How to trust wisely
And avoid getting hurt.
Happy Friday, Intentionalists!
I grew up around honest people. My parents were law-abiding, promise-keeping individuals who showed up when others needed their help. Their friends and neighbours were the same. My childhood buddies behaved likewise, and so did their parents. Burglaries and muggings were unheard of in my neighbourhood.
People didn’t cheat or con others out of their money. If there was any danger that we were warned about, it was from people outside our circle: ‘Stranger danger’ – murky men, we didn’t know, who might offer us lollies and try to entice us into their cars.
While this childhood was somewhat idyllic, it didn’t prepare me for adult life where I came up against people with no moral compass when it came to trustworthiness – conmen, manipulators, narcissists and even just flaky people who proved to be unreliable.
For a while, I was impressed by people who told me they had a ‘nose’ for dishonesty and instinctively knew who could be trusted and who could not. But when I watched them in action, their trust had more to do with luck. And plenty of times they were scammed, ghosted and let down despite all their confidence in someone and their perceived own magical ability to discern ‘good eggs’.
While listening to our intuition about who not to trust is an excellent guide for avoiding the worst kinds of people, I don’t believe it can be 100% relied on regarding who to trust. That’s because deep levels of trust can only be placed in someone when we have many different experiences of them and their true character is revealed over time.
Author and podcaster Jay Shetty, suggests creating four categories of trust for the people in our lives. Some people will remain forever at the lowest level of trust, while others will start at that level and, over time, earn their way up the ladder.
As the definition of an ‘intentionalist’ is someone who lives with conscious awareness, this is an excellent guide for understanding the level of trustworthiness you can rightfully expect from people.
Today, we are going to work through Jay Shetty’s four levels, and we encourage you to think about where to place the most important people in your life.
So, grab your journal and a pen and let’s get started!
PROMPTS
1. Write a list of at least 10 people in your life who are important to you and your well-being at this very moment.
This list might include an intimate or business partner, your friends and family members, someone you are dating, your boss and co-workers, a financial advisor or accountant, a tutor or personal trainer, customers and clients, suppliers, doctors and other medical specialists, etc.
2. THE FOUR CATEGORIES OF TRUST
As you go through the four categories of trust, think about the people you listed above. Where would you place them?
LEVEL ONE: NEUTRAL TRUST
Placing someone in the first category doesn’t necessarily mean that you think they’re inherently untrustworthy (although they might be); it just means you don’t have enough experience with them to be able to say with certainty that you could trust them in all situations.
Shetty points out that we tend to decide whether to trust people within the first 30 seconds of meeting them. And when we decide to trust someone, we often go all in too quickly.
Furthermore, behavioural studies show that our subconscious has some dubious conditioning when it comes to influencing our decisions about who to trust.
For instance, did you know we are more likely to trust people who:
Wear suits
Have deep voices
Smell nice
Resemble someone we like
Are charismatic or good-looking
This is referred to as the ‘halo effect’. We think that because a person shines in one area, we can trust them in all areas. But just because the person you get to mow your lawn does a fantastic job and always shows up on time, doesn’t mean you should trust them with your children.
While you’re open to trusting some of the people you place in category one in the future, you should remain consciously aware that they will require re-evaluation over time and experience. This is an excellent category to keep in mind when you are first dating someone.
LEVEL TWO: CONTRACTURAL TRUST
This is where you start to have more interaction with the people in level one, and you see yourself as having a contract with them. Do they follow through on what they promise to do? Is the quality of the work they deliver commensurate what they offered? Do they return the respect and consideration that you show them? Do they honour your boundaries?
You use your head more than your heart when deciding to trust people in this category.
Having a contractual level of trust with someone doesn’t mean you can’t be friendly or social with them. You can do that while being circumspect about what personal information you share and what level of responsibility you give them.
Although romantic movies promote love at first sight, you’ll do yourself a service to walk slowly into love rather than to ‘fall’ into it. Once we are emotionally invested in someone, we become more prone to ignoring red flags.
Who from the people you listed in question one belong in this category, and not higher, because you don’t yet have an intimate or long-term experience of them?
LEVEL THREE: RECIPROCAL TRUST
This is a much more relaxed version of level two. You now have enough experience with someone to have a reciprocal relationship where you don’t have to worry about someone’s honesty or being disrespected or taken advantage of. You pay for dinner one time; they pick up the tab the next.
Occasionally, people in this category might let you down in a minor way, but it isn’t a huge betrayal of trust because they have made so many previous deposits into the ‘trust bank’ that you have a fair idea of what is in and out of character for them. They may have forgotten to call you on your birthday, but they also dropped everything and were by your side when you had to go to hospital.
With this category of people, you’re safe letting your guard down, and you’re able to trust them with your heart, not just your head.
Who in your life belongs in this category?
CATEGORY FOUR: PURE TRUST
This is the highest level of trust we can place in another human being. This is where we completely trust someone to always have our back. It’s also a level at which we can be our most authentic, vulnerable and faulted self and know that we’ll still be loved unconditionally.
Because the level of trust is so high, we might only ever find one friend, family member or partner we can fully trust like this, or we may never find anyone whom we can trust like this at all.
Jay Shetty gives a sober warning about this level of trust, especially in dating. Because trust is so romanticised, people often try to find a partner with who they have this level of trust from the beginning of the relationship, so they manufacture or imagine that they have a spiritual bond when true trust hasn’t been given time to develop. Pure trust can only come from long relationships that have been tested many times over many years. While you’d certainly want to reach a very high level of reciprocal trust before you committed to someone, pure trust might take a lifetime to achieve.
If you have even one person you place in this category, consider yourself blessed. At the same time, if you don’t, there isn’t any reason to feel bad because pure trust is extremely rare in even the closest of relationships. You can still have a wonderful life if you have a few friends you can trust at a high reciprocal level.
As intentionalists, we’d even suggest that the healthiest level of pure trust is the one you develop with yourself and with your higher power (if you believe in God or the Divine).
We hope today’s newsletter has shown you how to place trust in people wisely. It also goes without saying that like tends to attract like. If you want to build good levels of trust with people, then you need to be inherently trustworthy yourself.
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FEEL GOOD AFFIRMATIONS
It’s okay to go slow and earn each other’s trust.
Being prudent with my trust doesn’t mean I’m unfriendly or arrogant.
My first responsibility is to myself. I only allow people into my inner circle who I can trust in every way.
(Pick an affirmation and say or write it slowly ten times. And if you want to repeat all the affirmations, that’s wonderful too!)
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KELLY’S SILLY BIT
I thought it might be nice to get fact up together. Dog facts? What say you?
Adam Ant’s mum used to be Paul McCartney’s housekeeper! A young Ant (Stuart Goddard was his real name) even used to walk McCartney's sheepdog, Martha! (Yes, the song Martha My Dear is about his beautiful dog, not his then-girlfriend, Jane Asher, as people originally thought.)
Do you have high blood pressure? Go and pat a dog. Seriously. Our blood pressure decreases when petting a dog, AND the dog you pat, its blood pressure decreases too 🥹
George Lucas's Alaskan Malamute, Indiana, was the inspiration for his Star Wars character Chewbacca! George would take Indiana on car rides with him, where she would sit in the passenger seat, leading him to lovingly refer to her as his co-pilot. He really liked this name, and his dog, as he used it again for another of his movies, Indiana Jones.
Did you know that a dog’s nose print is much like our fingerprint, in that it is completely unique to each dog.
There was a beautiful little Cairn Terrier puppy who was left abandoned. She was adopted by a man named Carl Spitz, who just happened to be the unofficial dog trainer for Hollywood. With love, care and training, he managed to score Terry the role of a lifetime alongside Judy Garland. Yep, that’s Toto from The Wizard of Oz!
Puppies and senior dogs dream more than adult dogs! Yep, little puppies dream as their brains are developing. They're learning new things and processing them. And older dogs, like my Mikey, their sleep patterns change as they age, and they may now have longer or more frequent dreams.
In war-ravaged WW1 France, a US Soldier, Lee Duncan, found a damaged kennel (which once supplied the German Army with German Shepherd dogs). Duncan rescued the dogs and brought them back to his unit. He then snuck two dogs back home with him to LA and became convinced one could be in movies after seeing him leap on camera. Rin Tin Tin's first starring role was in 1923’s Where the North Begins. This film was a whopping success. It’s often been credited with saving Warner Bros. from bankruptcy, and he became an international movie star!
A study revealed that dogs show unselfish kindness towards others without any reward. They are just KIND!
If you’d like some more silliness (and to see my beautiful old boy Mikey), see last week’s clip below:
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And there you are. If you have any cool dog facts you want to share, pop them in the comments! We’d love to see them.
Be an intentionalist.
Belinda & Kelly XX
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