Tag Archives: trust

22

Why People Lie

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what is honesty?
Live honestly

 

***Always Be Honest–

How much is your integrity worth?

What can you gain by being dishonest that you can truly enjoy?

A wise man once told me: “If your word is worth nothing, then neither are you.” That statement has stayed with me over the years, and the older I get, the more I analyze everything I say and the value of the truth. I was also once told that everybody lies at least once a day. At first, I was angry about that comment. But then you look at all the things we say not to upset anyone. Looking at the thoughts you have and your words that result, evaluating them for honesty is essential for developing your integrity and how much other people can trust you. Let’s look at why people are dishonest and the price they pay for doing this. These are the actions we take in dishonesty.

Definition of Honesty

Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness, along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft. That seems like a pretty straightforward definition, and not very difficult to see the benefits of making this choice. It all begins with the decision we make every day in our lives that decides how our honesty will affect our lives. Nobody can choose to be honest for you, and the entirety of your life will reflect the amount of goodness you value.

Additionally, an honest person will inform others of the opportunities for growth and self-actualization. There is no room for silence in the moments when a situation calls for your honest evaluation to assist a person find a better path. Even though most people don’t want to hear the uncomfortable truths, is it better to lie? Be open about your life and your philosophy with all you meet. They will know what to expect from you and trust what you say. Doing something or saying something to manipulate others into doing something beneficial for you is deceitful. Be honest, even when it is difficult, and in the long run, it will work out for the best.

Why Honesty Is Difficult

When you look at being honest and telling the truth, it would seem simple to practice. When you make a statement, make a truthful one. However, it appears that being honest is a little more complicated than that. So many people don’t want to hear the truth. Here are some of the main reasons people don’t always tell the truth are:

  • Fear of harm: The most straightforward idea to understand why we lie is for self-protection, including self-deception, to prevent injury to ourselves. This harm can be either physical or mental. However, what is the damage? A momentary uncomfortableness? You have to measure if the benefit is worth your integrity.
  • Fear of conflict: To some degree, we all fear conflict because it is painful and uncomfortable. Life is more comfortable when things flow smoothly. But creating calm with lies is only delaying the inevitable storm, and it will come with higher intensity when it arrives.
  • Fear of punishment: When growing up, how often did we lie about how well we did in school or started a fight? How often do we cover up our mistakes and transgressions? Accept responsibility for all things. We make excuses that give all of our power away, and accepting responsibility puts all the power in your hands.
  • Fear of rejection: Sometimes, our insecurities are the foundation of why we lie to each other because we want to remain popular in our relationships. Typically, it is harmless boasting to make ourselves appear more admirable to other people. Better to be true to yourself and who you are than to live a lie. If people don’t like who you are, there is no need to spend time with them.
  • Fear of loss: This is usually the loss of personal objects, such as money or expensive possessions. Greed is the foundation for this reason and can be found in us. We often lie to make ourselves more desirable to other people, too, fearing the loss of that relationship. Some people lie for fear of alienating someone they care about and again losing that relationship. Other times, when our self-esteem starts to decline, we even lie to ourselves as a means to prevent loss of morale. No matter what you are afraid of losing, better to address the issues head-on with honesty. Then you can take real action to find a result that will benefit your life.
  • Altruistic Reasons: We often lie to help our friends and loved ones. How often do we flattery someone to make them feel better? Or don’t tell the whole truth because we are afraid of hurting someone’s feelings? This is the only selfless reason why we lie. However, it doesn’t pay off in the long run. Better to be honest so that all people can work from a place of knowledge and acceptance. Lies are harmful and build negative energy in the situations of your life.

It comes down to a matter of integrity. Do your words have any truth in them? Should anybody trust and listen to what you say? Being honest is essential because nobody will ever imagine or believe you if you are not trustworthy. If you lay about one thing, you would lie about another. Where do you draw the line morally? It is a slippery slope once you start to blur the lines of acceptable behavior.

Integrity and trust are not things that you can easily replace. Value them as much as gold. Those who lie continuously and repeatedly will pay the price in all areas of their lives. If you can’t trust yourself to tell the truth, how can you ever trust anyone else?

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” -Thomas Jefferson

“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.” – Spencer Johnson

“Honest hearts produce honest actions.“- Brigham Young

“To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.“- Edward R. Murrow

 

21

Trustworthy

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Trust- firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

Walking in the middle of something gives a perspective that makes it challenging to see the possibilities that lie on the edges beyond your current scope of vision. You focus on the things you see, and it can be frustrating because we want certain things to happen, and we want them in the manner we imagine they should come. It is frustrating and a little scary when things don’t happen exactly how we pictured them. Life runs on a script that we can influence but can’t write. It takes having a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something, or trust in life and yourself. Let go and trust the Universe.

The True Meaning of Trust

You are a great human soul with unlimited potential. From the moment we are born, influences and circumstances are conspiring to tell us that we are less than we are. We forget what we can do when we set our minds to it. It is easy to let doubt and a lack of confidence affect you and make you accept lesser circumstances as OK or, worse yet, to think less of yourself.

As people, we can think and use our imaginations. In that creative thought, there is a power to bring the unseen into reality. It happens all the time in all areas of life. Each work of art, new business idea, or invention began in someone’s imagination and was brought into reality. It has been that way since the beginning of man. Sometimes when things aren’t going the way, we want to start to be more creative and trust ourselves to bring into reality the things that will make us happy. To have faith in life will bring your thoughts into reality.

Trusting Other People

When it comes to trusting others, that can be not easy. So many people seem to be out to build their plans and selfishly take care of their things. Trust comes on a collection of results from actions taken. The people you can trust will reveal themselves over time, as will the people you can’t trust. Be kind and understanding with others because they are just trying to travel their path as best they can.

Trust arrives with honesty and truth, so be honest and truthful, and those who are not will reveal themselves. Always value being honest with others and telling the truth in all situations, and you will be trusted and find people you can trust along the path of life. Then when you see them, don’t let go of them. This course can be a challenge, but it is worth it because honesty is something we all need, and to find someone you truly trust is like finding a hidden treasure.

How to Let Go and Trust

There are higher forces in the world than us. Life has been happening for thousands of years before we arrived and will continue long after we have gone. It is essential to understand that life is not meant to be easy but to bring us the experiences that will make us better people and find our purpose. What we want and what life wants to teach us can be the same. Often, the hardest thing to do is decide what we want and think about it and let life handle the details.

Trusting that we don’t know the best method to get where we want to go and accept the journey might not look exactly as we imagined it would. But that may be the most effective way to contact us where we want to go and do what we love to do. Sometimes it seems we are just a passenger on this ride of life, and in truth, that is what we are a lot of time. We can steer the car, but life seems to choose the roads. Don’t be frustrated with the experience. Trust that life is taking you exactly where you need to go and enjoy the ride. The journey is the real prize anyway.

Take a moment this day to look at your life and see how many miraculous things are in your life right now. Count them and state them clearly. You are healthy. You have plenty of possibilities; you are breathing. Some people love you and people you love. Use your imagination to create and trust that the forces around you will bring great things into your life. Be grateful and have a joy in your heart that today all is good, and the possibilities of tomorrow are infinite. The biggest problem with knowing what you want is knowing you know the best way to bring it all about. Life knows more than you will ever learn. Trust the process and be the best you can be today. Trust, you will get the great things that are coming.

Let go and trust the Universe.

Trusting in life Quotes

“Sometimes, when you lose your way, you find YOURSELF.” ― Mandy Hale

“Trust what feels true even if that truth requires you to ignore what you know.” – Gina Greenlee

“Trust starts with truth and ends with truth.”

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”-Stephen R. Covey

 

 

21

Allowing

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Positive Thought Project-

They are allowing– Permitting for things to move without resistance and evolving and growing naturally.

Life is a journey, and that is not just a cliche. It is a fact we live with every day of our experience in life. One of the human problems is that people always feel they have the best answers to issues and feel we must do something to achieve all of our goals in the most efficient manner possible. People obsess over the minute details of life and often don’t allow the natural path of growth to occur. Having a good work ethic can be a detriment because we learn that doing nothing is lazy and wrong. But sometimes, nothing is the exact right thing to do. Allow things to grow and develop into what they should be. Allowing is difficult because you have to trust that things will move as they should. It all starts with a conscious awareness of your thoughts surrounding a situation, the words you use to express the case, and the actions resulting from the problem.

You Can’t Force Things.

To see how allowing works, look at nature all around you. Trees, animals, plants, flowers, or anything that lives and grows all manage quite nicely without outside influence. No matter how intelligent you are or how much money you have, there is no way you can make a plant thrive. Each entity goes through its life cycle of development naturally, and all we can do is help where we can and allow it all to take its course. It makes you wonder where we should adopt this attitude in our own lives and allow for things to develop naturally in the best way possible.

People are very good at creating situations where there is a perception of control. But that control is only on the surface, and chaos is always only a second away. A loved one dies, an accident happens, you lose a job, a relationship ends, a relationship begins, or any other of the million things you can’t control or plan for happens. You realize you were never in control of anything in the first place. This experience is a scary realization, but also it is empowering when you realize all things are working, even without your input. Events are moving toward their inevitable conclusion and will grow or stop in how they were meant to occur. You are just a part of the plan, not the creator of that plan. That is a harsh realization for many people.

Lose the Grip of Control

As you look to take control of every situation in your life, realize that you have never been able to or will never be about to control the outcomes of life’s circumstances and manipulate them in the way you think benefits you. Things will all take place without the control and guidance of stuff they have no chance of working out as we wish them to, helping us. But do we have the vision to know what is in our best interest?

Often it seems that the tighter your grip on trying to control things stops them from progressing and growing as they naturally would for the benefit of all. We have a vision based on our beliefs and ideas of how things should go. But, if we let things play out as they should, we could receive benefits and great experiences we never thought of or imagined. It is hard for people to let things be and develop independently, but that is the only way to get a harvest. Please do what you can to help but allow the seeds to grow and produce as they are best capable.

Do You Know The Best Possible Outcome

It doesn’t matter if it is in business or personal relationships; you do not know the best possible outcome for any situation. You may think you know, but one thing I know for sure is that you don’t. Things may turn out exactly as you planned, but you will never know how much better they would have been had you allowed them to develop in their manner. A minor success could have been a home run, a life-changing event. The ultimate answer to a challenge you face could have materialized—all by allowing the solution to come rather than forcing it by having to be correct.

There are many different paths for a trip to reach its destination that no matter how much we plan, we will not be able to see them all. You have to develop trust with the Universe, God, the force, or whatever you choose to call the power behind life. Please make a choice you think is best, take action and let it grow in the best way it naturally can. We don’t have enough information to understand the best possible outcome of the battles we are fighting.

Acceptance is The Answer

Learn to develop patience with yourself that you don’t always have the best answer, and you are improving continually in life. Lessons will be available to you, and learning them is the growth that makes being an experience of value. Control is only an illusion that we can never attain, we can fool ourselves into thinking we can, but it is not real. Be open to what may be coming your way because it is what you need to experience at this moment.

Let go of the need to control and allow life and its things to develop around you. This is patience that wise people I have met seem to work with if not master. Things fall into place without much effort at all because that is their natural state. Don’t let fear and the worry it provides stop you from allowing things to happen. This journey is the flow of life, and letting go of the fear of not being in control is often the only thing you need to allow the best-case scenario to happen to you.

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” ~ Brian Tracy
“The power is not in wanting but in allowing things to happen.”

 

 

21

Something Big

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Without purpose, life is an exercise in existence.  Tasks are completed daily for no other reason than to get to the next day. Some find joy in this, but for me, there has to be a purpose to achieve, a target to be acquired, a goal to be accomplished. It is in the pursuit of accomplishments we find out exactly what we are made of.  To find that holy grail, climb that mountain, sing that song, start that movement, or accomplishing whatever goal lights your fire.  The process is one that we all have to learn from experience to see what works for us. When I was fortunate to reach success, there were a consistent set of influences present.  When a failure has occurred, one or more seem to be absent.  Each of us is an individual, and our stories, beliefs, and needs are different, but these things will only help you.

Build a Solid  Foundation– Not with the goal you pursue, but the one you build in yourself.  Develop honesty, integrity, trust, loyalty, love in yourself for yourself.  Every relationship and experience you experience allows you a chance to become these things. Regardless of your past, you are defined by the actions you take today.  Focus on this and build the foundation for success by making decisions that represent the best of you.  This foundation will not be fancy and isn’t done to make you popular or allow you to brag about your talent or accomplishments. This solid foundation is built in stone and gives you a chance to accomplish anything if you are honing your personal skills and standing for the right things. Honesty, integrity, kindness, gratitude, service, and joy of life seem to be a good place to start.

Commitment– There is a constant and consistent effort needed to move your dream forward to a positive conclusion. There are going to be bumps in the road and challenges to face.  Anything of value comes with challenges attached. That is what gives these things their value. Stick with it through the tough times and keep plugging along toward what you want. The most beautiful, practical, workable philosophy won’t work if you don’t.  Keep taking action toward your goal, and don’t give up.  Be committed. 

Learn the Steps– Goals are not all the same. Some are long-term, some are short-term, and some are intermediate. Learning to break them down into smaller steps and understand what each step means allows you to find meaningful action every day. Nobody goes from beginning to end in one step. It takes several to many steps depending on the size of the thing you want to attain. Be patient with your journey and learn what you need to.  Enjoy the steps, and they are the things you will remember most when success comes your way.

Picture it –  Imagination is not just a tool for daydreaming. It is a tool you can use to bring almost anything into reality.  Imagine your goal as if it is a reality.  See what it looks like, feels like, and picture the world with your goal as a part of it.  All things ever created started this way.  To be an image in someone’s mind brought everything ever created into reality.  Practice using your imagination always; it is a valuable skill that you can lose if you don’t use it. Visualization of something will allow you to bring it into reality, visualize it daily.

Be Accountable- Every day, you have the opportunity to move forward or backward. Only you can be responsible for your actions. If you choose to take a day off, you are accountable for the progress you don’t make on that day. Taking consistent, manageable action every day toward your visualized idea will allow you to move closer to making it a reality.  You are responsible for yourself and the actions you take or don’t take. Remember that nobody else is to blame, only you.  Be accountable to yourself always and accept responsibility for where you are.

Roll With It–  No matter where you are in life, life is always changing. The world around you will always change and forever. Don’t fight it. Go with it always.  It is the difference between positive growth in life and stagnation. Keep moving forward with a positive attitude.  Let go of the things that are outdated and relationships that no longer serve a positive purpose. Change is inevitable and constant, so grow with it.  I know this is easier said than done sometimes, painful experiences are not so easy to roll with, but the choice is yours. Follow the path to success or failure. There is no other direction.

Team Up–  When you set out to accomplish something, it can be an idea in your mind, but it takes others to really make things happen. Build a team that is like-minded, goal-oriented, and change-minded people.  It is going to take support, not fighting to get you to your desired destination. When like minds are employed in a venture, it moves faster, and it is a lot more fun.  Life is a game meant to be played in pairs. Find someone who believes in you and allow them to help you.  Understand what a great gift this is.

Tell Few–  Tell your plans to only those you trust because the first inclination of someone is always to discourage you and tell you what might go wrong or why your dream/goal/desire is unrealistic. Tell only those who will support your efforts. The process is hard enough without hearing negativity from your “support system.”  Better to keep it to yourself. But those of a like mind will support you. Those who care about you and love you will want nothing but the best for you. So tell few and never boast to most.

Write It Down –  Make the goals you are after a checklist and when you can check them off, do it and celebrate the win. No matter how large or small, celebrate it.  Putting it down in ink is a process that will allow the accomplishment to take shape in reality. There is a transformation from thought to reality when you write something down. It starts to become real somehow. Do this to your dreams, and soon they will become a part of your life.

Use Reflection– What you become seeking your goal/destination is far more important than what you get at the end. Skills will be developed that will allow you to achieve other things.  Take time to reflect on all things you do, and ask good questions about what you learned and answer them honestly and completely.  Reflecting on your experience is a powerful teaching tool for yourself.  Never miss a chance to look for personal growth.  Never let a momentary setback be the thing that derails you.  Each “failure” is a gift to accomplishing the ultimate prize. Don’t take failure personally. Take it for what it is, a lesson. Reflect and learn from it, and the perceived weakness of a mistake becomes a strength of your great accomplishments.  Reflect and learn.

There it is,  a simple method for accomplishing success at whatever you are seeking in life. All people have goals at some point. I urge everyone to keep setting them until the day we are no longer a part of this wonderful experience called life.  Whether you follow this process or develop one of your own is not important as long as you find one and know that creation and accomplishment are in your hands.

“You have to remember that the hard days are what make you stronger. The bad days make you realize what a good day is. If you never had any bad days, you would never have that sense of accomplishment!” -Aly Raisman.

“You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.”- Zig Ziglar.

“Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.”- Thomas Carlyle.

 

21

Trust

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Trust~firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

It is impossible to talk about the value of trust without discussing all of the reasons we don’t trust or, worse yet, trust when we shouldn’t. It is one of the greatest learning curves in life, putting your trust in the right people and things. Today’s goal is to look at the things we trust and bring them into your consciousness and analyze if they are worthy of trust or not.  The things we trust build our beliefs about the world and the people we encounter in it. If your trust is misplaced, so is your belief, and your experiences will most likely reflect this. Once someone violates your trust, it is good to understand what it tells you about them. They certainly don’t have your best interest at heart.

Childhood Trust

There are education and indoctrination into becoming the human being you are today. The beliefs you have today were built on the foundation of trust people innately have for their family members. A person is born, and they spend the first portion of their life trying to figure out how the world works. What is safe? What can we trust? The parenting we receive and the culture we are born into providing many of these early answers.  The definition of success, goodness, desire, positivity, how to treat others, our values are all determined as we figure out life. Add to that the messages we receive from media and authority figures of school or other organizations.  It all determines what we trust.

As life unfolds and you have new experiences, many of the things you once trusted as truth are proven to be no more than an opinion you choose to accept as true. When you start to see these truths fail, it cannot be easy to trust anyone or anything.  Life provides a good classroom and having thoughts, opinions, and even beliefs that change and develop as new information and experience become available is a healthy thing.  The attachments of trust we build to beliefs make them Earth-shattering when they are proven not true. This can be a philosophy or a significant other. When these heartfelt truths are broken, so are you. At least for a while.

Trust Yourself

Life is much easier and enjoyable when you trust yourself. Of course, this is a much more difficult proposition than it sounds.  We all make mistakes, miscalculations, and misjudgments in the experience of our lives. How can we trust such a person? The choice is up to you, to crawl under a rock and hide from the past mistakes and cowering in fear because of the mistakes you will make in the future. Or you can see the mistakes for what they truly are, learning experiences. Some paths of knowledge are much more painful than others.

Trust yourself to learn the lessons is a big step in figuring out exactly who you are and what your purpose might be in life. Trust that you can handle whatever comes your way, no matter how uncomfortable, intimidating, or insurmountable it may seem.  Look at your life so far. How many challenges have you successfully (or unsuccessfully) navigated so far? Each of us is on our own hero’s journey, and the only way we can fail is to quit. Trust in the hero in you. Don’t let the villains who enter your life win.

Trust Your Experience

Daily we are inundated with messages. From society, social media, the mainstream media, advertisers, and government.  People seem to forget messages always have a purpose. In our society, we are given messages to buy things, spend money, gain possessions as if that will fill us up.  We all know, I think, that deep down, buying things will not fill our empty spaces. They are meant for real emotional experiences.  There is a momentary enthusiasm that may accompany a purchase, but it leaves soon, and you are faced with the same space.  Don’t trust the messages you receive from the outside. Analyze them and determine the motive.

Much of the “news” of the day is presented in a way to increase your level of fear.  A frightened person is easy to control. If you are afraid of your neighbors, you will not unite with them and do something revolutionary like think for yourself.  Trust in the experiences you have with people and situations. You know what good feels like and seek that out in your daily life. Trust it.

Recognize Trust

When it comes to relationships, trust is built over time and through consistent interactions with someone. We all meet people who we trust, and they are proven they don’t merit that consideration.  Just as with any experience, we should use these experiences to learn from. Not as an excuse to never trust again. The gold treasure of life is to find people and things you can rely on. Those are worth more than any monetary reward. It is also their scarcity that makes them so valuable. Trust again, but not anyone who has broken your trust. They do not deserve it.

It is simple to see if a person is worth your trust. Be conscious of their thoughts, words, and actions.  Do they do what they say?  Emergencies happen, but for the most part, if you say you are going to do something, follow through and do it. Trust is built.  In the same vein, are the things they tell you true? Really there is no good reason to lie or be dishonest.  Honesty is how trust is built, and it can all be torn down with one lie. A lie is proof of a lack of character and possible narcissism.

Trust

Evaluate your thoughts, words, and actions honestly today and decide whether they are worthy of your trust.  Are all of your beliefs valid, supported by observations and experience, or are they something you blindly accept?  Trust yourself to know the difference and to keep positive in your life and the negative out.  The answers are not the same for everyone.

Trust is an important ingredient in an enjoyable life. You have to give it to get it. It will restore your faith as quickly as it took faith away.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” 
― Ernest Hemingway