Several years ago my son shot his BB gun and broke a window in someone else’s car.
He was sick to his stomach about it.
The guy was great, I sent him right down to the glass shop and paid for a new window in his car. Then had my son pay me back for the window which was about $150.
Easy.
When you can fix a problem with money, it’s not a real problem.
There are some things money can’t fix.
Trust is one of those things. If you don’t have trust, you have a big problem and you might not even recognize it.
No amount of money in the world can fix a trust problem.
A lack of trust creates animosity, resentment, resistance, friction, jealousy, anger, aggression, revenge, and lawsuits. Everything is harder when you don’t have trust.
Trust is scarce in our world. When you build it you have something not very many people have. It’s a reputation you want and it speaks to your character.
People don’t protect against you when they trust you, they happily give their hearts, hands, blood, sweat, and tears for you and they feel good about it afterwards. You can’t buy that, you earn it.
My daughter is a great kid and she does well in school. She works hard at school and tries hard to do her best. The teachers give her the benefit of the doubt all of the time.
Her school hands out “choices forms” when a student makes a bad choice. After several choices forms you start to lose privileges.
She decided she wanted to get one choices form before she left the school just to say she wasn’t always a “good girl”.
I explained to her that one choices form would start to erode trust. It wouldn’t be about that one choices form but the fact that teachers would change their opinion of her and she would no longer receive the benefit of the doubt.
My boys didn’t get the benefit of the doubt at that school. They were boys. They made some bad choices and had the fun friends who were facing getting expelled because of so many “choices forms”. They had to walk a much tighter rope because they weren’t trusted.
Once trust is gone it is almost impossible to restore… and you can’t buy it back and you have to work ten times as hard to gain an ounce.
So while the days are harder than usual and your emotions are on a roller coaster, I encourage you to make choices about what you say, how you react, and how you lead and that are based on building trust.
Your future self will thank you.