I was a pretty normal person who was a rule follower and I generally obeyed the law. I can’t stand to be involved in drama, and I would rather talk about ideas than people, so gossiping isn’t really up my alley.
I never really put much thought into being trustworthy. I didn’t have an opinion on it and I didn’t really understand its value.
I trusted that people were generally fairly consistent characters. I would rather trust someone than be suspicious of everyone and that was about the extent of my thoughts on trust.
Looking back I can see that I was loosey-goosey. I didn’t focus on building trust with others, and in many cases I was probably destroying trust because of it. I would do the right thing most of the time, but sometimes it was easier not to do it, or I would use excuses and justifications why I wouldn’t do that thing that would build trust. Always they were selfish or self serving reasons that my ego decided were relevant.
Seth Godin taught me that trust was an asset.
There’s something about the word asset… it makes you pay closer attention. It means you have something valuable.
I had only ever thought of physical and tangible items as assets, so thinking of trust as an asset was a huge paradigm shift.
I started to pay more attention to how trust worked in my life.
Because trust is a slow build, it happens with every little transaction… a promise made and kept, returning what’s borrowed, sticking to your word, paying what’s owed, creating safe spaces, offering your best work, consistency, humility, and support.
When I was interacting with someone I didn’t trust, I armoured up. I went into protection and self preservation. I didn’t want to be associated, and I didn’t want them to affect my life because they pose too much risk so I generally tried to steer clear of the shady people.
I noticed I would give the world to someone I trusted. I wanted to be around them. I wanted to work with them, learn from them, and confide in them. They provided an element of safety to me that allowed me to bring out my best and most creative self.
There is way less “red tape” when there is trust.
People want to help you and they happily do favours for you. They believe you won’t take advantage of them or intentionally do them harm.
Life becomes a whole lot easier once you’ve established trust, you are operating in a world of its own.
The extra perk of being trustworthy is that you trust yourself.
You trust you’ve done the best you could do when someone accuses you of different.
You aren’t thrown off your rocker as easily when you know in your heart of hearts you were doing what you thought was the right thing.
Trust is an asset. It gives you freedom.
The more ways you can build it, the more ways it can be leveraged.
It might be one of the best kinds of assets there is.
There is no depreciation when it comes to trust. The more you intentionally build it, the more you use it, the more it’s worth. It appreciates, and it is appreciated.
It’s worth paying attention to and its an asset worth building.
It’s not the easy road, it’s not a short term gig and it’s easily destroyed.
It’s long term, it’s in the details, and it’s maybe the most valuable thing you can have… especially when you live in a world where trust is scarce.