Trust yourself.  Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.  Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.  — Golda Meir

"Our team needs more trust."  "I can't trust them."  "My trust has been broken." 

I hear these words often in my work as a coach.  The yearning for connection in these comments is strong and palpable.  We know that trust is one of seven important relationship strengths of any working relationship: critical to have, difficult to define, painful to lose, challenging to engender when broken.

So what is trust?  From Dictionary.com, it's the "reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, of a person or thing; confidence; confident expectation of something; hope."

Reliance.  Integrity.  Surety.  Confidence.  Hope.  Certainly things we want to demonstrate with others, and to expect from others in our relationships.

Paradoxically, trust, as one of my teachers once said, is first and foremost an inside job.  Meaning that you can't trust others, or expect them to trust you, unless you first trust yourself. 

If you're yearning for more trust in your working or personal relationships, look first to where does trust reside in you.  What does "trust" mean to you?  Where does confidence, hope and surety live in you?  What do you trust about yourself?  If you find you have broken trust with yourself in some way, how can you begin to rely upon your inherent strengths and abilities again?

As we fan even tiny sparks of surety, hope and possibility within ourselves, we can begin or renew the process of building trust with and among others.

Where does the concept of trust as an inside job show up in your life?

My most popular post, based on what types of searches bring new people to this blog, is one I wrote when I just started this site, over four years ago, referencing the Starfish story.  (If you don't know it, the gist of the original story is that one person can make a difference through their […]

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it […]