CAN'T GET OUT WHAT YOU DON'T PUT IN

What is:

Essential for effective communications?

A cornerstone of healthy relationships?

Dispensed slowly?

Yanked quickly?

Desired in our daughters' boyfriends?

Vital to all organizations?

Missing in most organizations?

An ingredient in high performance teams?

Abundant in our God?

Lacking in our politicians?


The answer: trust.

Trust is a belief and confidence in something or someone. You either have it or you don't.

Whether trust is in your personal bag of virtues or not doesn't stop you from being asked to display it. How often and in how many ways in your work and personal lives are people asking you to trust them? Occasionally it's easy because you do trust them, and you will gladly and confidently do what they ask. Sometime it's easy because you don't trust them and would never do what they ask even under the threat of having to spend time alone with a mime.

The challenge comes when you're asked to do something you feel you should do that requires a level of trust you don't have. Friends may ask you to play the "Trust Me" game without historically having produced any legitimate reason for you to do so.

In life you can find yourself backed in a person or professional corner frantically searching for trust from people whom you have never given a reason to trust you. If you didn't have people's trust before you needed it, you'll never have their trust when you do need it.

Lesson: Deposit often in the trust bank. You never can tell when you'll need a withdrawal.

CATS, BIRDS, AND WORMS

One beautiful, Southwestern morning, I was in the shed filling up a bucket of birdseed to feed and nourish all the winged species we have here in the mountains.

As I took the bucket-o-seeds around to the back bird feeders, I saw something which gave me pause for thought -- our cat, Sydney, in a brazen example of nature's inescapable food chain, was eating a bird.

I was struck by the irony. I'm feeding the birds; my cat's eating the birds.

Sticking with warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered vertebrates, it's often said, "The early bird gets the worm." Then doesn't it also follow that the early worm gets eaten?

You get the promotion, somebody else doesn't, Somebody else wins the turkey raffle, you don't. The good die young, the bad live on.

In life you don't always win and often you're darn lucky to come out even. Life is going to do to you what life does to you. Why is there a tendency in us humans to feel unfairly treated when we don't get what we want? In nature what's fair for the cat is sure not fair for the bird. What's fair for the bird is a real bummer for the worm.

Lesson: Fairness is a non-issue. Some days you're the cat, some days you're the bird.

READY OR NOT HERE WE COME

Do you ever wonder if these new-fangled concepts that you are exposed to on a daily basis are really any better than the old ways?

To flip a classic rebuke, "Don't just do something, stand there." Are the decision makers at work and at home merely "doing something?" Should they "stand there" for awhile to insure that the new is really better than the old?

Consider the thrust to change management and parental styles. Is the new participative method really better than the old authoritarian? If God didn't see a need for authority, wouldn't he have sent Moses down from the mountain with the ten suggestions?

I'm certainly not against change, but as fellow travelers in these dynamic times, we must be real clear as to the changes we initiate. Will the changes you generate create real growth, or is change being implemented simply because you're not sure what else to do?

The tried and true may not always be the most glamorous way to go, but before committing to a new idea, think it through and back again. If you're not ready on all fronts to change, you may be better off to refrain from "doing something" and just "stand there" until you are ready.


Lesson: Don't blindly jump on the change bandwagon until you're sure you want to go somewhere.

BELIEVE ME

One day I was driving down a highway in rural New Mexico, doing a tad over the speed limit, when I saw ahead a car doing exactly the speed limit. Physics dictates a showdown.

My first thought was, "This person must be new to New Mexico." As I came closer, my "passing genes" kicked in. Positioning myself for a shot at the lead, I perceived a slight problem -- I was about to pass a police car.

My decision to pass or not to pass a police car would seem a given, but not in this case. The car in front of me was not your everyday state police, but a Navajo reservation police car. My belief told me that the reservation police do not give tickets on a federal highway -- at least that's what I thought I believed until it came time to test my belief.

Test results: I followed that car until I reached my destination. So much for the intensity of that belief!

Your new girl friend seems like an honest, open, trustworthy, reliable kind of person and you believe possibly this could be the one. The night of your fifth date she calls you on skype and tells you how much she values your opinion. She has just bought a new outfit to wear on your date tonight. You are waiting for her to get out of the clown outfit she is wearing and show you what she bought. Suddenly you realize this refugee from Barnum and Bailey is indeed wearing what she bought! "How do you think I look?" she asks. "Trust me, you can tell me anything."

Lesson: You never really know how much you believe in something until there is some risk involved in that belief.