious faith and faith is the growing belief and comfort in the truth and certainty of something you can’t see or otherwise prove.” ~The author.

Why is trust such an important issue in living, relating, working and sleeping? Because the levels to which we trust or distrust have a major impact on the outcomes of our efforts to grow into a quality life of happiness, success, contentment, well-being and peace of mind. Probably like nothing else. Consider the ramifications of these questions:

• How much trust do you have in life about getting good things and avoiding bad ones in return for the right efforts you give?
• How do you increase your trust in your partner when he or she has done something to erode what trust you had?
• Can you ever really trust a workmate to not stab you in the back when the right occasion occurs and you are not watching?
• Why do you easily let go and completely trust that your vital organs will continue working properly when you go to sleep at night without having any conscious control over what happens when you are sleeping?
• How do you go about determining when, who and what you trust or don’t trust?

Another good question is: How is all this working for you? Are you getting what you want? Or have you noticed the level of trust you place in a person or situation influences the way you act or react and what the actual outcomes are?

Trust is a very complex thing because: (a) it involves an interaction between thoughts, feelings, beliefs, perceptions, communication and behavior , all from many different reality realms and various accuracies, and (b) it influences the positive or negative results you get, which in turn either increase or decrease your trust reservoir, and again in turn, affecting future expectations and results.

Here are some other problems with trust:

• There is always an unresolved battle between absolute/universal morality vs. relative morality, as to what is right and what is wrong and why. This compounds the problem of knowing what to trust or not trust between two people from opposing viewpoints or even within the same person’s changing viewpoints.
• If the truth be known, we are really spiritual beings on a human journey and human trust issues can’t be resolved with human thinking which works within a human time zone; stepping up and accessing the higher consciousness necessary to meet this challenge is not easy.• We over-trust two things that affect everything else—our individual ability to know for sure the things that are trustworthy vs. untrustworthy, and our internal thermometer which finally decides the on or off switch as to how much to trust or distrust.
• We are all at much different places in the degree to which we are growing our own trustworthiness and the inclination for trusting in general, as well as the completeness of our definitions and understanding of trust.

In reality there are only a few things we can do to improve our understanding and application of trust to get better results:

1. It really is important to know that no one has ever figured this out—knowing for sure when to trust or not, or even to what degree is sensible? All you can really do is gather what information you think substantiates your hunches or produce the particular outcome you want, let go and look, listen and learn. If you don’t like what happens, then look for the connections between your thoughts, feelings, suspicions, quality and quantity of information, expectations and actual outcomes, which may need changing or rearranging to get better results.

2. Consider beginning the valuable process of separating the serious things that are controllable vs. the ones that aren’t, especially in the middle ground. I have never met anyone who knows for sure what happens to us when we die, but that is sure worth worrying about because the right response probably works out both here and there and the wrong one doesn’t work at either place, at least not in the long run, which we should be most worried about.

3. It is a good idea to separate the toxic influences of past burns due to naïve trust, from your present understanding and approach to current issues, because the connection has likely worn very thin and may even disappeared in reality, due to time and growth alone. Hence, try to judge each new situation as it comes, especially if you want to increase your ability to trust and get the results you want.

4. Eventually you will discover the power you have that continually comes along in the way of opportunities to choose your thoughts, which are really what starts the trusting equation in the right direction, once you figure out where trust comes from and where it goes. From a physics and philosophical standpoint, “what goes around comes around.” Or, by playing the “tit for tat” game of life right, you always get the right results, because you are controlling the most important controllable—you.

“The greatest appeal a person can create is in showing strength and certainty in adversity and sharing slight vulnerability during calm seas.” ~The author.

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA and also a business and personal success coach, sport psychologist, photographer and writer living in the peaceful mountains of North Bend. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, Passwords to The Prosperity Zone, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, The Bow-Wow Secrets, Do What Matters Most, “P” Point Management, and Reality Repair Rx coming shortly. He can be contacted with comments or questions at 425 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net