August 2011 Archives

Maybe you feel jaded because your trust has been betrayed and you have built high walls of protection  around your heart. Thats understandable. Life can be harsh, and people can be cruel. Now you have a choice. You can either let the betrayal define you and become closed and bitter, or you can rise above the hurt and become even more determined to do whatever you can to create a world of unconditional love. Trust without any guarantee that your trust will be respected. Love without any guarantee that your love will be returned. Be kind without any guarantee that your kindness will be appreciated. This is the dance of authenticity, the risk that being completely yourself will open you to the most satisfying of all relationships.

Learning to trust an unpredictable world changes your whole outlook on life. It makes the world a more open, inviting and friendly place. Don't give your trust recklessly. Give your trust mindfully; aware that there are no guarantees and there is always the chance you will be hurt again. In your calmest moments, you know that the risk to keep your heart closed is nothing in comparison to the joy of sharing love.

Are There Any Guarantees?

It seems backward, but the first step to building trust in relationships is to accept that there are no guarantees. Find your balance. Being jaded and being idealistic are equally dangerous when it comes to relationships. Be realistic. There are risks involved. But also believe. Believe that there is something stronger than the risk- that is the joy of dropping your guard with another person, letting that person into your private thoughts and dreams and making a commitment to love each other through thick and thin. Risk your trust in return for the adventure of being in love. Trust opens the gates to love.

Trust is more important than love. Saying to another person 'I trust you" is often more profound than saying "I love you." You may not always trust the person you love, but you can always love the person you trust. Trust is a gift. When you offer someone the gift of trust, you create an opening for something greater. Trust frees you from your fears and helps you give birth to love.

Building Trust in Relationships

Stephen Covey, son of Stephen Covey who wrote Seven Habits of a Highly Effective People, is the author of The Speed of Trust; The One Thing that Changes Everything. He offers the analogy that every relationship has a trust account. When you build trust, you make a deposit. When you break a trust, you make a withdrawal. The withdrawals are typically larger than the deposits. Therefore the fastest way to rebuild the trust account is to stop making withdrawals. The other way to rebuild trust is to make new deposits.

Here are 10 practical ways to build trust.

Practice with small and safe deposits first. There are big things to entrust to someone, and there are smaller things. How many people would you trust with your life savings? Probably very few. What about telling someone a secret, or starting a new business with someone? Again, very few. But would you be prepared to trust someone with a smile, or a kind word, even knowing that they might abuse your vulnerability? Start by making small deposits into your trust account and build confidence from there.

Gather information to get the greatest return on your investment. Trust, to a certain extent, is built on information. Instead of taking a blind leap of faith, take a calculated risk. Gather as much information as you can before you trust, but keep in mind that trust implies incomplete information. Wendell Berry said this- "Knowledge, like everything else, has its place, and... we need urgently now to put it in its place... Let us...abandon our superstitious beliefs about knowledge: that it is ever sufficient, that it can of itself solve problems... Let us give up our forlorn pursuit of the 'informed decision." Gather information, but also be prepared to take a leap with incomplete information.

Be transparent. Suspicions often emerge in relationships when people act in a way that is outside their character or routine. Even if you don't know why you are behaving the way you are, or if you don't know why you are pushing love away, just express that you are going through something and need some space. Transparency leaves less room for imagination that can easily create unnecessary drama.

Be consistent. Make sure your words match the way you live. Mean what you say and say what you mean. There is nothing that can devastate trust more quickly than inconsistency.

Believe in the strength of your partner. He/ she can deal with your feelings and doubts and questions. Express yourself as lovingly as you can, and trust your partner to stay with your honest thoughts and feelings.

Agree to boundaries with other family and friends. Your relationship has its own intimacy boundaries, and this has as much to do with sharing private information and personal feelings as sexual intimacy. If you are telling a friend something that you haven't or wouldn't tell your partner, you may have crossed a line into emotional infidelity. This can create major barriers to trust.

Don't confuse trust with forgiveness. They operate differently. You usually forgive people well before you trust them. You might forgive an apologetic jewel thief, but not leave him alone in a jewelry store. You might forgive people who have hurt you, but not leave them alone with your heart. If there has been a breach of trust, work at forgiveness as the first step towards trust.

Each person has their own trust account. People operate their trust accounts differently. You need to deposit into the other person's trust account in a way that speaks to that person. Garrison Keilor tells a story about a couple who had been married for many years. The woman wrote a sonnet to her husband that amongst all the things she loved about him it was when he was working on the broken washing machine that she gained a "trust for tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that." Be clear about how trust accrues, and ask direct questions to know how trust builds for others.

If you have breached a trust, don't make things worse by lying about it. Take responsibility quickly, and begin regaining broken trust. The more time that passes, the more tangled the web, the harder it is to come back from broken trust.

If in your situation the broken trust is too deep, then work at a healthy ending to the relationship. There is more at stake than the relationship (and kids if there are kids involved). Your ability to trust yourself and get back on a path with integrity is the biggest issue at stake. Work towards loving and leaving the relationship, giving thanks for what it has meant, forgiving life for disappointing your expectations and moving forward positively.


Trust - What Are You Ultimately Protecting?

A Zen Master lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening, while he was away, a thief sneaked into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal. The Zen Master returned and found him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty handed. Please take my clothes as a gift." The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away. The Master sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused," I wish I could give him this beautiful moon."

The beautiful thing about this story is that the Zen Master wasn't holding on too tightly, so trust was easier for him. Be generous in your relationships. The more freely you give, the less you will feel that you have to lose.

Life is generous, and always offers second chances. People are flawed, but there are always opportunities to rebuild trust. You have an inner courage to get back up after being hurt and keep loving anyway. Let go, trust the adventure of being alive and enjoy intimacy without defensiveness.

The best part about therapy is that even after thirteen years, unlike your marriage, your relationship with your therapist will still be in the honeymoon stage.

Therapy isn't the real world. It's a fantasyland where you, the client, are the center of someone's undivided attention. But however seductive that is, it's a means to an end, not an end within itself.

Fantasyland is also where fantasies happen. And all of a sudden you find yourself wanting to be your therapist's best friend. This sort of attachment is beneficial as long as it never occurs.

In fact, for a long time I thought my therapist was only one-dimensional and didn't actually ever leave her office. In the evenings she just filed herself away and appeared like magic the next morning, bright, ready and alert.

You don't need to know that your therapist probably wanders around Target wearing a daggy Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, arguing with her overweight, chain-smoking husband and obnoxiously behaved children.

Seeing as I used to rank therapists slightly below used car salesmen, politicians and journalists on an integrity scale, I didn't hold out much hope.

The first psych I ever saw asked me if I was breast or bottle fed and the second one told me there were people far worse off than me. The third psych went psycho on me and I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

But my fourth psych seemed to be made of sterner stuff. She was nice enough, but it used to annoy me that all she ever wanted to talk about was my mother.

It wasn't until she told me a very lame fart joke that, in my eyes, she gained any street credibility. Up until that point I thought she was a bit of an Ice Queen, possibly based upon the fact that she was so competent at her job.

Most of my friends had therapists and we'd go out for lunch and compare and contrast. I was always smug because I KNEW I had the best therapist. What I didn't know was that I had a very transparent case of what the psychology world calls transference.

This means transferring a past relationship, usually but not always, your relationship with your parents, and projecting your positive (or negative) feelings about them onto a current relationship, usually with your therapist, who becomes the good (or bad) parent. So your therapist, in effect, is role-playing your fantasy parental figure for the sake of therapy. No matter how badly behaved you are, your therapist will still approve of you. The whole idea is to work out your childhood issues to your satisfaction.

Over time transference will fade and you realize that increment by increment therapy has actually worked and you can now hold your own in the real world.

Just as there is no such thing as the perfect parent, there is no such person as the perfect therapist, just the good enough one. And your mentoring therapist gets a big kick out of seeing you get better.

The same way a good enough parent can sit back at their child's high school graduation and think, "I didn't do such a bad job after all!"

What if you could snap your fingers and all your blocks, anxiety, and fears where no longer there? What would you be doing? How would you be feeling and in what direction would your life be going?

This is an exercise I do with my clients to help them become aware of what they want in their life and what is stopping them for achieving their dreams and goals.

Imagine yourself there for a moment. Hold that vision. What would be different about your life, if you no longer had obstacles in your way?

Having what you want does not have to be a fantasy. It can be a reality. What do you want to know and what needs to change in your life to get there?

That's where I come in. To guide you, lead you, push you, and help you develop the skills and tools you need to start down that path.

To heal, to grow, and to make changes, we all need help, support, and guidance to succeed in our lives. Reach out and find your team. Do something today that starts you on that journey. Take one small step toward your new life.

Good luck on your journey.