Transcript for June 7, 2009 by Ian Lawton

The relationship of trust between parents and children is a delicate one. Families are often on edge, a little like the parents who walked past their son’s bedroom and were astonished to see that the bed was made and everything was tidy. Then they saw an envelope propped up on the center of the bed. It was addressed, “Mom and Dad”. They opened the envelope and read the letter with trembling hands:

 

Dear Mom and Dad,


Please sit down before you read this. I had to elope with my girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with you. I have fallen in love with Sarah, and she is so nice even with all her piercings and tattoos, and her tight motorcycle clothes. But it’s not only the passion mom and dad, she’s pregnant and Sarah said that we will be very happy together. Even though you don’t care for her as she is so much older than I, she owns her own trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. She wants to have many more children with me and that’s now one of my dreams too. In the meantime, we’ll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Sarah can get better. She sure deserves it! Don’t worry Mom and Dad, I’m 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I’m sure we’ll be back to visit so you can get to know your grandchildren.


Your son,

John



PS: None of the above is true. I’m over at the neighbor’s house. I just want to remind you that there are worse things in life than my report card that’s waiting on the desk in my bedroom.

How Trusting Are You?

Trust! You can have too much and you can have too little. In the movie, “Meet the Parents”, Robert De Niro plays the over protective parent, Jack Burns. Ben Stiller is Greg Focker, the daughter’s boyfriend. Burns puts video cameras all over the house. He says to Greg Focker, “Can you ever really trust another human being, Greg? No, the answer is you cannot.” “Trust me, Greg,” he says, “when you start having little Fockers running around, you’ll feel the need for this type of security.”

For Jack Burns, trust is a scarce commodity that he gives and takes to control people around him. Late in the movie, after giving Focker a hard time throughout, he finally says, ‘Guess who’s back in the circle of trust?”


How wide is your circle of trust? Do you think you can ever really trust another human being? Maybe your issue is that you are too trusting, and you keep getting hurt. One way or another we all have trust issues at some point. Its one of my most frequent topics of conversation. You can get hurt and close ranks or you can fall madly in love with life. You can shrink in fear, or you can offer yourself freely to the world. Either way, it’s a matter of trust.

Trust is both in your nature and your nurture. Each of us is naturally trusting to some degree. From a nature perspective, it depends on how much oxytosin you have in your brain. Of course, you are trusting according to your life experience and upbringing as well. So it’s fair to say that trust exists on a spectrum. You aren’t either trusting or not trusting. You move in and out of different levels of trust but we are all trusting to some extent.

Trust also works differently for different people. Studies have shown that trust operates differently for men and women. Women tend to trust people they are personally connected to; friends, family, and friends of friends or friends of family. Men tend to trust people they are symbolically connected to; people who went to the same school, played the same sports or fellow Rotarians. Generally speaking, women will have smaller but closer circles of trust, and men will be more trusting of strangers but only take the trust to a certain depth.

How does trust work in your life? How does trust relate to your beliefs about yourself and the world?

Trust is Your Inner GPS

Think of trust as an inner GPS. It’s the still small voice that tells you where to turn next. I got my first GPS about a year ago, so it’s still a novelty for me. There are a couple of things I have noticed about the GPS and trust.

1. If you plug in limited information, then it doesn’t matter how much trust you have, you will end up in the wrong place. Have you ever tried to enter an address on Leonard Street? I once plugged in an address, and it took me directly to a house but it turned out to be the wrong house. It felt like I was in a different state I was so far from where I needed to be. The numbers on Leonard Street end and restart over and over again. I fully trusted my GPS, and it did what I had asked it to do. My trust was misplaced because I had programmed ambiguous information into it.

2. Trusting Assumptions- You can really end up in trouble if you start out with an unfounded and unexamined assumption, and then trust it blindly. There was a news story about a man in the UK who followed the instructions of his GPS to the brink of disaster. He was led up on a narrow sidewalk, through a fence and off the edge of a cliff. He just managed to escape as his car hung over the edge of the cliff. The driver explained later, “The GPS kept insisting the path was a road, even as it was getting narrower and steeper.  I just trusted it.  You don’t expect to be taken nearly off a cliff.”

It’s all very well to trust your GPS, but you can also trust your eyes, and question your assumptions.

Your level of trust partly grows out of what you have programmed into your inner GPS. What internal beliefs are driving your life? If fear and protection are your main operating agreements, then you will likely be very mistrustful. If you operate according to some self limiting beliefs, you might trust someone you know will hurt you in order to confirm your beliefs.

Be willing to examine your beliefs, see where they come from, and ask yourself whether these beliefs are serving you. Are they inspiring you to live as abundantly as you could? If you conclude that your beliefs are not serving you, then choose to change the beliefs. Begin resetting your inner programming to a set of beliefs that serves you and those around you.

3. Following the Signs. Once, we were driving in New York City. It’s a stressful place to drive at the best of times. We were using the GPS to navigate around. We came to a large sign that said, “Stop. You cannot turn right here. Turn around.” The GPS lady was adamant that we should turn right. The sign seemed clear. GPS lady seemed annoyed as we sat there in a quandary. We turned around. The GPS recalculated, took us a few blocks and then back to the same corner. Three times we tried to find a different way through, and each time the GPS brought us to the same dilemma. Finally, we turned right despite the warning signs. A police man was waiting for us around the corner. He said, “Why did you ignore the signs and turn right?” You know what I said, don’t you? I said, “The GPS told me to turn.” You know what he said, don’t you? He said, “Tell it to the judge.”

When it comes to trust, there are all sorts of signs for you to follow. Double speak in a relationship; turbulence in a financial market, hypocrisy in a politician, these are all signs that your inner GPS can use to make trust decisions. Someone who behaves manipulatively is not to be trusted even if they are a family member. If someone is giving mixed signals, they may not be trustworthy even if they went to Michigan State. Allow your inner GPS to pay attention to the signs that are in front of you.

The basic lesson is to trust your gut, but verify your assumptions. Examine your beliefs to see how they are guiding your inner GPS and your trust.

Building a Good Trust Rating

So far I have focused on trusting others, and I have suggested that you trust or mistrust others because of an inner wisdom. It’s also important to focus on how trustworthy you are yourself. Do you have a reputation for reliability? In this age of credit scores and insurance ratings, let me suggest that you give yourself a trustworthy rating. Are you AAA when it comes to reliability? If not, then begin now and aim for AAA.

The reassuring thing is that even though you have let people down before, you can start afresh from this moment and begin rebuilding your trust rating. Create the habit of being trustworthy and people will quickly trust you.

In the 2005 Italian Tennis Open, Andy Roddick performed an amazing act of sportsmanship. He questioned a point that was awarded to him that would have won him the match. He showed the umpire the mark where the ball had been in, the umpire overturned the decision and he went on to lose the match. But the beautiful thing is that he won so much more than the match by acting with such integrity. He had built a reputation for reliability.

When you are faced with situations and you know you can cheat or take the easy way to glory, consider your reliability rating. Go for the AAA rating and build a reputation for yourself that others know they can trust.

Trust – Let Go and Let God

Ultimately, both your own reliability reputation and your ability to trust others come from the same place. They both come from an ability to let go of immediate outcomes. If Andy Roddick had been obsessed with outcomes, he would have accepted the ruling and won the match. As it was, he let go of the outcome and opted for integrity. Live with integrity, and let go of the outcomes.

The recovery mantra is “let go and let God.” No matter what your understanding of God or Higher Power and no matter what language you use to describe that which is greater than all and present in each, the spiritual discipline of surrender is the deepest form of trust. Do what you can to make sure that you are being trustworthy and then let go of the outcomes. You let go of outcomes, when the inner satisfaction from doing the right thing is greater than the outer satisfaction of success or victory.

Whatever your conception of God or that which is larger than life but present in the midst of life, it begins as an inner experience or awakening. At some point you may feel it stirring in you, and it calls you to surrender to its presence. This surrender is a trust that there is a larger order or purpose in life than you may discern in each moment.

Consider the Japanese Kimono gown as a beautiful symbol of the truth of inner trust. Some Kimonos have very plain outer designs but immaculate and exquisite decoration on the inside of the gown. Some of them are intentionally imperfect on the outside. The purpose is to remind the person wearing the gown that beauty ultimately resides within. The people who see the imperfections of the outer gown are reminded of the magnificence that lies beneath the surface.

When you let go of outcomes, the imperfections, the setbacks and the hurts fade in comparison with the beauty that lies within. You begin to trust the music of your own soul; the perfection that no one and no changing circumstances will ever be able to take from you. This beauty within offers you a panoramic view of life, so much larger than immediate outcomes, and enables you to surrender the outcomes because you trust that things will work out the way they need to and you trust your own ability to roll with the punches.

There is very little in the world that is truly trustworthy. One in two marriages ends in divorce. Financial markets are fickle at best. Religious beliefs are here today and gone tomorrow. There is something that is reliable, but it’s not the markets, it’s not relationships, its not religious belief and it’s not even your own behavior. All these things are imperfect and constantly changing. What is reliable is the perfection deep inside you. It doesn’t budge while everything around you changes. It accepts all the imperfection, and trusts in spite of the evidence. Deep inside you, not even a leaf stirs on the well rooted tree that is your inner trust. Come back to that, and remove whatever is blocking your awareness of this trust. Once you have realized this inner trust, so many things will fall effortlessly into place in your life, even while circumstances keep changing all around you. Do you believe me? Maybe you can trust me. Namaste.