Seven signs of someone who can be trusted

By no means will I give a concise compendium of traits about the trustworthy here, but in a world where spin and manipulation are far too common, at least we can get the juices flowing.

Seven signs to look for in people who can be trusted:

1.             They take your word – in other words, they trust us.  Trust is reciprocal.  When someone trusts us, they don’t feel threatened by us, we’re less likely to feel threatened by them.  By trusting us at our word, they don’t demand anything of us.  We find them, by extension, more trustworthy.

2.             They don’t appear to have anything to gain – even if they could gain by something we can give or supply it may not appear that important to them.  This is the quality of not coveting what they don’t have.  When they have nothing to gain, we have nothing to lose.

3.             They don’t have a poor track record – if there are people who say to us, “Be wary of that one because they did this and that,” we’d be responsible to be cautious.  Of course, they could have been falsely tried, so trust is earned on this occasion.  If the opportunity presented, and we wanted to give them the chance to be trusted, we could ask them about the negative claims people have on them.  If they’re honest and admit they could have done better, that’s increased reason to trust them more.  If anything is to be rewarded in the trust stakes, it’s honesty.

4.             They handle disappointment and frustration well – it means they account for disappointment and they account for their actions.  They understand that if they react poorly it diminishes trust, because people feel less safe.  They take responsibility for their actions, their errors of judgement, their mistakes.  It’s incredibly hard to trust someone who won’t accept their responsibility.

5.             They are reliable even when nobody’s looking – this is the reality of life.  Those who wait until they’re alone to do something shifty, to attempt to get away with something, can never be trusted.  But those who do what they do the same when nobody’s looking have integrity.  The hard thing is knowing how to test this.  And be wary, because the trickiest manipulators are expecting to be tested.

6.             They feel trustworthy ‘in our gut’ – there is such a thing as an instinct for trust, but it is not wise to use that as the sole reason to trust someone.  It is always best to be on guard if that’s all we’re going on.  And if it’s only our gut that says to us ‘trust them’, be curious as to why.  With further observation we can soon determine, “Ah, that’s why it feels appropriate to trust them.”

7.             Where they let you down, they made amends – it is never the end of the story to have betrayed or seriously disappointed someone.  The end of the story comes either in a full or lack of repentance.  Repentance redeems a relationship.  A lack of repentance destroys the relationship and so much more.  If they made amends, chances are they’ve INCREASED in your esteem and you may even trust them more than before.

Being able to trust people is the cornerstone of relationship.  Being able to be trusted is foundational to satisfaction in relationships.  Trust is central to safety.  In relationships, there’s nothing worse than being in a situation where we can’t trust one another.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash