Who Do You Trust...?

​Trust can be a poignant, sensitive, even delicate word.

It can rise all kinds of feelings within us. The word “trust“  summons up images of close friendship, dependability reliability, or it may suggest it’s a very opposite, mistrust, treachery, betrayal.

A lot of how we interpret the word will reflect our own experiences.

I’m often asked why I counsel people to keep their aims, goals, aspirations, to themselves, unless they are speaking to someone in whom they have complete trust, or who will support them 100%.

I do this because the reasons why people will undermine, discourage, even belittle the aims of someone else are myriad. If you have a friend who knows you as you are at this particular moment, and have been for many years, it can be very difficult for them to accept that you want to change something in both your lives. Because both lives do change when one life does.

If you have been shy, diffident, hesitant, because you don’t feel really well about yourself and how you appear to the world and you’re not really happy in yourself, the change for the better in your life may be a change for the worse in your friend’s life.

They may find it difficult to accept the new you. They may find it difficult when you become assertive, positive, confident in your presentation to the world. When that happens, you cease to be the predictable, hesitant, quiet and compliant person they knew.

Because they see you differently, they're not sure how to deal with you. 

I’ve seen this over the years, when a man or woman has lost weight, toned up, got a new wardrobe, and re-asserted herself or himself in life. Acquaintances suddenly find themselves at a loss as to how they should respond to the changed individual, paying more attention to what they say, being aware of the emergence of a new person.

This can lead to huge discomfort on the part of  acquaintances. They may become lost, unsure of themselves. It brings doubt, uncertainty into their lives. They have to figure out how to handle the change. They may be well out of their comfort zone.

But that’s not your fault, or anyone else’s, who decides ( that great word) that there is more to their life than what they’ve been tolerating for ages.

That’s why I counsel privacy, discretion, when you talk or think about your aspirations. 

Let the ideas and plans you have build inside you. Let yourself become acquainted with them. Let them build in the Intensity and Force of your imagination till they express themselves in action, and not get leaked in dribs and drabs, to unappreciative and possibly damaging minds, where they can then get shredded,  and ineffectively trail the ground at your heels.

Trust people by all means. 

With discretion.