Becoming Trustworthy

Every January, I find myself thinking about trust and what it means to be trustworthy. I don’t know what about January draws my mind towards trust, but it does. I feel that the most important person we need to trust is ourselves. If we are not trustworthy, how can we accurately asses if anyone else is? If we are not trustworthy, how can we tell when others are deceiving us? I will be honest and share that my internal dialogue is brutally honest. I work really hard on being factually honest with gentleness, but I am a work in progress. Knowing where you are at with your honesty requires knowing what is real and what is imagined. A lot of people have the habit of interpreting the meaning of what other people say and then skewing it more negatively or positively than was intended. I invite everyone to do a reality check and ask the people in their lives to explain their point of view and then check if their explanation fits your internal “truth” about what they think. If it doesn’t, you either cannot trust them or you cannot trust yourself.

Knowing whether or not you can trust the people in your life is easy. Do their words match their actions? Do the people in your life have actions that align with what they say about themselves and what they say about you and your relationship with them? If they report they care about you, do they show up during hard times? Do they listen while you unpack and try to lighten your load? How do they demonstrate caring? If they say they are professional, do they conduct themselves professionally? A lot of people have a very skewed vision of themselves, and when I notice this I know that I cannot trust them and wonder if they can trust themselves. This is why it is so important that we are able to recognize truth when we see it on ourselves and in others. A lot of people are dishonest out of ignorance. They do not see how often they lie to themselves or about themselves and lose all sight of the truth. If we are in the habit of deceiving ourselves, then how can we be honest with anyone?

Stopping the habit of self-deception is hard. Practicing radical honesty is painful at first as we let go of our self-delusions: even the harshest of views can have a layer of protection. For example, if we put on a few extra pounds, it is often easier to say our partner no longer finds us attractive than to say we have disappointed ourselves by not watching our weight more closely. Another commonly held belief is that we can’t possibly save money. The truth is there is usually something we can cut from our spending that would improve our financial situation even if only a little. Look at your life: what lies are you telling yourself, and what purpose do they serve? I can tell you from my lived experience there is power in the truth no matter how hard that truth is. We can lose weight, save money, and be honest with ourselves. We can make incremental changes to improve our life and have more good days than bad. It starts with facing the obstacles to our happiness with radical honesty. Once we know the truth, we can change it.