How To Gain Someone’s Trust.

 

By Anubhav Srivastava. (Register For His Workshop – Super Confidence For Super Success)

How to gain someone’s trust? We all want to be seen as trustworthy, we all want to be seen in a positive light and be respected. But not everyone is able to instill that sort of trust. In fact many people do not even have the trust of their close ones. So how can you build it? Here is how

 

1) Honor your words

How can one believe you when you cannot even honor your words. If you say you are going to show up at some place at a given time no matter what, then don’t break that promise no matter what. If you have made a commitment to someone about  doing them a favor, then do it. Don’t back at out at the last moment. Such behavior over time will ruin your reputation, lead to a lack of respect and you will never be able to build much trust.

 

2) Make sure your behavior is consistent.

Would you trust someone who promises you great things and sometimes delivers on them but most of the time, does not? You probably wouldn’t as the person’s degree of trustworthiness is rather erratic. So why do you expect anyone else to trust you if your trustworthiness seems to change from time to time as well?

Make sure honoring your words and keeping promises becomes a habit, only then will you build a trustworthy reputation that will not be so amongst the people you interact with but also amongst people you have never met. Good word spreads around! If you maintain the right behavior consistently, even people you do not know personally will trust you without you having to earn their trust!

Remember, most people will rarely believe what you say but they will often believe what others say about you.

 

3) Conduct yourself with integrity even when the people you interact with are not around.

This is again about the power of the word that spreads. If you think you can put on an act of incredible trustworthiness in front of people but completely lose your integrity when they are not around and still get away with it, you are wrong! Word spreads.

Integrity is not just about how you act in front of people, it is about you staying true to your words and not displaying hypocrisy even when those people are not around. If your integrity is an act, sooner or later people will see through it, word will spread and you will lose any trust you built.

 

4) Reveal any information relevant to the other person as soon as possible

When it comes to building trust you can either choose the passive route or the active route. The passive route is where you when you wait for the right conditions to show that you are trustworthy. The active route is when you prove your trustworthiness even when it is not needed.

Let me give you an example. Suppose your spouse does not want you to interact with another person. Not breaking that trust would be honoring your spouse’s wishes and not talking to them.  Let’s say after many months the other person tries to contact you, you tell them not to contact you again but do not reveal the information to your spouse either. You are technically honoring your spouse’s wishes but you are still withholding information from them.

In this case what would really build trust is when you actually tell your spouse that the other person tried to contact you again. Sure it will lead to some conflict and anger in the short term, but at some level they will appreciate the fact that you revealed the information to them without them asking you for it. The bond between you and your spouse will only grow stronger from you going out of your way to share information with them. This is how long term trust is built and solid relationships thrive.

 

5) If you made a mistake in the past, admit it yourself and never repeat it

Nobody is perfect, everyone makes mistakes from time to time. Everyone does things they regret later. What separates people with great integrity from those with a questionable one is the willingness to admit their mistakes and being honest about it. If you have done something that you shouldn’t have done then it is better to tell it them yourselves instead of them finding out from someone else.

Do not get defensive or try to blame someone else. Accept personal responsibility. Accept that you screwed up and made a mistake. If the mistake is relatively minor, you will be forgiven, but you will have to ensure that you never repeat the mistake again.

This will hit your trustworthiness to some degree but if you made the confession yourself and never repeat the mistake again, over a time the trust will be rebuilt.

 

6) Don’t share secrets

If someone tells you something and expects you to not share it with anyone else, honor that secret with your life. In fact one does not have to explicitly state that what they are telling you is a secret not to be shared with anyone else. If common sense tells you that what the person told you is the sort of information that you would not like to be revealed to someone else, if you were in their shoes then GUARD it.

If you let the secret out, sooner or later they will find out because we all know words spread faster than fire. And if you were the only person they initially shared it with, they will know it is you at fault and the trust will be shattered.

If you share secrets or have any sort of a relationship, romantic or otherwise with people who share your secrets, things will inevitably have a bad ending. 

 

 

7) Earn it

Trust takes time to build. It doesn’t happen automatically. Trust between two people is not something that one develops overnight. There is a reason that as a little kid you are taught not to trust strangers. Because there is a huge degree of uncertainty involved.

Similarly, as an adult, usually trust develops only over time when you get to know everything you can about a person, their thinking, observe their actions and their behavior towards you.  So the first thing you need to is to to earn it.  When the person sees your love, your care and your willingness to do anything for them time and again, even in the absolute  worst of situations, that is how trust develops. This is how true friendship develops.

A girl and her dad were crossing the bridge. The father was concerned about the daughters safety. So he told her “Sweetheart, hold my hand.” She told him, “No Dad, you hold mine!”. The father found it funny and said “What’s the difference?” The little girl responded ” If I hold your hand and if the bridge collapses and I may let your hand go, but if you hold it, I know no matter what, you will never let me go.” That is trust!

 

Conclusion

I hope this article has been useful to you. As always, remember it is practicing what you read that makes a difference.  If you fool someone into believing you are trustworthy, you may fool them for some time but not for long. Sooner or later, the truth will come out. Real trust is built upon love, honesty, dependability and loyalty and that is what you should aspire for!

 

About the Author

Anubhav Srivastava is an author, speaker and the director of Carve Your Destiny, a first of its kind comprehensive inspirational movie on success. The movie itself has been seen on Youtube by close to a million people.  Anubhav has also been featured in numerous International and India Media outlets such as BBC , The Times of India, Hindustan Times etc.

&For one on one consulting or a motivational workshop at your organization please email anubhav101@gmail.com . If you would like to write a guest blog post on Anubhavsrivastava.com you contact me on the same email address. Facebook: http://facebook.com/anubhav981

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