Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being excited about what could go right.

I was really looking at my life and certain decisions I made were really wrong. I had an experience in my life after which I started having doubts over people's real intention. I mean there was nothing wrong with them, but maybe it was the environment, maybe it was the fascination of some things, but whatever it was, there was something wrong about the environment is what I believe more than there was something wrong with the people. After all, I knew those people from a longer time, but the environment that was created was temporary. So my dear friends, I want to tell you that I learnt after some time that there are going to be things in our lives that go wrong, there are going to be people in your life that hurt you, but that does not mean you forget trusting people and believing that everyone would be like that. There will be a negative environment, negative circumstance that might have caused people to act a certain way, not everyone is bad. I read a beautiful quote today, "stop being afraid about what could go wrong, and start being excited about what could go right".  I somehow just wanted to hear this and I heard it at the very moment I needed to. So today I am going to write on trusting yourself and others in the right way. 

Firstly, what is trust? Psychology today defines trust as follows and its beautiful: Trust—or the belief that someone or something can be relied on to do what they say they will—is a key element of social relationships and a foundation for cooperation. It is critical for romantic relationships, friendships, interactions between strangers, and social groups on a large scale, and a lack of trust in such scenarios can come with serious consequences. Indeed, society as a whole would likely fail to function in the absence of trust.

It means that we can rely on someone based on what they say they will do. It's critical in romantic relationships, friendships and interactions between strangers and social groups on a large scale and a lack of trust will come with serious consequences. In fact I can connect the dots to our society as a whole, there's something called as a country, which is just a piece of land and water but it's a psychological construct that we all together believe in. But in objectivity it is simply land and water. There's no name on it, but still we all trust the system and the social construct that's created and we call some land as America, some as India, some as Europe, some as Africa, but none of the land has a name on it. But it's' the trust in the system that allows the world to function in a certain way. So without trust, the social construct would never exist. So we know what is trust and why is it important. It's important because the social structure itself depends on trust.

Now I want to address the fact that we all have some trust issues sometimes, we can't trust an xyz individual because of our past experiences. Fine, but if the past experience was in a different environment, a different place, why are we still so scarred about it. Shouldn't we be excited about the possibility of what could go right when we trust people. This blog today is more about relationships. There must be blind faith in our partner and our family at the most. We want to be in relationships where we can trust our partner and our partner can trust us. Trust brings a lot of social harmony in our lives, it also allows us to share information that's tough, harsh and not that great with a psychological feeling of safety. This reduces our chances of stress and depression. So when I talk about a life partner, it's important to find someone you admire but it's equally important to have a friend in your life partner with whom you can discuss the difficult issues. 

Imagine your boss trusts you and does not interfere you when he gives you some work. He also says that he does trust you to complete the work well. Wouldn't you be motivated to do the work on time, give quality work and maintain that same level of trust. So that's what Stephen R. Covey says, trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. Yes, on the other hand trusting also comes with a risk, for example, you may trust someone to help you with a project but maybe that someone at the last moment will say no. So remember that trusting the wrong people also has its own consequences. 

Whether its business, its relationships, or whether it is friendship, trust comes with time. It takes years to build but can be lost in seconds and it would take forever to repair. So what I am trying to say is that we should learn to trust others, but we should also be very careful to maintain our trust in the eyes of others. 

Life is a complex thing, it's not straightforward, there would be days where our trust would be broken. But that would be 10-15% of the times. But that does not mean we should not trust others, we should rather trust others now so that we can really understand that was it we who were wrong or was it the person whom we trusted was wrong. 

Currently I work at Microsoft and our company highly values trust. We trust our employees so much so that we have given unlimited holidays for people. That's how wonderful our culture is. We trust people irrespective and also empower them to achieve more in the organisation and team. 

What adding trust can do to the different sections of your life: 

1. Romantic Relationships: When we trust our partner completely, we become very powerful. We become free and we do not worry about whether our partner will cheat with us or not, in fact we can work together with our partner to build a better future. A future and an environment that's supportive and it's not about competing but more about collaborating. So the essential ingredient in that is trust. 

2. Friendships: When we trust our friends, and they trust us, we can create an atmosphere of vulnerability where it can be easy to share information and also easy to gather information. It can help during tough times and we can also celebrate success during good times. We can make each other smile on bad days and good days likewise. But for that the foundation is trust, we need to trust the other person for creating such a friendship. 

3. Professional Relationships: More trust amongst colleagues also means more collaboration, more collaboration means more easy sharing of ideas and information, and more sharing of ideas means more growth for everyone within the team. So trust is also an important factor while having a wonderful team and wonderful team mates. 

All I want to say at the end of it is friends, remember trust is a very powerful component in our human interaction. Yes trust does come with consequences but the benefits of trust far outweigh the issues of trust. So let go and trust people around you and see how your relationships and friendships change for a better world. You would find a much more supportive and an enriching environment for your growth. 

Saying this again : Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being excited about what could go right.