Russian proverb:’Doveryai no proveryai’ – Trust but verify.
The trust needn’t be blind. It can be intuitive. It doesn’t mean it is irrational.
Today I got an email from a friend asking for advice on how to trust people as it has become difficult when we deal with so many people.
Trusting someone is a natural thing. It is our brain’s way of responding to protect yourself from danger. You trust someone because you feel that person won’t harm you. It is not always they do good for you.
If we don’t trust people, we lose the opportunity to be with good people. If we trust ten people, two of them may break our trust and disappoint us. Rest of them may not. If we do not trust anyone, we lose the opportunity to know those eight reasonably good people. The more you trust people, the more they trust you and like you. The more trust you place on a ‘normally less trustworthy person’, we may see surprising ways in which he does good things as he is touched by the act of our trust and he might be tired by the lack of trust others demonstrate to him.
Trust in the new world is credit scores, reviews, ratings, and testimonials. Brands quantify trust to get more customers. Lovers demonstrate their best romantic moves to build trust. Trust builds with more and more transactions and interactions, with lesser deviation from expectations.
We live in a world of instant trust, unlike earlier, people took relatively more time. The Internet has commoditized trust. It builds trust instantly. The more people endorse a product, you trust it. The reason people want more social currency – the likes in social media.
Trust is the new currency.