Trust Beyond Yourself

May 25, 2025- Sunday

Are you a trust first or a trust last person? Try trusting others a little more at hello and you’ll usually get a like response. 

When I first meet people, I take them at face value.  I assume what I see is what you get with them. Through my life, I have found that to be fair.  I have also found I was wrong many times.  Mostly wrong to the negative but not always.  When I first meet people, I admit to being somewhat gullible. A person can easily sell themselves to me. 

I have tried to learn from the phrase, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” In the beginning of a relationship, I try to give the person every benefit of a doubt. I think that is fair.  That is the type of reception I hope to receive.  However, I limit my trust to a minimal level at the beginning.  I won’t provide any information I wouldn’t mind being public. If someone begins to trust me, I am more likely to begin to broaden my trust in them.

Outside of my wife, there are not people I fully trust. I also don’t have a lot of hidden information that would require a secretive level of trust. Secrets are usually dark or bad in nature and the fewer of those someone has the more peaceful their life will be. 

Professionally, I always was uncomfortable when I had to trust a colleague with sensitive information to get work done.  I considered those situations risky with potential of negative outcomes for me and other people.  I diligently worked to avoid those situations.

Time and life experience allows trust to grow in relationships, and I think there are different levels of trust between people.  We all need to have people we can trust or people we can count on in given situations.  I work to be that kind of person.