One of the hardest things to gain after it is lost is trust. At one point or another, we all lose trust in someone or something. At some point you will also make a choice in your life that will cause someone to lose trust in you. The hardest thing is to rebuild trust after you have lost it.
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on another course to help with people dealing with self-confidence; it’s been one of the hardest to complete. So I wanted to write some of the things I know about building trust and confidence. Hopefully you and I can both learn from this.
I decided to write this today in one of my favorite Starbucks, one where it’s quiet yet it seems to have a lot of traffic of people coming by ordering their drinks and walking away. I watched the last five people who are at the counter to pick up their drinks. Some just pick it up and walk away, no tasting to see if it’s OK, no looking to see if they got the right drink. Some look to see if the cup is marked the way they asked for the drink. A few are taking a taste, feeling the cup to see if it needs to have a sleeve on it or not.
This showed me three levels of trust as they picked up their drinks. One is the person who has trust in the system or maybe it’s trust in the barista who serves them every day. But it’s with full trust that they just pick up the drink and walk away. They don’t have to check anything about the drink. Imagine in your life being given something, maybe told something is ready for you, and being told to have total trust, faith that it’s right. Whether or not you can do this has to do with whether or not you have been hurt or had your trust broken by someone. If you haven’t suffered those things, you may be able to move forward never questioning it in life.
The second level of trust would be the person who is pretty confident but wants to take a small test to make sure things are right, to see if something needs to be adjusted. In their lives, they have some faith but don’t take a small step in faith, don’t put full weight on the foot before taking the full weight off the other foot. This is one of those things you would do to see how bad your foot would be hurt if you fell. You want to be able to trust, but a small bit of fear makes you test to make sure it works.
Today I was able to take a friend on a ride on the back of my motorcycle. This was her first time on a bike since the accident she was in last year in which her husband was killed. She took a small test of riding to see how she felt before buying a new helmet, buying new riding gear. It’s taking a small step not just a total leap of faith. This is my recommendations for you as a place to start if you have lost trust in your life. Take baby steps!
The third is the person who has lost all trust. You can tell them by the fact they looked to make sure the cup was marked right, then they tasted it, then they stopped and waited and tasted again. These usually are the ones who have to learn confidence all over again. These are the people that I want to help by writing the self-confidence course to help them to learn confidence. Before they do, they must get to the point in which they take the baby steps, working up little by little.
So how do you build little by little? Start by having friendships of trust. In my life I have full trust in many people. I have so much confidence I’m usually the one pulling the practical jokes on others, as I’m not afraid to have them pulled on me. It took me a long time of making baby steps to reach this point. I had to learn who I trusted, and who not to let that far into my life.
Your friendships are like the circles on a target. They have rings to them, the very core of that target represents those that are close to you and who you fully trust. Each ring has different levels of friends. As you head towards the outer rings they are more like an acquaintance than a friend. In my life, they get limited privileges on how close I let them. When riding my motorcycle, I have had many people pull out in front of me, and more than a dozen times cars just start pulling into me. Yes there are levels of trust on them. I know that if someone is driving while talking on a cell phone they are usually the most dangerous and I stay away from them. The ones that put a signal on and look in the mirrors are the ones who are making sure no one is in that spot, it does not matter if it’s me or a car they are looking for others around them. Those are the ones when you see them you get to build a fuller trust. On the bike there are levels in between.
So draw a target and rank those you trust and those who need a little more growth for you to have faith in them. Use this idea of the circles in your life to see who, or what, you can trust and not trust in your life. The next thing is to build a step-by-step method to keep yourself safe and soon you will see you have confidence in others. Once that is built, you can build confidence in yourself.
I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. Why don’t you live the life you always wanted, learn to love what you do, and those you share life with? Get a plan today to become a RockStar in your world. I’m here to help you.
