How To Build Self Trust

There are 3 unconscious questions that we are all asking every other person we meet. In all of our interactions, whether they are personal, friendship, business or relationships we are unconsciously, meaning we are not even aware we are doing it, asking three questions. These three unconscious questions are communicated to us by how we feel. How we answer these 3 questions in all of our interactions will significantly contribute to how we make other people feel and how we feel being around them. Just like we are unconsciously asking these 3 questions to others, others are unconsciously asking us, the same 3 questions. We build self trust by asking ourselves the same 3 questions too.

Question one : Can you be TRUSTED ?

Self trust is an issue for a lot of people, not because they is anything wrong with them, but because very few of us make it through to adulthood with our self esteem intact. For a lot of people, in our 20’s and 30’s we need to learn how to trust ourselves again and grow to be able to rebuild our self esteem and start to fall back in love with ourselves. People only want to work with, have relationships with and be around people we can trust.

Self Trust builds within us, when we keep our promises to ourselves. When we keep our promises, we make a deposit into our trust bank and the balance increases but when we don’t keep our promises, we are making a withdrawal and our trust bank balances decreases. One of the core ingredients in building self trust is human consistency. If we are being inconsistent within ourselves we can’t build trust within us. If we don’t have trust within ourselves we won’t have it with others.

Human consistency doesn’t mean we need to be perfect or robots, it means there are no wild swings of extreme. For example, have you ever known someone and they demonstrated extreme mood swings and you never knew what mood was going to show up at any given time. We tend to find those people weird and strange. It’s because the person is displaying inconsistency with their mood and emotions and we can’t trust them because we don’t know what is going to happen next. So we will avoid interacting with them.

If we can’t trust within ourselves, how are other people going to be able to trust us? For other people to be able to trust us we first must learn how to trust ourselves. To build self trust within us, when we decide we want to do something, it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be going for a walk three times a week or learning a musical instrument. When we make a promise or commitment to ourselves to do something. We need to follow through and do it.

Question 2: Are you COMMITTED to excellence?

This is just an elegant way of saying are you any good at what you do?

Are you consist in how you are showing up as each day? One of the core ingredients to trust is consistency.

In context of a love relationship such as a marriage or close friendship are you committed to the relationship regardless of what happens? Are we committed to being there when that person need us the most? How do we talk about that person when we are not with them? Do we talk about them the same way we do when we are with them? What is our energy and vibe we feel around that person?

Being committed to excellence is about demonstrating a consistency in who we are being and showing up as, what we are portraying and the values we live and express each day.

Question 3: Do you CARE about me?

This is the single most important question, everyone wants to know the answer to is - do you care about me, not in my role of customer, or as a client, or as a colleague , or any other role I play in life but as a person genuinely. We demonstrate care through our actions.

Do we take time out for our own self care, to look after our energy and our emotions? Are we self respecting and self loving? Do we have clean, clear and crisp boundaries in life? Caring for ourselves as people is fundamental, if we don’t care about ourselves then others won’t either.

The 3 unconscious questions we are asking are based on trust, commitment and care. These are the 3 key ingredients to all relationships. If we take away any of these 3 key ingredients in any relationship it will break down. Where there is a lack of trust we have nothing. Where there is trust but no commitment, we have nothing, where there is trust and commitment but a lack of care, we have a very superficial relationship. Where there is care but a lack of trust or commitment we have a very dysfunctional relationship.

When you have trust, commitment and care in any relationship you have deepened that connection with that person. Trust, commitment and care is how our character is built, that reputation we have with the people we love matters to us. Now some people may say you shouldn’t care about what others think of you, but in the context of relationships with those we love, we are always going to care what our inner circle people think of us. We will always care what our children think of us, our partners think of us or those near and dear to us think of us. We may not care as much about what people outside of our inner circle think of us but what our inner circle thinks of us will always matter. That’s why how we demonstrate trust, commitment and care matters, because what other people, especially those we love and care for think of us matters to us.

The degree of which we have trust, commitment and care for ourselves is reflected externally in our relationships with other people. We can’t have trust, commitment and care with others if we first don’t have it with ourselves.

If there are themes showing up in our lives where there is a lack of trust, inconsistency around commitment and there is a lack of care then often this is a reflection of the realm of trust, commitment and care within ourselves, that is inconsistent or we haven’t taking responsibility for or we haven’t embraced.

These 3 core questions everyone is asking everywhere we go, if we can demonstrate or answer these questions when we are connecting with someone in the way that we show up we are going a long way to establishing deeper connections and relationships with others. The reason why we are doing this and why deep connection with others matters is fundamentally as human beings the core driving function of the human condition is we all want to belong, to be worthy and valued and to be loved. Without trust, without consistency, without care we can’t have any of those things.

Do we trust ourselves? Are we committed to our own decisions and excellences? Do we care about ourselves as people? That answer to these questions needs to be yes and we need to keep developing and growing until we can answer yes to all three.