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the work & play cornerstore

Resources from this episode:

Show Notes:

I've decided to take the first month of this year and focus on relationships.

Just focus on my relationships: my relationship with the Lord, my relationship with my husband, my kids, my friends. Relationships are gold in life. They're so valuable. And one of the best resources that I found on relationships last year was a talk given by Brené Brown. It lasts I think 24 minutes-ish. And I'm just going to go ahead and tell you now that her talk is far superior to this podcast episode. And I hope by you listening to this and catching some of the main points of her talk is that you'll take the time and go listen to it from start to finish and take notes.

Her talk is called the Anatomy of Trust, and it's all about how to be a trustworthy person. It breaks down—she's a researcher—she breaks down trust and what that looks like. It's full of beautiful illustrations that are so powerful. And I promise it's worth your time.

Today I'm going to be sharing with you seven ways that you can build trust with those around you and how I'm going to be working on that in my own life.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below!

So I'm going to link to Brené's talk in the show notes because my goal is ultimately to get you to go watch it or listen to it, for no other reason than it had a profound impact on me last year. And I want to listen to it again. I believe it's going to have an amazing impact on you in your relationships. And here's a quick reason why you should listen to this podcast and also watch the talk.

First, I'm going to keep this really high level today. I'm going to give you my biggest takeaway, followed by the seven points of building trust. And Brené's talk, she's going to bring the heart of it, the eloquence, the stories, she's going to bring color to these points. And honestly, she might make you cry.

But if you listen to this podcast and the talk, my hope is that these points are going to sink in. They're going to really sink into your heart and your actions and your actual, real life relationships. But if you had to choose one or the other, my podcasts or Brené's talk, just go ahead and watch that because I'm telling you, it's so good. It's going to be better than this.

So, all right, I'm going to start with my biggest takeaway. And that is simply that trust—we're talking about trust and relationships, that's the whole point of her talk, it's called the Anatomy of Trust—trust is not built in massive ways, in these big moments like you might expect.

Trust is showing up in the smallest of moments.

It's the seemingly insignificant acts of kindness or listening or showing up in a relationship that really count. It's the small things, the little moments with your husband or your daughter or your friend. It's showing up in the in-betweens.

Now Brené opens her talk by talking about this moment when her daughter comes home from school devastated because a friend at school that she thought she could trust, shared a secret with the whole class and left her totally ashamed and mortified. And as a mom, it just broke my heart listening to this. And of course, it broke Brenée's heart, and they're sitting on the floor, and her daughter's crying, and they just start to talk about what trust looks like and how you can trust one friend or not trust another. And just what it looks like. Because I think she came home and was like, "I'm never trusting anyone again."

So Brené talks about trust being like a marble jar. And she says,

"Trust is like a marble jar. For every moment of trust earned, one marble goes into the jar. And you only share the important stories with friends who have filled up their marble jars."

Meaning these are the ones that you can trust. They're going to keep your marbles safe.

And she continues to provide examples of ways that trust is built and really in a lot of research asking friends and people, who are people that you trust, and why do you trust them? Their answers were shocking because there were these seemingly insignificant moments. They said, "I trust this friend because they remember the names of my grandparents." Or another trust-building factor is when people attend a funeral of a loved one. And this was really interesting: People develop more trust in others when they ask for help, when they show vulnerability.

Like I said, there are several beautiful examples of this in her talk. Go listen to it. But my big takeaway is that:

We don't build trust when we show up in the big moments. We build trust in the small, seemingly insignificant moments. How we show up for people in our lives is how we build trust.

So Brene breaks down the anatomy of trust using the acronym, BRAVING. And this is seven ways that you can build trust or be a trustworthy person.

The first one is boundaries. She says, "You respect my boundaries. And when you're not clear about what's okay and what's not okay with me, you ask. You're willing to say no."

The second is reliability. You do what you say you'll do. At work, this means staying aware of your competencies and limitations, so you don't over promise, and you're able to deliver on the commitments and balance competing priorities. That one got to me. You do what you say you'll do.

The third is accountability. You own your mistakes. You apologize. And you make amends. That builds trust. Being accountable to your own actions.

The fourth, I love this one, is simply the word vault. It's locked up in a vault. You don't share information or experiences that are not yours to share. I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you're not sharing with me any information about other people that should be confidential. Vault. You're able to keep experiences safe, and you don't share things that are not yours to share.

The next is integrity. You choose courage over comfort. Listen to this. This is good. You choose what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy. And you choose to practice your values rather than simply professing them. To build trust, you need to be a person of integrity.

The sixth is non-judgment. I can come to you. I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. And we can talk about how we feel without judgment.

And the seventh and final piece of this puzzle is generosity. I love this. You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others. Simply put, you just believe the best of people. Goodness. I feel like in today's world, especially on social media, people believe the worst immediately. If you want to be a person that is trustworthy, you want to extend the most gracious and generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.

To recap:

Boundaries
Reliability
Accountability
Vault
Integrity
Non-judgment
Generosity

A few of those stuck out to me, big time. First, I know I need to be more reliable. I really like to set a lot of goals or try to do a lot of things and then promise a bunch of people I'm going to do them all, but I don't always follow through. I need to be reliable. I need to just do what I say I'm going to do. And if I can't do it, I need to say I can't do it.

I also think the integrity one is something that we have to choose over and over again. But the phrase that stuck out to me was courage over comfort. Courage over comfort, every time.

And always, like I said, I embellish that last one, but just always being a generous person, extending the most generous interpretation possible to people and what they say and do.

I pray this encouraged you. I really hope that you want to go hit play on that talk right now because it really is so good. But if nothing else, I hope that you maybe just took one of these things, one of these attributes of the anatomy of trust, so that you can walk it out in your relationships and become a more trustworthy person, showing up in the small, insignificant moments.

The Work & Play Cornerstore

Today I'm going to be adding just a book, one book, that's it. Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. It's actually the only book of Brené's that I've read all the way through, although I also have Rising Strong and Dare to Lead eventually on my book list. One day, I'll get to them, I know. But Daring Greatly was a beautiful book by Brené, really recommend it.

I hope today has encouraged you. I hope it's helped you just to pause and think, how can I give more to the relationships in my life? Because relationships are really the most important things in our lives. And I hope that it's encouraged you to just make some small choices, to take advantage of those little moments, to build trust in the most important relationships in your life.

I'm going to close with words from Brené, who says,