Trusting Yourself and Others
Have you ever had a piggy bank? Do you remember putting coins into it and listening to them rattle around? Did yours have a plug in the bottom that you could open to remove money or did you have to break it open? Wasn't it amazing that the money that took so long to accumulate could disappear so quickly?
A piggy bank (or a marble jar) is a great metaphor for trust. Trust is built slowly over time. And, if you aren't careful, can be lost in a moment.
It's likely that you are extremely trustworthy in your commitments to others, but you may be prone to letting yourself down. Learning to keep your commitments to yourself is a foundational key to creating a life you love (so much so that we spent a full month getting better at honoring personal commitments in UNLEASHED Resilience in October).
Laura Gendron, CPDT-KA, and I had a wide-ranging discussion in which we looked a trust from a variety of angles. Since reliability is such a key factor in trust, we explored ways of setting yourself up for success, including internal and external forms of motivation and reinforcement.
As I often joke, everything in life relates to dog training, and we certainly proved that true with this conversation. ?
Links worth clicking
- Connect with Laura on her website, Facebook, or Instagram
- Check out Susan Friedman's episode on UNLEASHED (at work & home) about being a bold learner. She often uses the piggy bank analogy as well.
- Atomic Habits, James Clear's excellent book about building habits by making behaviors obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying
- Laura and I are both fans of Brene Brown's work, including The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, and Dare to Lead
- Click to view an infographic of the Gottman Institute's "5 Magic Hours" for Relationships