Becoming Trustable

By Leo Babauta

As a husband, a father, a man … one of the things I crave most is for my loved ones to trust me. It’s something I want with my team, my readers, my coaching clients, the members of my Sea Change and Fearless Training programs.

And I’ve worked hard over the years to become more trustable.

It’s really a magical thing, when people start trusting you. When your wife and kids trust you, it can melt your heart. They can relax, and feel taken care of. When your clients trust you, you can go deeper with them. When you trust yourself, you can relax more in any activity.

There’s magic in becoming trustable.

In this article, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned. To be clear: I am not perfect, and I don’t always do everything perfectly. This isn’t about perfection, but about being someone that people can count on – including taking responsibility when you’ve fallen short of what they were expecting.

An Example: What Happens in a Marriage When You’re Trustable

A marriage is a great example of where the magic of trustability can transform things. In a marriage, one partner will crave the radiant love (not necessarily sexual love) of the other partner – a husband craving the abundant feminine love of his wife, for example. (Note: This can apply to any gendered relationship – I’m going to use man/woman because that’s the one I know best.)

But she can’t fully give her radiant love and affection if she can’t relax. And she can’t relax if she’s always worried about whether things are going to be taken care of, anxious about whether her life is safe, whether you’re going to follow through on what you said you’d do. I can’t tell you how many men I’ve worked with who said this is one of their wives’ main complaint!

When our partner doesn’t trust us and complains that we don’t do what we say we’re going to do … we can take that as criticism. We can say, “Why does she always have to complain about me??” But what we’re missing is truly getting her experience, of having to worry about things she doesn’t want to worry about. She feels tense, and she can’t relax enough to give her radiant love.

When they can relax, and know that things are taken care of … they can give their love more easily and abundantly. Which is what we crave.

And so the magic comes when we become trustable – all of a sudden, they can relax more. And their love flows more easily and abundantly. It’s a wonderful magic!

It turns out, this is how all relationships often work, including professional relationships – when they can trust us and relax, a deeper relationship can form. Magic happens.

How to Become More Trustable

When we understand how all of the above works … then the question becomes, “How do I become more trustable?”

And my answer is that it doesn’t happen overnight. And it’s a never-ending process, like any kind of mastery. You’re never done growing in this area.

But it is possible to grow tremendously here!

I’m going to give some of the key learnings here:

If you take some of this on, a little at a time, I would be willing to bet that things will magically start to change for you in all of your relationships. And it just feels freaking good to be trusted!

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