Trust. What a word. I am a trusting person. I trust that people around me are good to their word. I trust that when someone makes a commitment, that they’ll keep it. I trust that people aren’t just out for themselves. I’m not always right. I certainly ran into this issue in a big way last year and it absolutely overturned my world. It brought doubt to who I am and what I stand for. I began to wonder if I could trust myself. But, I realized that trusting myself is the most important trust that I can have. I believe in who I am and what I stand for. If others aren’t trustworthy, that’s on them.
The company that removed the mold from my new house breached my trust. It’s not too surprising, especially having met the person responsible. If there’s one thing that I know as a clinician is that I’m actually pretty good at reading people. I’m just not good at listening to what I read. In this case, it didn’t really matter, I didn’t have much of a choice when I realized that these people weren’t trustworthy. It will hopefully change the way I choose people to do work for me.
My wife actually has a pretty good bead on finding trustworthy people to do work for us. Over time, she’s weeded out the less than trustworthy people. I, on the other hand, would give them too many chances. I need to learn. So, today I’m standing my ground. The people who are tying to take advantage of me are not going to find someone who will roll over. They’re going to have to back off. And I will hopefully learn to be more circumspect in the future.
It’s unfortunate that there are people who will let greed overtake their ethics. In many cases they probably convince themselves that what they’re doing is ok. I had this happen to me last year in another setting. I’m really not very good at this, am I? Ironically, my willingness to trust others makes others trust me. That’s the advantage of being too trusting. The disadvantage is that some people will take advantage of you. At the end of the day, however, those people have to live with themselves. I’m sure that they do, but I have to hope that it won’t turn out to their benefit in the long run.
The only person that I need to trust is myself. And that’s what I’m going to keep doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment