Trust Building
July 2023
WWW.soulsoothers.org Rev David revdavidlt@gmail.org
The most important characteristic you can possess to build trust is to actually be trustworthy. In order to be trustworthy, you have to first learn self-worth, empathy, and how to relate to others.
Trustworthy. Let’s define trustworthy as one person listening to another without having any alternative motives or agendas. In other words, it is someone whose only purpose is to be present, open, authentic and of sacred service to the other. This is completely different from the normal sales person whose only interest is to know enough about you to steer you into a purchase situation using your own sharing as a leverage tool against you. I’m aware that some sales people don’t want to sell you something if you really don’t want it. Yet, the really good ones find a way to get their needs met, (selling you something), in the guise of helping you. It is a standoff. The sales man has to break down your defenses by trying to build trust and pretending it’s all about you. While you try to maintain your sales resistance and not make a pressured decision.
I practiced this a few times during those invitations to get a free weekend at a beautiful resort and all you must do is listen to a sales presentation to buy a time share in a luxury resort. The room is all prepared, the presentation has been rehearsed 100 times, people are already on a vacation or preparing for one and it is a perfect storm for selling time shares. We listen to all the great places that we can stay, all the wonderful opportunities available to us. We slowly forget that this is a major expense and money commitment for years to come and feel like perhaps we can afford this version of a life style of luxury. There is a lot going on in terms of mood, energy, feelings, politeness and all the rest. Now comes the closing, are you in or not? Other tables are saying yes, and they celebrate, which puts even more pressure on you to buy, to celebrate, to make everyone happy. They are being so nice, so helpful, so generous with their offer, how can you say no? That’s it, just say no. They don’t have your best interest in mind. They just need to sell, and they are very good at it. Well now, they need to know why you are saying no. They have to know what the objection is so that they can overcome it. For me, I simply say that we are not ready to make vacations our first priority at this time in our lives and for our income. No need to be rude, no need to justify or defend, just stick to your guns. You have the last word. Even with all that pressure and the great show that they put together, in the end you have the final word. Just say no.
When we have the opportunity to be trustworthy, we are listening to the other person, not to sell, not to judge or use their own words against them. We are listening to understand, to know them at a deeper level. Our only agenda is to be present without judgment, without advice giving or having to fix them. Being trustworthy is being worthy of their trust to share with you. They want to be heard. They want to feel safe. In my experience the only questions come from wanting to understand or clarify, not to challenge or to have them reconsider a feeling or a decision. I’m not saying that we have to agree. I am saying we can learn more about why they feel the way they feel, why they think the way they think. We can understand them and accept them where they are because we have no agenda to move them to someplace else. Our full and undivided attention is on them. The question is, are we willing to do that? Do we have the energy, the patience, the relatability within? Can we put ourselves into neutral and just be open to hearing from another human, their views, hurts, disappointments without disapproving, correcting, fixing or advising? How trustworthy are we really?
When we allow ourselves to be worthy of another’s trust we are gifted with a type of connectedness that most people don’t get a chance to experience. The real reward isn’t the money that they invest in you, or the self-inflated ego wanting to take a bow or a pat on the back. It is in the simple experience of allowing yourself to get fully connected with another person’s life, emotions, thoughts and experiences. For the other person it is the satisfying experience of being heard, validated and understood.
Self-worth. Remember those exciting times when someone would ask, “Can you keep a secret?”. Did it make you feel special, part of the “in” crowd? I know that it did me. The problem with low self-worth is that if you don’t value yourself you try to get it from others. Now that they have told you their secret, that desire to show others the fact that you are special, important and valuable is to pass the secret on. As soon as someone asks, “Can you keep a secret?” you already know that they can’t. So, if you are asking that of someone else then you can’t keep one either.
If you have done your inner healing work, then you have found that at your core, you are really a good person doing the best you can with what you have to work with. It is then that you begin to like yourself. You begin to see your own self-worth and value. You don’t have to hunger or crave it. It becomes an inside job. The key in all this is to do the inner healing work. If you are fortunate enough to find someone trustworthy, then you don’t have to heal alone. Take it from me, doing it alone is difficult if not nearly impossible. It would be like trying to build a house without the blueprints.
Empathy: Many times, in the normal course of conversation, some people have confused empathy with sympathy. Close, yet so far away. Sympathy is more closely related to pity, feeling sorry for someone else. This keeps the listener at a distance, detached. It is merely a terrible or sad story. Empathy is more like putting yourself in their shoes, trying to feel the emotions being expressed. It is feeling the embarrassment or hurt or pain as if it were your own. Empathy is a deep understanding of another that expands your awareness and changes your life to some degree. It is what enables you to be open, compassionate and understanding. It’s an essential ingredient in building trust. Empathy can be learned, I don’t believe it always comes naturally. It takes patience, an appreciation of life. It’s about caring, and it is also about letting your heart space expand to include more than you ever thought possible. It takes courage to just be still and listen and to trust that the person you are listening to is a precious child of God trying to find their way. These are all reasons that makes finding such a person very rare and valuable. It is not a perfect art form but if you are truly committed to learning and experiencing empathy it becomes more and more a reality. Practice, along with opportunity creates small miracles of success. That brings us to our final point, relating to others.
How to relate: From our crowd-sourced Open Dictionary. the quality of being relatable (=easy to understand and feel connected to) In fact, relatability is practically the God particle of theater, and it has been for a long time. Submitted from United Kingdom on 07/11/2014. I just finished reading a great book by Alan Alda, (yes, the star of MASH) entitled, “If I understood you, would I have this look on my face?” He points out that memorizing your lines is only half of acting, the other half is being able to relate to what is being said and responding to the lines that are coming at you. You say your lines, not because you memorized them, you say them because you must, you are responding to the other character, you are truly listening and understanding. Relating relies on empathy and being trustworthy. It requires you to be real and authentic, transparent and honest.
I hope this has been informative and beneficial to you. Trust building is at the core of what it takes to be a “Transformational Life Coach”. I think it is what I have spent my entire life getting prepared to do. If you are considering sharing your life and its challenges and start doing the inner healing work that will help you to be a success in all your endeavors and make your dreams become your reality, then let’s start the process. I can be reached at revdavid@soulsoothers.org or d/l this form and fill it out and send it back