by Stella Lin

Created on: March 03, 2007   Last Updated: April 29, 2007

Trust "implies instinctive unquestioning belief in and reliance upon something," according to Dictionary.com. The interesting word here is "unquestioning." How many times do we question in the back of our minds the reliability of someone's words, especially when this person makes a promise? Do we use that person's history as our personal "background check" to assess the reliability of his integrity? Or do we use our own backbone (or lack thereof) to judge whether this person will follow through? Would you consider yourself a self-reliant person who likes to be in control, or do you completely trust others to the point of delegating tasks to your subordinates without questioning their competence? How many times does a friend have to mess up before you eventually lose trust in him? If he lied once, would you give him a second chance, or would you deem him "once a liar, always a liar"?

Trust is not the belief in OR reliance upon something; it is a combination of both.

They say that without trust, a relationship will not survive. That is true, because you need both character and love to earn someone's trust. It may sound silly to say that if someone has had a bad academic or work history, he might be a bad life partner. Does he turn in his homework on time or does he always give his teacher excuses for why the paper was late? Does he call in sick to work even if he isn't? Is he always late to work, even if it's only five minutes? Believe it or not, these traits affect relationships. If someone has a habit of forgetting appointments with you or always has an excuse ready on their tongue to justify their actions, even if their actions hurt you, eventually these traits will wear you down and although you continue to love them, you lose your trust in that person.

You can feel it when someone doesn't trust you. They constantly ask you questions as though they don't believe you are competent enough to do it in the way you know how, or they criticize the way you do things because it's not good enough, or it's not the way they were taught. Sometimes a lack of trust stems from someone's own lack of character, and sometimes it comes from someone's background if they did not grow up in a loving environment where individual growth was encouraged. Someone who does have character but constantly questions you about yours can just be as annoying as someone who doesn't have character and drops the ball.

So how do we build trust? A good start would be to assume that the person knows

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