Work with Trust…

TrustWorks! is a training curriculum that helps individuals and organizations build trust in
relationships. The TrustWorks! curriculum is built around the ABCD Trust Model,
which identifies the four elements of trust:
Able – Demonstrate Competence
Believable – Act with Integrity
Connected – Care about Others
Dependable – Maintain Reliability

Some essay Steps to Repair Broken Trust…

I believe that most leaders strive to be trustworthy. There aren’t too many leaders who
wake up in the morning, roll out of bed and say to themselves, “Hmmm…I think I’ll try to
break someone’s trust today!” Yet even in spite of our best intentions, there will be times
when we damage the level of trust in our relationships. Sometimes it’s due to our own
stupidity when we make choices that we know are wrong or hurtful to others. Other times
we unknowingly erode trust by engaging in behaviors that others interpret as
untrustworthy. Regardless of how it happens, breaking trust in a relationship is a serious
matter. When a breach of trust occurs, there are five steps a leader should take to repair
the relationship:
1. Acknowledge that trust has been broken. As we’ve learned from the success of the
twelve-step recovery process, acknowledging that there is a problem is the first
step to healing. Don’t use the “ostrich” technique of burying your head in the sand
and hoping the situation will resolve itself because it won’t. The longer you wait to
address the situation, the more people will perceive your weakness as wickedness.
2. Admit your role in causing the breach of trust. For some leaders this may be a
challenging step. It’s one thing to acknowledge that there is a problem, it’s a whole
other thing to admit you caused it. Our ego and false pride are usually what prevent
us from admitting our mistakes. Muster up the courage, humble yourself, and own
up to your actions. This will pay huge dividends down the road as you work to
rebuild trust.
3. Apologize for what happened. A sincere apology involves admitting your mistake,
accepting responsibility, asking for forgiveness, and taking steps to make amends
to the offended party. Explaining the reasons why something happened is fine, but
don’t make excuses by trying to shift the blame to something or someone other
than yourself.
4. Assess where the breakdown in trust happened using the TrustWorks! ABCD Trust
Model. Did you erode trust by not being Able, Believable, Connected, or
Dependable? People form perceptions of our trustworthiness when we use, or don’t
use, behaviors that align with these four elements of trust. Knowing the specific
element of trust you violated will help you take specific actions to fix the problem.
5. Amend the situation by taking corrective action to repair any damage that has been
done, and create an action plan for how you’ll improve in the future. Your attempts
at rebuilding trust will be stalled unless you take this critical step to demonstrate
noticeable changes in behavior.
You can’t control the outcome of this process and there is no guarantee that following
these steps will restore trust in the relationship. However, the important thing is that you
have made the effort to improve yourself as a leader. You’ll be able to lay your head on the
pillow at night with a clear conscience that you’ve done everything under your power to
cultivate the soil for trust to once again grow and flourish.

Stop Being Blown Away by Passing Thoughts and Feelings…

' A tree has many leaves, and the wind touches all of them… in one way or another. Some
shake, some quiver, some hardly move at all. Yes, the tree knows their trembling; but neither
the wind, nor the leaves it stirs are the tree that feels their touch. Thoughts and feelings are
like leaves; learning to watch them wave is much better than being carried away with every
breeze.'

Learn the Power of a Quiet Mind -

When you want to directly enjoy the sunshine you must go outdoors. You understand you
have to take yourself physically to a place where the warming rays of the sun can fall upon
you without interference. Likewise, when you want to know the powers that circulate through
a quiet mind, you must take yourself to that place where this silent strength can make itself
known to you. To go quiet, you must go within.

To ensure your success in going within and going quiet, consider yourself as being a
naturalist of the mind. A good wildlife naturalist casually observes the diverse ways of birds or
bunnies without interfering. And that's what you must learn to do as you journey within: being
an impartial witness to the life of your own thoughts and feelings. Let them fly and hop around
within you without the slightest concern for their direction or character. Neither resist nor let
yourself be drawn into any of their attention-stealing antics.

Again, all you want to do is watch. Detached self-observation is your aim. Each time you
realize that you're no longer watching, but rather that you've been captured by a thought or
feeling and are being carried along by it, just quietly withdraw yourself from that temporary
psychic wave. Come back to the awareness of yourself in the present moment.

This is the heart and soul of going — and knowing — quiet. Let go, give up, go within, and
watch. And over and over again, bring your awareness of yourself back into the awareness of
the present moment.

Learn to watch and drop your own thoughts and feelings trying to tell you: "You should give
up this worthless, unproductive practice!" They don't want you to succeed and there's a good
reason why: They cannot dwell in that silent world you wish to enter, and that wishes to enter
you.

Slowly, subtly at first, but eventually even beyond your mind's protests, a new, deeper sense
of silence floods into you; filling your awareness with itself and, at the same time, with yet
another awareness that the source of this supreme stillness is arising out of your own being. It
washes everything out of its way. And so arrives a quiet mind.

Yes to Imagine and Giving Peace a Chance…

Dr. Ron Alexander sat listening to the record company
executives and staff he’d been hired to help. They’d
sought him out as a mindfulness expert and corporate
consultant to help them improve marketing and sales.
One major artist―a “diva” who shall remain
unnamed―had followed her first two highly successful
records with a third CD that had, so far, failed
miserably. What could they do to turn things around?

As people made suggestions, Alexander took notes. The
word no was used 76 times in response to a proposed
plan. Yes―or any other encouraging word? Eleven
times. “So over the next few weeks,” he told me, “we
focused on what it would be like if, before anyone
opened their mouth to respond, they went into a ‘yes
state’ to engage what I call the open mind, a state of
open possibilities.”

Yes Leads to Creativity and Problem Solving ~
Alexander, the author of Wise Mind, Open Mind , saw a
big shift at the record company: From the top down,
meetings had far less discord. “No is a constrictor,” he
says. Ideas about how to turn the artist around began to
flow, and soon, the majority of the responses were yes
or “why not?” Divas don’t get on buses to go cross-
country announcing call numbers on AM radio stations,
the executives had protested weeks earlier to one
unusual idea. By the end of Alexander’s process, this
diva did. Within weeks, she’d sold close to a million
CDs.

I’m not a record company executive (or a diva). But a
few weeks ago I decided to count how often over several
days my first instinct was to respond with some form of
no. There were more than 76. A lot more. I said,
“Probably not” to my 15-year-old’s idea that she and her
friend could save their money for a year to buy a white
Mercedes (seriously?), and no to her proposal that they
take a bus trip to Las Vegas (seriously?). I said no to the
idea of sitting down and playing the piano (I’ll sound
bad; I’ll be judged; I’ll get frustrated); no to my
husband’s that suggestion we grocery shop together
(we’ll get more done if we divide and conquer), and no
to the idea of joining a book club for parents of teens
(I’m not a joiner; I don’t want to talk about my
daughter’s “issues” with strangers). Thinking I was
being helpful, I said, “Don’t” when my son professed to
feeling guilty about something he hadn’t even been
responsible for causing. When I was done counting, I
was surprised that I, a “positive” person, was so, well,
negative. Turns out, there are a lot of ways to say no.
And a lot more reasons to say yes.

Saying Yes to Joining~
Dr. Robert Bilder is a professor of psychiatry and
biobehavioral sciences at the University of California,
Los Angeles UCLA and holds a chair in creativity
research. “Much of saying yes,” Bilder says, “is saying
yes to another person. By acknowledging that you are
going along with a plan initiated by someone else, you
are strengthening or creating a bond with them.” The
same neural circuits are engaged when we join groups,
Bilder says, as when we fall in love. Oxytocin levels
surge, which, because that makes you feel so good, has
an addictive quality. When you say yes to another
person, you’re engaging this reward circuit, making it
more likely that the next time you’re asked to join
someone, you’ll say yes.

Yes Broadens Your Outlook ― Literally~
At UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center,
researchers study the neurobiology of positive
emotions. Christine Carter, a sociologist there, has
written about bringing up happy kids in her book
Raising Happiness . “Your brain,” she says, “operates in
a really different way when you perceive resistance or
are resisting. When you’re positive or expecting a yes,
your field of vision is actually larger.”
“When you are anxious, or perceive a threat (which
brings about an extreme state of resistance),” says
Carter, “your vision needs to narrow in order to focus.”
When you’re not in this state of anxious resistance,
“you’re able to take in more stimulus across the board,
versus only being able to see what is right in front of
you.”

Saying Yes to Adventure Re-creates Your Brain~
Dawna Markova, a writer and inspirational speaker,
works in myriad ways to help people “learn with
passion and live on purpose,” including encouraging
people to test themselves in outdoor adventures. She
may be best known for a poem she wrote on the night of
her father’s death.

“I will not die an unlived life,” it begins. “I will not live
in fear of falling, or catching fire.”
Fear―of falling, or making a fool of yourself―is a big
reason to say no to adventure. But neuroscientists know
that when you expose yourself to new
experiences―from learning to fly-fish to climbing giant
trees―your brain releases noradrenaline and dopamine,
and the exertion brings on endorphins. This makes you
feel alert and better able to enjoy that moment and the
ones that follow. And, when you take a flying leap into
uncertainty (perhaps using a harness in the case of
high-flying leaps), you train your brain to believe that
you can. Your experiences literally re-create you.

Yes Is Good for Your Relationship~
The simplest way to make relationships work, says Dr.
John Gottman, considered the country’s foremost
researcher into marriage, is to say yes as often as you
can without sacrificing an important part of yourself in
the process. (Gottman makes it clear that agreement is
not the same as compliance, becoming who someone
else wants you to be). In fact, he has even come up with
a formula: For every no or negative thing you say, say
yes or something positive five times. Yes, that’s a good
idea. Yes, I can help you. Yes, I can make time this
afternoon.

And the “emotional coaching” we so often do to
alleviate our partner’s or child’s suffering? Don’t tell
someone not to feel something, as I did with my son,
says Carter. Just encourage them to talk to you. Then
listen.

Getting to Yes~
When you say no a lot, your brain gets in the habit,
literally paving more neural pathways and raising the
speed limit on your knee-jerk “No!” response. Luckily,
as brain scientists have realized, we can rewire our
brains.

We have knee-jerk responses, Carter says, because it’s
efficient. Our decisions come from two parts of the
brain: a quick, instinctive reaction from the basal
ganglia and the deliberate, considered response from
our prefrontal cortex, which involves an energy-
intensive process. Parenting, for instance, would be “too
darn hard if you had to constantly weigh every decision
and construct it from your prefrontal cortex.” The trick
is changing what those efficient, low-energy knee-jerk
responses are. With some practice, it can become just as
instinctive to say maybe as it is to say no.

Always Yes?~
In the end, Markova says, what’s important is not so
much the yes as the willingness to say it. It’s the pause.
If your gut, your heart, or your head (all of which, by
the way, are surrounded by neural circuitry) is
screaming no , you might say merely say, “I don’t know.
I’ll get back to you.”

Just being willing to say yes means you’ve removed the
barriers to new people, experiences, and feelings. And
after the pause? Sometimes you say no. If you’re
female, there’s a good chance that right about now
you’re thinking, but my problem is saying yes too much
. . .  yes to driving teens around town, yes to
volunteering for anything people ask me to do, yes to
taking on far more than my share of household chores.

No, Markova says, can be just as much as an affirmation
of self as yes.

“Inside of yes,” says Ron Alexander, “You have to have
the capacity to set boundaries, to have brakes. No is an
essential part of a yes way of thinking. No, I don’t want
to do that. No, I don’t like the way you’re
communicating with me. It does lead to a yes. It leads to
a woman saying yes to her self-esteem.”

Me? I said yes when my husband asked about grocery
shopping, which turned into a funny date. I made new
friends at the book club and learned I’m not the only
one worried about my kid.
To my daughter’s plan to buy a white Mercedes, I said,
“Why not?” To my surprise, this kid, who has “lacked
initiative,” signed up for an online driving course,
started studying for her permit, and lined up babysitting
gigs to start saving money. All I did was pause and
listen. And not say no.

The piano? I sound bad. I don’t care. It feels good to
play music again.

But I still said no to the bus trip to Las Vegas. For now
Every day, take a mindful pause. It’s like taking your
pulse. During this pause, identify three things:
thoughts, feelings, and current beliefs. With each one,
ask: Are they positive, neutral, or negative?

Take a negative belief, and pose an antidote. For
example: I don’t believe I can pass this test. A positive
antidote would be I am fully capable of passing this test.
You may have determined, in your mindful pause, I feel
anxious about this test.
If your body is in a state of anxiety, he says, “You have
to shift your body’s physiology.” The quickest way to do
that? Get on the yoga mat, take a walk, go surfing. “The
physical exercise will shift the neurons in your brain,”
says Alexander, and enable you to shift from no (I can’t)
to yes (I’m capable).

Great Yeses of History

Yes to Imagine and Giving Peace a Chance~
John Lennon strolled into Yoko Ono’s art studio in 1966
and encountered a ladder. A sign at the bottom invited
“Step Up!” He climbed, expecting the words at the top to
read “Piss off!” Instead, he read YES. It was, he said, like
the sun coming out. He credited it with an
extraordinary shift inside himself, personally and
musically.

Yes to Nonviolence~
As the leader of Indian nationalism in the 1930s and
’40s, Mahatma Gandhi was convinced he could gain
independence for his country without firing a bullet.
How, Lord Mountbatten asked, did Gandhi expect the
British to depart? “I expect you will just walk out,” he
told the viceroy, who found the idea inconceivable.
Gandhi simply did not see the no, and in the end, the
British left peacefully and an international movement
for nonviolent protest was born.

When No Means Yes~
In a classic case of using no to affirm herself and half
the population of her country, Susan B. Anthony said
no: women will no longer accept having no rights.
Despite having a great fear of public speaking, she
stepped into a yes state and, with Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, traversed the country giving speeches and
appealing to the government to treat men and women
equally. In 1869, she founded the National Women’s
Suffrage Association, and went on to say, “Yes, I will
vote,” in November 1872, for which she was arrested
and convicted by a jury that had been instructed by the
judge to return a guilty verdict. Though she was not
imprisoned, she was ordered to pay a fine of $100, to
which she said no (the fine remained unpaid for the rest
of her life).

Can We All Be Successful ?

In the world of creativity and art you hear the term ‘make it’ a lot. I don’t
mean with regards to the creation of the art, but rather
in terms of whether or not you have achieved success.
‘When do you think you will make it then?’
‘Did you see that x seems to be finally making it?’
‘When will you give up on this if you haven’t made it by then?’

If you are creative and are serious about your craft then you will
probably recognise the sentiment behind these questions. Many
people ask these sorts of questions without thinking, yet when
you actually consider what is being said, the whole concept
doesn’t really make any sense. It is loaded with false assumptions
about reality and carries a weight to bear upon the artist that
declares, albeit inadvertently that they are not yet valid.
For the artist, this can damage our view and understanding of
success. By passing the job of defining our hopes and dreams to
people outside of our context (informed in all likelihood by
popular mass media), we allow the way we see our art and our
relationship with it to be influenced by fabricated notions of
what success ‘should’ look like. We are then in real danger of
narrowing our own dreams to stay within these tiny abstract and
arbitrary boundaries.
This is true in any field of work and essentially comes down to
the underlying presence of ignorance and stereotypes within us
all. When you talk to someone outside of your own area of
expertise you draw on what limited knowledge you have of their
area, and this is made up of ideas rather than experience. But
these stereotypes are possibly more powerful within the creative
world because it is public opinion that artists can want to either
influence or adhere to. This means that we are in turn influenced
by public opinion on what constitutes a successful artist, even
though there is no consensus on such a thing. Public opinion is
that, as artists, we must be ‘trying to make it’, which on the
whole (eg. for a musician), to the general public maybe means
getting a record deal and being on radio/TV. For the writer it
might be getting a book published and being short-listed for a big
literary award etc.
Success is therefore measured specifically by what happens
beyond the work itself. People don’t care if you have written an
astonishing 800-page masterpiece that would easily hold up next
to War and Peace. Unless you are lucky enough to find an
acclaimed enough agent who can be bothered to read it and pass
it on to a reputable publisher who is willing to take a chance on
it so that you can earn abundant royalties and receive a large
advance for your next book, you have failed. At least that is true
in accordance with general public opinion.
If you are rich and famous you have made it.
If you sign a record deal you have made it.
If you are/have neither of these then you must be failing for they
are the very definition of success.
Take a moment to think about some of the ways success in
your field might be stereotypically measured by public
opinion. Is this a satisfactory way to measure it? Have you
been influenced into defining success in these terms?
More often than not public perception of success, in any field is
measured by image and fortune – everything is seen through the
money lens. This is designed to leave us in a perpetual state of
discontentment.
It is blindly assumed that if you have made money and notoriety
you are successful. Most of us know somewhere deep down that
this is not true, but we still believe it. We also know that
happiness is not tied up in these things, but we still assume that
we would be happy if we had them, and again strive to get them.
Success is encountered in the personal external rewards rather
than the product of what we do. We falsely identify ourselves
then not by what we do, but rather in what we have and what
others think we are. The notion of success has therefore become
extrinsic rather than intrinsic, and we chase after meaningless
expectations rather than real world value.
Do you listen and believe other peoples’ expectations of what
success should mean for you?
Have you ever made a list of what you would genuinely like to
achieve?
What is the heart of your ambition – is it intrinsic or
extrinsic? i.e. Do you focus on the dream of fame and fortune, or
is there something more meaningful driving your passion for
your work that you would (ideally) do whether you got paid or
not?
This is an important question to answer when it comes to
knowing where you want to take your work, and what you will
say the next time someone talks to you about ‘making it’.
Perhaps you could ask them what they mean. Chances are they
wont really know because they wont really have ever thought
about it.
In the next post I will be talking about the problem of fear
and how we can sometimes sabotage our own potential
because we are afraid of abstract consequences.

To The Other Man/women

You will know it when she starts to tire of you. The light you now see in her eyes will
grow dim. The intensity will drain from your conversations. She will seek you out less
often. She will not stare into your soul as much. She won’t shake her head and do her little
inner chuckle. You, you will be left feeling like a man slowly dying of thirst. And she will
be the water tower, exalted far above your reach. I should know.
I have become background noise; the one-time hit now fading into nothingness. I’m that
wallpaper you barely even notice. And you, you’re her Mona Lisa hanging in the spotlight.
The mystery of your almost-smile has captured her. I can’t see your face but I know you’re
there, enjoying every minute; because I’ve been where you are.
Now, she hangs on to every word you say. You can see this, but that won’t stop her from
telling you anyway. She will tell you how much she values your insight, how many times
she read your last text message, how her heart races when she hears your voice on the
phone. You will see the pleasure in her eyes every time she sees you; she won’t even try to
hide it. She will hold your hand each time you cross a street together, letting your body
shield hers, and you will know how it feels to be God. In the periods of measured silence
between you, you will find yourself aching for her. You will call her. You will revel in her
delight.
But as with all things that were once new, you will get old. Your stories will start to sag
and fold in all the places that were once firm and tight; and you will be helpless, trying to
prop them up, to plug the holes now appearing like those ‘Whack-a-Mole’ moles. She will
come to know the end of every adventure story before you tell it. She will know of better
ones and she will tell them, her eyes challenging you to top them, to do something to make
her look. And with all your strength you will want to. You’d give your next breath to be
able to.
But you will see yourself losing her. That, dear current Shiny New Thing, will suck the air
from your lungs. When you begin to fade from her sight, you will know how I feel. You will
see it coming, and you will be unable to redeem yourself. And that, my friend, will kill
you. I should know.