Today's quotation:

Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel.  And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too-- even when you’re in the dark.  Even when you’re falling.

Morrie Schwartz
Tuesdays with Morrie

Today's Meditation:

If you come from any sort of abusive or neglectful background, you know how hard it can be to trust other people.  We grow up not trusting in good things happening, not trusting people to come through on their promises, not trusting life to show us its best side.  We grow up thinking that the only thing we can trust is that promises will be broken and that other people can't be trusted to do what they say they will.

It's a terribly difficult feeling to work through and to leave behind; some people never do so because they don't ever realize that it's part of their psyche, that it's a natural but unpleasant result of a lifetime of broken trust.  But it's something that we need to get a handle on because most people on this planet are trustworthy, and we do them-- and ourselves-- a huge disservice when we don't trust them.  So much of what happens in our lives is the result of other people's actions that we must trust others or face a lifetime of negative expectations, which usually bring about negative results.

It's a terrible reality that our expectations can cause our results-- we tend to find people who aren't trustworthy, and they keep reinforcing our lack of trust in everyone.  We must keep in mind that our unconscious efforts to sabotage ourselves in order to make our beliefs true are more of a problem than anything that happened to us in the past.  If the people in our lives aren't trustworthy, we need to search out people who are, and make them part of our lives.  If they are trustworthy and we don't trust them, the problem is ours and we must deal with it.

When we can trust others, we can spend our lives in much more positive ways.  Some may not live up to our trust, but they're the exceptions rather than the rule.  The way we treat others is the way they treat us back, and if I want other people to trust me, then I need to trust them-- and I need to avoid the people whom I know I cannot trust, to keep them from poisoning the well.

For further thought:

The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way to make people trustworthy is to trust them; and the surest way to make them untrustworthy is to distrust them and show your mistrust.

Henry J. Stimson

more on trust

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