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- Choosing to trust
Choosing to trust
One of my core beliefs, choices in how I live my life, is I choose to believe in people. I choose to trust. Trust and verify, don’t open myself up to undue risk, but I CHOOSE positivity, belief in the good, optimism.
I am ever so aware that there are bad people, untrustworthy people, people with bad intentions, and I will always always fight for what is right. But my default is not to believe the worst in people. As Nike Head Coach Chris Bennett says - paraphrasing – I would rather believe the best in people and be disappointed every once in awhile than believe the worst in people and have my expectations met. Because often, people will rise or fall in accordance with what you expect of them.
I happened across this Tim Ferriss episode with Jim Collins, and the timing couldn’t have been more fitting. From around the 1 hour, 10-minute mark, Collins discusses how his long-time collaborator the late Bill Lazier persuaded him to move towards a trust bid, which was not Collins’s natural inclination.
As Collins said Lazier told him: “You have to decide as a basic stance, is your opening basic stance about people is they are trustworthy; you always start there, your opening bid is trust and trusting them.”
Collins wanted to know how Lazier dealt with the pain of sometimes finding people not trustworthy. First, Lazier said, he didn’t leave himself open to catastrophic loss, but he framed some of his thinking in a new and refreshing way: “Think of it as upside and downside. What’s the upside to taking the bid of mistrust? Well, you’ll maybe prevent yourself from having one of those hurtful experiences, and what’s the downside? The downside is - trustworthy people, you will lose them, and the upside to trusting people is when you find the trustworthy people, they will rise to it.
The critical thing he said to me is, have you ever considered the possibility, Jim, that not everybody is one or the other? But because you trust them at the outset, they are more likely to become trustworthy because you trust them.
Ever since then, I try to live to that, that that’s the opening bid, but protect your flanks, it can’t be catastrophic.”
A couple of other points from the podcast if you only want to listen to parts:
· “You can always say something you haven’t said. You can never unsay something you’ve said.”
· In the last 20 minutes, Collins focused on telling people, what would you do if your life was short, if you had 10 years left to live? … And the fundamental thing to consider, the fundamental way to measure your life, is how have you changed others’ lives? Have you made some peoples’ lives better and different? And if not, get to it.
Other listens and reads from the week.
Citibike at 10
And how might it be impacted by the demise of Lyft
My daughter’s murder wasn’t enough
CTE and football/sports
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2023/chris-nowitski-chris-eitzman-cte-harvard/