Hi, everybody. I’m Mike Staver. This is Mondays with Mike, a weekly video series where I answer questions from people just like you. Here’s this week’s question.
“Which comes first, trust or vulnerability?”
Marty: I think it has to be trust. I don’t think you’re you’re able to be vulnerable, like truly vulnerable if you don’t have some level of trust either. In the situation, the person or or whatever is going on. But I feel like humans are preprogrammed to kind of keep that that wall up. If we don’t have trust, a trust, a situation where we feel safe.
Mike: But then how do we know the other side of that is and how do we know if we can trust if we don’t give them something to prove they they’re trustworthy?
Marty: That’s I guess that’s a good point there. I guess at some point has to be that leap of faith is.
Mike: Something, right? Yeah, this is a good question.
Well, let me answer it this way.
I love what Marty said because what he said was, I’m not going to lay down in the hammock if I don’t have reasonable assurance and I’m not going to fall through the hammock. Right. Not going to jump out of the airplane if I don’t have reasonable trust that the parachute is going to open. So there’s a couple of things about trust and vulnerability. The first thing is make sure that where you place that trust and where you have that vulnerability has a reasonable chance.
I see people all the time going out and sharing personal information with people that have in no way proven,
demonstrated or acted in a way that they can be trusted. It’s not that they’re mistrusted. So I want to give you this equation. I’ve used it before in Mondays with Mike. Consistent behavior plus time equals trust. But I can tell you this if you’re never vulnerable with anybody, it’s probably you probably have some trust
issues and it’s probably not anybody. Right. It’s probably you taking a look at that. Trust and vulnerability are very close cousins.
So I want to encourage you to understand that vulnerability is an important part of mental and emotional health. So find small incremental ways that you can trust so that you can lean into vulnerability, because I believe both of those are the key to successful relationships.
I hope that’s helpful!
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