As a child trust came naturally, so much so that my parents had to warn me about the scary people in the world that could take advantage of that trust. They made this warning rhyme, helping the conditioning take hold faster – stranger danger!

As I grew up, the cautions about how dangerous the world could be increased and the days of innocent childhood trust moved further and further away.

Teenage drama and young heartbreaks helped condition that trust could be broken, not only by a stranger but also by thoseclosest to me. This reality quickly became the most painful type.

Re-read those few paragraphs – I am sure on some level they relate to your experiences, your conditioning. As I looked over them again, my urge was to delete them and start over. All I could see was a mental state of blame — blaming anything and everything for my trust issues.

When I first came across The Responsibility Process™, a mental state of blame was exactly how I saw my perception of trust. It was something that had to be earned, and once it was broken at all, it was gone. Once it was gone, it was nearly impossible to get back to a place where I trusted that individual again.

Sure, I might say I trust them, but my gut, my inner voice, never forgot – looking back now, it never forgave either.

Over the course of this journey, trust has been talked about in many different ways from many different people. I have even written previously about breakthroughs regarding this subject.

On a recent Application Mastery call  I had another breakthrough with trust. I had been struggling with making myself feel guilty when I was asked to do something and instead turned it down to do something I wanted to do.

I had labeled this behavior selfish and assigned a negative connotation to the concept of putting myself first. I was unaware I had even done this until Christopher helped to raise my awareness.

It was during this mentoring session that I realized the association of guilt was in response to evaluating my own actions and deciding they were “wrong” or that someone was going to be disappointed in me.

So what does this have to do with trust? For me – everything.

I wasn’t willing to disappoint someone close to me to stand true to myself. I had labeled this as guilt and then shamed myself about it.

After letting this thought roll around for a few days and looking at the other interactions in my life, I realized that at the core I struggle with trust.

In my past I’ve experienced people who thought very highly of me — even loved me — walk away from my life after I “disappointed” them. I had no idea until now the impact that had on my trust going forward.

Currently I struggle trusting that if I put myself first, then the people impacted will choose to leave.

I went back and forth between shame and blame until I realized it isn’t trust in general I struggle with. There is no one else to blame, the whole world isn’t “bad” or “scary.”

Trust starts with trusting myself first.

I didn’t trust who I am to other people. The idea of disappointing someone I care about was scary because I was afraid that the disappointment would lead them to think I am leaving them.

The reconditioning I want to do is based on a truth the media often glazes over – there are good people out there. There are people who at their core love and give. There are people close to me who see who I am and stand right next to me even when I stumble or fall.

My intention is to start trusting who I am and to change my conditioned expectation that those closest to me will leave if I’m not always perfect. After all, the only thing in this world I can control is me and my responses.

It is time to celebrate imperfections – the little dings in my suit of armor that make me ME. Trust starts with trusting myself first.

Jessica Soroky, CSM

Only 21 years old, Jessica is already a Certified Scrum Master with two years of practice in agile delivery and team leadership. She is also the youngest participant in The Leadership Gift™ Program and its growing worldwide community of leaders and coaches. After five years of non-profit development through Nellie’s Catwalk for Kids, Jessica continues her leadership journey in state government, not-for-profit, and private sector leadership studies.

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