Trust is rooted in your relationship with yourself, so interacting with a basic level of trust is critical in allowing yourself to be open to vulnerability, intimacy, and growth. It takes self-trust to recognise trust in others.

If you don’t trust someone, they either haven’t earned your trust or they have but it hasn’t made a difference. Somewhere along the way there is a critical difference in core values (incompatibility) and/or you feel unsafe due to your lack of self-trust.

Trust is part of the basic foundation of your interpersonal relationships. Without it, you don’t have the love, care, and respect required for your relationships to be healthy, mutual, and fulfilling. Instead, you’ll trust too much or too little. It’s like treating a traffic light as if it’s always on red or green regardless of the actual colour.

Think of trust as working on a debit and credit system.

When you are willing to have your own back, which includes being willing to exercise judgement and discern feedback about your interactions, you’re willing to give the equivalent of seventy percent trust when you first meet someone.

A debit and credit trust system mentality and attitude says, I don’t know you yet, but because I trust myself, I’ll give you enough trust to get a sense of what you’re about. You won’t ignore, dismiss or override yourself to keep indicating trust to someone.

Based on real experience of this person over time, you’re either going to maintain a steady level of trust and increase from there or you’re going to roll back.

As you have the foundation of self-trust and so, as such, you genuinely value trust, there will be no need to increase it on a willy-nilly basis or act tight-fisted. You give what you have to give and are mindful of what it takes to get to know someone. Should you find you have less trust than what you started with, you’ll honour this knowledge by ensuring that you don’t attempt to build a more intimate relationship. You will pay attention to yourself and create healthy boundaries that reflect this.

When you treat and regard yourself with love, care, trust and respect, you won’t continue spending time around someone who offers less than what you can already do for yourself.

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