What is the Significance of Trust?

There can be different degrees of trust and each person has his or her own version of what trust represents to them. You often see this in intimate relationships where couples find out too late what each of them thought trust really meant to them. When it comes to trust; never just go along and assume that the other person is on the same wave length. Even in friendships that have spanned the test of time; until an event comes up to invoke a test of each others trust; you may not know for sure what the other person's reaction really will be. Therefore, trust can be relative to a situation, and this is one of life's biggest mysteries because we operate on the belief that we know someone for all these years and suddenly we are surprised, well, actually shocked by behavior we didn't expect.

In business; trust is paramount. From the customer service line all the way to the CEO, trust is always the number one glue that holds the company or relationship together and trust can ultimately be what tears it apart. A vendor or customer wants to know that this business is trustworthy, that they can count on this particular business to commit to something or produce something for them. If there is a problem with this businesses reputation, it makes more work and just bad feelings all around on whether there will be any interaction between the two.

Children usually have blind trust. It is so wonderful to spend time with children and feel the innocence of blind trust. Mostly because it is the only place you will usually find true unadulterated trust in human beings. Once we get to a certain age, our ideas, our beliefs, our influences change and therefore so does our trust level. Pets are also wonderful for trusting us; as a matter of fact I have felt pretty guilty seeing Rover wagging his tail for the keys and the leash, when I really know he is really going to the V - E - T.

It is very heartbreaking when we feel we can't trust someone with whom we are close to. Sometimes it is a family member, a spouse, a friend. Or even someone we work with. Once that bond has been altered it is forever changed and as everyone knows; it is very hard to "get back to" the same level the relationship once was on. Sometimes, you cannot repair the damage. And that is why it is so very important to know how each of you stand on issues before any damage is done.