Our society rewards those with high egos and those who will throw you or others under the bus for their own benefit. I mean look at the result of ‘Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House’ by Michael Wolff. Why would he write a book to expose so many individuals? Is Wolff doing this for the greater good? Obviously not.
So how do we learn to trust? It’s not something you’re taught at school. In primary school, you tell someone to keep a secret and hope for the best. You’re so young and naive, that it doesn’t mean anything.
In high school, secrets turn into gossip and it stays with you until you graduate. You learn to keep to yourself or find at least one person you can tell everything to. You call them your best friend and hope that it lasts.
If you made it so far into university or college you learn to be independent. You have your own timetable and meet different people in every single subject you take. There’s limited contact hours and majority of your time is spent at the library, working a part time job or going out with friends. There isn’t much trust learning here. Except for the occasional group assessment where each person works on one section to put together as one report. There’s no vulnerability here.
My story starts with my so called best friend of 9 years. We went to high school and university together. We were in the same classes for years. We were like sisters (even our parents were great friends). We didn’t have the same personalities but understood each other at that time. I went out of my way to include her in group activities. They were extremely extrovert whereas we were both introverts. We would share secrets with each other and talk about topics we didn’t want to share with the wider group. Moving forward, high school ends and our group disburses. Maybe this is when our friendship actually ended too. I didn’t know any better.
I learnt my lesson the hard way. I was struggling with this one particular person and hurting so bad. I shared a lot of my thoughts and feelings about this with her. It took a few weeks for her to admit she went behind my back. That was the moment everything changed. It didn’t make sense to me when she admitted it was her fault. I wasn’t even angry. Just disappointed and feeling numb.
All these questions were going through my mind:
Why would she do that?
Why would she continually watch me hurt and still let it happen?
When do you stop caring about someone so close to you?
What’s the point of sharing struggles when people just use it for their own benefit?
The list could go on….
Even though this event has scared me for life, it won’t stop me from learning and trying to trust people in my life.
This experience has changed my perspective on every connection I have today. It has made me question my own values, beliefs and behavior.
Here’s a list of things I do to determine if someone is trustworthy:
- Understand their personality. Observe their behavior.
Ask yourself if they’re a self-interested person? How do they interact with others? Do you share the same or similar values?
2. What type of bond do you want to build?
Is it short term, medium term or long term? Do you trust them with personal matters or strictly just work related matters?
3. Why you should trust them? Vice versa. Why should they trust you?
4. Identify red flags from current and/or previous behavior.
5. Trust your intuition.
