Trust

Yesterday's reading included Doubting Thomas.  So what are you like on trust?  Simon P Walker has been publishing his new book online and in Chapter 4 writes about trust and how we learn to trust (or not) others and ourselves in our early life, and how this affects us as we get older.  It also reminded me of this post I read a little while ago on how different attitudes to trust can affect us.

I know that I find it easier to trust myself than I do others.  And that is now I am so much better at trusting others!  In my previous job it took me a long time before I could escape from the trap of thinking that no one else could do it as well as I could (well, they couldn't could they ;)) so I had to do it myself.  It took a long time to learn that lesson, and it was one that I thought that I had learnt.  However, when push comes to shove I find that I do not trust others L  What I had learnt to do was to let them do things that didn't matter.  Building a trust in others that is not there is hard work, and the only way I know of doing it is by continuing to do a little more of it all the time.  The problem is that I know I am going to get let down at some point.  It isn't trusting because it always works, it is trusting knowing that sometimes it doesn't, but doing it anyway.

Fear and protection

All of us have developed a front stage- a version of ourselves that we present to the world. ... Now, of course, in order to do this, we have to hide lots of things about ourselves away. ... All these things that I cannot risk bringing out onto my front stage I have to put somewhere- so I put them in my back stage. My back stage is the place I learn to put things that I do not want people to see. http://simonpwalker.blogspot.com/2010/03/let-us-go-back-to-old-story-one-of.html

I may be preempting what Simon Walker is going to say, but I think the problem comes when we put things back stage (which he writes more about in the Undefended Leader) because of irrational fear.  And of course if we never bring them out then the fear of bringing them out grows and we are even less inclined to do so.  How do we crack this problem?  Of course one option is to "Feel the fear and do it anyway" (I haven't got round to reading the book, but it is a great title!), but what if we do that and it goes wrong?  Is there a gentle toe in the water approach to this or do we have to dive in, because there has to be a certain degree of fear to overcome to be of value?

I was talking with a friend who said that whenever they saw a rule they broke it to see what happened, whereas my approach is to keep it unless I have a reason not to.  Acclimatisation to dealing with things like this mean that we have different attitudes towards fear - I do not know what it is to break the small rules - so the big ones carry greater fear.  Perhaps I need to dip my toe in the water more and walk on the not to be walked upon grass!