Table of Contents
Trust Video Illustration
How we use the word “trust.”
“I trust you.” “Don’t you trust me”? “That person broke my trust.”
These are common phrases we often use in our lives. Subconsciously we know what it is, but we don’t bother to understand the basics. Breaching of trust, therefore, leads to emotional turmoils and shaking relationships.
What is meant by trust?
Trust is the unshakable belief that a person or entity will behave and function in the predefined fixed mutually agreeable ways without any anomaly.
If you give a $5 bill in a Subway, you trust the center to give you a fresh-bread sandwitch, everytime.
So, there are three components to trust.
- A set of rules.
- An agreement.
- Two parties.
The rules can be written or verbal.
The agreement can be written or verbal.
How to establish trust?
1. Establishing rules
1. Agreement is mutually beneficial.
2. Every agreement has an exit for both parties.
3. Implementation of the agreement is a gradual process called trust building.
4. Rules around which the agreement is built are often constant but are subject to change by mutual consent.
5. There is always a penalty and compensation for breaking rules and agreements.
So, say unambiguously, “I trust you to do ABC in XYZ.”
Never say “I trust you” because that is vague.
2. Why trust is always between two entities or individual?
It is therefore very simple now to understand that there are essentially three components to trust:
- Predictability
- Dependibility
- Faith
When you are predictable, people can depend on you to do your role in different situations(or irrespective of the situations). So, predictability is your quest, whereas people’s dependability on you and your delivery to those dependencies creates faith in you amongst those people. Once these three are practiced and sustained for several repeated occasions, there is a trust established between you and those who depend upon you.
3. Examples of trust
You may trust your doctor for the medicine but not the disease affected by that. You can trust a car to brake at a red light when you are crossing the road, but you can't trust the driver to brake when you walk at green light.You can trust your partner not to cheat you as long as you have openly discussed all the above five and agreed. You can not trust a partner to not cheat you if you both have not defined it and agreed to it. Don't blame the other for breaching. In non-agreement, your and your partner's trust is different.You may trust your driver to safely take you to the destination, but you can't trust a drunk driver to do so. So you trust your driver not to drink while driving.Why trust is a rare virtue?
Even though trust is between two entities, one with predictability is the one on whom others depend. Obviously, if you look into the world, employers are the people on whom employees depend on paying them salaries. There are far fewer job givers than job seekers. Therefore, there are fewer people in the population who has to remain predictable and deliver over and over again, whereas most other human population depend on such individuals.
Virtue=Wisdom+Power;
10% of the people in any population are dependable, whereas almost 90% of the people are dependent.
Power is hard to acquire. The power of earning money from the market, creating entities, and running entities and systems takes tremendous mental capacity. Hence trust is hard. Because 10% of the population at any given instance in history ends up succeeding in acquiring power, only a handful of humans ever remain trustworthy.
One can not remain indifferent without power. Stressful situations push humans towards survival, and survival is a hard game. When the going gets tougher, humans react differently, and so they appear to change. One with power does not get anxious under stress( such as economic slowdown, market crash, or pandemic), because they have the people and resources to help them through difficult times. Most others suffer in such situations.
That is why trust is a rare virtue because acquiring power is a rare pursuit. Powerful people prove their power through actions. They don’t have to tell people, “look at my power.” Because people can witness the power of such people through their actions, people trust them.
Why you can not trust anyone who says “Trust me.”
You have already understood that trust comes from power, power comes from the outcome, the outcome comes from actions, actions come from skills and patience, skills come from practice, and patience comes from the ability to handle stress; achieving all of these leaves an individual with no time to talk.
Those who talk are the ones who try to convince people because, deep inside, they know that they are powerless. So, before trusting anyone, you have to rationally measure their actions, and more so their actions under stress. Anyone with “trust me” is absolutely untrustworthy.
Only a doer and one with power can be trusted. A getter, or one who takes, can not be trusted. That is because the takers take. After all, they do not have power.
Therefore, when you help someone, do not help from the point of trust that they will return the favor, but rather do it with the belief that the favor will never be returned. A favor is not trusted. Favor and helping are unconditional, but trust is conditional.
What is meant by trustworthy?
In simple terms, trustworthiness means being indifferent, irrespective of the situation. If one lives a life with values, which do not change based on the situation, then whenever you are interacting with this individual, you will always be able to predict his behavior and actions. Trust is all about being consistent with actions and being uncompromising with that consistency.
Example: Often people are nice and polite when asking money from you, promising you to return in time. But then once they get the money, they show their true face. That is what is meant by breaking trust. Because the individual changed from being polite to rude after taking your money.
One of the fundamental trusts of any species, mammals, in particular, is the trust that mothers will take care of the baby till they are able to take care of themselves. Mothers have breast milk as soon as they deliver the baby. So, a baby trusts the mother to breastfeed after the birth and up to the age of 3 years till when the baby’s digestive system is well developed.
Mothers feel powerful because they feed babies irrespective of financial, economic, and social situations. Because that is the primary primal trust, women who have not breastfed often find it hard to trust, and children who are unfortunate to have not breastfed their mother become untrustworthy. This is because trust is genetically developed through the first three years of life.
Conclusion
We often don’t construct our rules and agreements in defined and finite ways. You get into trouble and emotional turmoils because you don’t accept the basic definitions and have an open conversation about them.
In critical relationships, business or personal, I prefer to write the nature of trust and the process. You may not need to get a sign of trust, but a small written document will help you to save yourself from being taken by a ride through bent reality.
Always know whom you trust and for what, and specify the exact narration without any vagueness.
I trust you that like any responsible readers, you will give us 5-star for this article and share in your circle.
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