Ep62_BuildingTrust_full
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] So I have a heart for men that are in prison, and a lot of it has to do with for a long period of time, I worked with fatherless kids. In a mentoring program and in residential home for kids that were in state custody. And I remember how many had zero connection with an adult father figure, you know, their biological father was not in the picture.

And I've seen statistics, not recently, but up to 75, [00:01:00] 80% of men in prison are fatherless. And I have a friend who has a heart for this as well, and he's been actually mentoring people on their last year, getting outta prison.

And just thinking about how do you build trust with somebody who's not gonna be trusting because they've been betrayed and all these people Yeah, sure. They've made some bad decisions and they have consequences to those. I'm not saying that they shouldn't by any means at all. . But I also like to have the perspective that, you know, if I was in their specific circumstances, the same life, the same situation, I don't know where I would be.

I don't know if I would have, I'd have a different worldview, I'd have a different orientation towards people. So today we're gonna talk about building trust. Seven steps to Building Trust. This is Decide your Legacy podcast. The podcast you do not just listen to if you haven't already done. So, subscribe so you'll never miss another episode.

And if you found it helpful, Pull out your phones, take 15 seconds and give it a review and a rating so it can grow if that's on Apple or Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast content so it can grow organically, [00:02:00] which it has been significantly. It helps me, it helps the message. It helps decide your legacy.

Reach more people. Couple risks I've taken recently. Well, I didn't ghost somebody, although I was tempted to, I hate to say that, so some, it was just a situation, great gal, a very good person, had some really good connection and started to really believe that probably based on proximity and. Based on connection that there's could potentially, if you live in the same city, be a good relationship and workout and everything, but probably not the best fit.

And so I had the conversation and it went really sup super well. I spontaneously asked somebody to meet up on Saturday out of the blue and they said no. And that was okay. I shook it off. So I'm Adam Gragg, I'm a legacy coach, speaker, podcaster, mental health professional for almost 25 years. My life purpose is helping people and organizations find transformational clarity that propels them forward to face their biggest fears, usually these emotional fears, so they can [00:03:00] live and leave their desired legacy, their chosen legacy.

I talk about stuff that you can describe to your six-year-old and they can understand. I also am a fellow traveler, so I talk about topics that I struggle with. I struggle with trust. I've had to deal with betrayal. I've had to deal with significant challenges that have hindered my ability to trust.

Sometimes almost paralyzed me, but I'm in a better place now and I can talk to you on the other side and share some things that have helped me significantly in the process, things I still have to actually work on. I wanna challenge you to listen, not just as a listener, but also as a teacher, so you can think about something you're gonna share with somebody.

One of these keys or some tip that resonates with somebody in the next 24. We have habitual ways of thinking. We know that people are highly habitual in their thinking patterns, and we call those neural pathways. So people that are negative are generally gonna stay negative. People that are positive and optimistic are generally gonna stay positive and optimistic.

They kind of go in in their content. Their view of the [00:04:00] world is gonna be very similar today as it was yesterday, unless they try to actually work on it and change it. One worldview people have is that people are not trustworthy. People will betray me or they don't want to hear what I have to say. A lot of people fear sharing their opinion or having a boundary because they have a mindset, a damaging mindset that if I set a boundary with somebody, they're going to leave or they're going to reject me, or I won't see them again.

That ties into attachment theory, which attachment theory. You can be securely attached. You can be insecurely, atta, or called anxiously attached, or you can have a avoidant attachment style and a mixture and an anxious avoidance style. So a lot of people that have attachment issues have this view that if I, especially if they're anxiously attached, if I assert myself, if I share what I feel and think, then people are gonna reject me.

We're gonna talk and deal with this today. It's a very important subject, and like I said, I struggle with myself. I want you to start. With an [00:05:00] action here though, think about who in your life, and it could be someone that's deceased that you deeply trusted and why? What was it about them that led to you deeply trusting them and trust?

By trust, you knew they had your best interest at heart. You believed they were gonna follow through with what they said they were gonna do. Not perfectly. You believed that they were looking out for you and they had your back and they weren't going to, you know, betray you. So, who in your life has been in that role?

And then who is someone who you struggle to trust currently and why? And write those things down or speak 'em into your phone. Don't get in a car accident. Pull over to the side if you want to. You can stop the podcast and journal and start it up later if you want. But who in your life do you deeply trust or had or did deeply trust they're deceased?

And then who is someone you've struggled to trust and why? So I had a deep trust for my grandfather, and I have struggled to trust a number of people because of a worldview that I've formed. Through experiences in life, cuz that's how we form those is because they come from past experiences. We're afraid they're gonna repeat themselves.

Here's seven [00:06:00] ways to build trust. Seven keys to building trust. Number one, I would suggest this is probably the hardest one and the most important is trust yourself. Wow, bet you didn't expect to hear that. Work on your own trust of yourself, and you can't trust everything you think because a lot of what you think is not gonna be true, it's gonna be based on keeping you safe.

You can't trust everything everyone else says or everyone else's opinion. You have to learn to trust your own. Gut instincts and trusting that is gonna take practice. It's gonna mean I'm gonna listen and I'm gonna trust in this situation. This is a good person, so I'm gonna open up to them. I'm gonna trust that I've seen enough history with this person in consistency, that I'm gonna go ahead and hire them, or I'm going to go ahead and share some struggles that I have with them and then see how it goes.

We have to work on ourselves first. It's internal. There's no external solution to an internal problem, and trust is actually an internal problem. So we start by working on ourselves, our own cognitive distortions, for example, mine, you know, people are [00:07:00] untrustworthy, you know, and people will tell me this a lot of times, that they have this cognitive distortion, this damaging mindset that I cannot change.

As well. And if you believe that and it really sinks in, then you're not gonna try. But I know you can change. And I was thinking about changes in my own life cuz I had this damaging mindset about flying based on some trauma experience on a flight years and years ago in 1998 on an airline that doesn't even exist anymore, called America West Airlines.

And that turbulence was. Disturbing to me. And I think now, and I did not wanna fly. I was terrified of flying. I would just lose sleep. I would avoid going on trips. I would cancel trips. And it was, it lingered for years, honestly. And when I flew I would be so hypersensitive and hyper aware of anything that possibly could go wrong and the landing, or I'd be looking at the flight attendant, like, something's going wrong there.

They're nervous about something. But I look now, and I think, you know, I've probably been on, in the last year, I don't know, 30, 40 flights, and I literally don't have any anxiety about flying. I mean, I can't. I don't worry about it at all. I enjoy flying. I [00:08:00] do lots of work on flying in turbulence. I relax. I don't have any trouble breathing, and I don't even know how that happened, but, and then I do know how it happened.

I worked on my neural pathways. I talked to pilots. I talked to friends. I talked about the fear with people. I got professional help, but I worked on it and I kept working on it. That has started to change the way I actually thought about flying. The same thing can happen with trust if you don't work on the neural pathways.

Gonna tell you, Hey, that's a dangerous person. They're not trustworthy, or they're betraying me because you've been betrayed in the past, or you're already discounting the potential in that relationship. So you do the work on yourself, and as I've said before, you can do the daily five and five. You do things, activities, and we've gotta link in the show notes to this.

But you do activities that are going to start training your brain to think differently. It can be a list of ideas or a list of opportunities. I love thinking, you know, what are the biggest opportunities I have over the next year? What are the biggest opportunities I have with my family? And you write down 10 things and whatever comes to mind, and it's about building and creating and growing.

So we have to work on this, trusting ourselves. The thing you gotta [00:09:00] do with that though, is to let go, is to surrender. And letting go is gonna be scary. It means that you believe, cuz that is confidence. You believe that whatever situation you face, you can handle it and you've done it before. You've gotten through things cuz you're listening to this podcast, so you've gotten through some crap, but are you thinking about it and remembering it?

So the second thing is to stop thinking. Overthinking makes you vulnerable actually, it makes you actually negatively vulnerable to predators, to people that will hurt you because you're looking only at evidence. You're only looking at data and you're not actually trusting yourself. So you lead to, when you work on trusting yourself, you learn to stop thinking so much.

When we overthink and we worry and we ruminate, what we're doing is trying to solve a problem by thinking about it in a different way. But the way we're thinking about it, there is no solution to it cuz we're not looking at any alternatives. We're not getting different perspectives. We're just staying stuck in our own.

Perfectionism. is gonna damage your life and it's going to actually put this perfectionistic anxiety wall between [00:10:00] you and other people. And people are gonna distrust you cuz they sense that in you. Cuz we sense that we're emotional beings. We know and pick up on how other people relate to us and connect with us.

And so like if I was mentoring a prisoner, it would be something where they would pick up on my level of confidence and my trust in my own instincts and my trust in myself and just believing. And I'm not saying you don't get training or you get some kind of. Preparation to actually give you the ability to mentor somebody in that role.

I suggest you actually do, but we have to figure out a way to stop the overthinking and the tools of the five and five help and learning how to breathe, do something active. I tell people sometimes when they can't sleep, if you're laying in bed for 30 minutes and you can't fall asleep, do something active to shake it up.

You know, go sit on the couch and read a book. Don't be getting on your phone. No, don't do that. Go on a little, walk around your house, go eat something. Lights, milk and cookies, kind of thing. But do something different. Do a meditation. Do something different. So if you found this podcast [00:11:00] helpful, I would really encourage you to hit the link shatterproof yourself.

Seven Simple Steps to Deciding Your Legacy. It's a course, an online course in ebook you won't wanna miss that. Be extremely helpful. Now, I'm gonna go into the fi last five items here. So to build trust. You need consistency. That's number threat. It's key. Number three, consistency. This is one of the big damaging factors in an alcoholic home.

It's because people's moods that are alcoholic or addicts that are untreated and not working on sobriety are very inconsistent. You may not know when you go to your mom or your dad whether they're gonna react negatively or positively. You're not gonna know how they're gonna handle something you share with them.

You're not gonna have this idea of what you're gonna get. And consistency builds trust cuz we know that we're gonna get the same person when we go with a problem today that we are, when we go to a problem with, to them with a problem five days from now, it's [00:12:00] the same person. They're there and it takes.

Evidence to gather , you have to gather evidence to know if someone is actually consistent so that leads to actually this. You need some time, and I know for example, like with my daughter, I've been trying to work on not being late cuz sometimes I'm five minutes late to things and she needs to see a pattern of that over at least probably a couple months that I am on time.

And these aren't important meetings. I'm on time to all those types of things. I'm on time. To a lot of different events, but there are certain situations when I'm picking her up at a friend's house, which she drives now, so I don't have to actually do that. So anyway, but I have to show her that I'm the same person today and I'm gonna behave the same way as I am in the future, not perfectionistic.

And maybe I'm a little too hard on myself with this, but. . If you see something that's inconsistent in somebody, don't jump to conclusions as well. Ask them. Cuz maybe for example, you have a colleague and you're wondering if they're behaving [00:13:00] unethically. But really once you got context, you'd realize that they aren't behaving unethically.

So you ask them and say, Hey, I have this thing that I've noticed. I could be wrong about that. And that could rebuild your trust. In them because you realize that in this context, this makes a whole lot of sense as to why you actually did that. So you ask. Then the fourth thing is predictable and it takes time to develop that predictability of course.

So you need enough time. And I've heard the cliche, and I believe it's true, that you know, it takes a lifetime to build trust and it really doesn't take a lifetime. You can establish trust over a significant period of time, but it can be destroyed in a moment. And I've seen that and. Experienced it, and I know that it's crucial that we pay attention to ourselves and how we're behaving to build that kind of trust.

Are we being predictable? Are we the same person now that we're gonna be five days from now, 10 days from now? So they know who they're coming to and you're there when you need them? Like I have some friends that [00:14:00] I know, even though I may not talk to them very often. I do talk to most of my friends fairly often, but I have some specific friends that I know if I was in the hospital.

I was dying or I really needed them. I know they jump on a plane and fly out and see me and do whatever they could possibly to help me. And sometimes that's discouraging cuz you can know that your friends are more predictable than family, you know? And I know some things about. Family too, where I can trust family and know that they'll be on a plane as well and things like that.

But it is crucial to have that level of predictability that takes time. So if someone's betrayed or someone doesn't trust somebody else, they're gonna have to show you evidence over time. You have to have both factors there. Evidence over time. That's the consistency and the predictability. The fifth thing, fifth key to building trust is to prioritize your actions.

Prioritize your actions over your words. So don't worry so much about what you say. I mean, when you say something, be careful to [00:15:00] promise, to not promise anything you're not gonna follow through with. So be very careful with your language. Be very careful with how you're conveying what you're gonna actually be doing.

But also remember that it's more important that you take action and follow through so that they can see that evidence. So I believe people, I believe more of what people do than what they actually. Because what they say can just be surface level. But when you see them consistently over time following through and you see them owning up to things where they mess up and you see them owning up to, who knows, even like an emotional outburst or even a bad day, and they give you information on it, then you know, this is somebody whose actions are showing that they really, truly believe what they're saying.

because you can have the exact opposite. You know, you can have people that say, well, I would never, you know, be dishonest, or I would never actually ghost somebody. You know, I would always let 'em know that I didn't think it was gonna work out, and then they don't behave that way. And you're thinking, well, you know, you are not [00:16:00] being honest about these things cuz you want people to perceive you in a certain way, but your behaviors don't line up.

At all. And so that's why people check references , because they want to know how people behave, right? They wanna know what their patterns of behavior are. That's why people check credit before they give you a loan and they look at past loans, or you have to fill out an application and they're gonna see if there's anything inconsistent on it, and they're gonna probably get it through.

Multiple different sources so they can see if there's any inconsistencies or they're gonna check your job references. If they're a good employer doing what they really should do. I mean, of course they're gonna have to have a gut level instinct. This is a good fit and everything, but they're gonna check and see if there's consistency there.

Or you check somebody's Facebook profile and you see inconsistencies there with who they actually portray themselves to be at work. Creates this situation where I don't trust as much. So you look at actions and you prioritize your actions over what you actually say. Be careful what you say. You can always say, I don't know yet.

Or if they're pressing you for a commitment, you can say, I can't commit to [00:17:00] that now, but. I will make sure I get back to you, and then you gotta follow through. I'll make sure I get back to you in a few days, you know, by, by the end of the day, Friday. And then you follow through because you're, you know, and I've made that mistake.

Like I said, I'm a work in progress, so I've had situations with clients where I said that I would get them something. I had one even today where I told 'em I was gonna send 'em some information and then I just totally forgot I didn't write it down, didn't look at it, didn't put it on my checklist.

I was really busy that day, I guess, and distracted. And then they reminded me, Hey, where's that information? And I said, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. I, I totally forgot, you know, my fault. No excuses, my fault. No excuses. That's a great thing to say. Great phrase to have in your vocabulary right there. My fault, or I was wrong.

No excuses. The sixth thing is to be vulnerable, and vulnerability does not mean you're getting walked on. It doesn't mean you're a puddle. People are splashing around it and walking on it. Doesn't mean you're a brick wall either. It's in between that. It's you are putting yourself in a situation where you get judged, rejected, hurt, but not [00:18:00] trampled on, not abused, not discounted, not validated.

I'm not saying you put yourself in situations like that, but you're doing things that expose yourself to other people, like a dog that rolls on its back and lets you. it's belly and play with its paws. That's a trusting animal. That's a trusting animal. You have to put yourself, you can put yourself in situations where you're being vulnerable.

So like what I shared is calling somebody a buddy outta the blue and say, Hey, can you go grab something to eat? Or Can you go get together and have a cup of coffee? And you know, potentially they're gonna say no. And maybe your mindset is that they're so busy, they have their family, they have these other commitments and friends, and they're not gonna have time to do something like that.

But you do it. And you just see what the response is and they say, no, I'm busy. I got, you know, soccer stuff with my kids. And then you say, man, no, we'll do it another time. And it. Something I'd love to get together with you at some point, and you just kinda leave it at that, and then you put yourself in that situation.

You're being vulnerable and pretend potentially you could start overthinking and be rolling in your head. [00:19:00] Well, they don't like me. I shouldn't have done that. I put myself out there. You know, I'm unlovable. Who knows what. That narrative in your head is going to actually be, but then you gotta deal with it at that point.

But you've done the work, you've taken the risk, you've done something that led to what you perceive potentially as a failure, but it's actually a success in which I shared in the last podcast. I see success and failure in their definitions being very, very similar, and they're about taking action and getting to the other side and living according to our values, moving in the direction we know we're supposed to head in.

So you have. This opportunity. I mean, the reality is being vulnerable. There's vulnerability in situations you can put yourself in consistently. and you can think, well, if it doesn't go well, how am I gonna respond? And you don't wanna face it because if it doesn't go well, then it's gonna be uncomfortable.

Just like for me, I mean, calling up and saying that I didn't think a relationship had the potential. They could have been hurt by that, or they could have felt rejected, and I could have, I would've [00:20:00] had to deal with that, or they could have gotten angry with me. So I had to let go of all that, that was being vulnerable.

But it led to a great thing. It actually led to honest communication. Open communication, and that's the seventh crucial aspect. And I would say the hardest is trusting yourself. At least it is for me. But the most important is actually being honest. Surprise. Surprise. Are you an honest person? And I don't mean just on the service level.

Are you honest emotionally? Someone asks you how you doing? appropriately. Are you gonna give him an honest answer if you're not doing well? Sure. You don't go into all this detail, but you don't say, I'm fine. You may say something depending on the relationship, like I'm working through some things, or I'm processing some things right now, or I'm not doing fine.

If you're close to them and. Open up about a struggle that you have and then they can trust you because we trust people who are emotionally honest and emotionally vulnerable. When someone, when you ask them how they're actually doing and they share with you, well, [00:21:00] I got this struggle that I'm going through with my business, or I got this struggle going in on in my marriage, and then you're like, and this is somebody who took a risk, I can trust.

That person, you start to get a vibe that this is somebody willing to actually be honest about what's going on. And the honesty is also related to very specific things in your life. So are you a person who cuts corners ethically? Are you a person who is willing to do things that might be perceived as an ethical?

Because perception is very important and I had a situation just recently where I feel like I have to correct some things cuz the perception could be different than the actual reality. And I have to be careful with that because I want to be, and I am and I truly believe I, I, I am honest there always can work on that in small ways.

It's usually, usually the emotional honesty that I have to work on. But it could even be that. Well, I noticed an area in my life where I'm not being as transparent and open and [00:22:00] honest, and it can be leading to distrust, but you just go and correct it. That's the beauty of life, is you build relationships at a higher level when you just correct the mistakes that you've made and you own up to them, and then people trust that because you're owning up to a mistake.

You're not this brick wall who never makes mistakes, who never says they're sorry. Some of the biggest breakthroughs I've had in my relationship with my daughter have been when I've had to own up to things that I needed to correct and change, and I needed to listen better. I needed to change the way I was interacting, and she gave me feedback and I could process it and own up to it and then make some changes.

And so there you go. I got a link to a worksheet. As well in this podcast that I'd encourage you to check out. And it has to do with all, it's actually, it's an article on all of these things on trust. So it's a link to an article and I'd like you to check that out and get information and share that. And so it's a brand new article that I've written about building trust.

So link to that. And I want you to [00:23:00] think now, which of these would give you the biggest result in your life if you actually started doing this today? , which would have the biggest impact that you could apply of these seven tips. Let me review briefly. So build your trust in yourself. So work on yourself, your own cognitive distortions, the things that are damaging and how the past has impacted your level of trust right now.

And be willing to acknowledge that and to see that and to say, okay, this is something I can actually be grateful for. And thank them. Be kind to yourself. Thank that part of yourself and say, Hey, you did your job. That's how I survived that situation then, but I don't need that. So you work on yourself. You trust yourself, you stop overthinking.

You notice when you are overthinking and you step back out of it, you work on your consistency because consistency builds trust. You work on your predictability, which means you're doing things the same over a period of time. A little bit different than consistency, cuz as a time factor involved, you prioritize your own actions.

You [00:24:00] make steps towards being vulnerable appropriately as a relationship progresses not right at the beginning. You're gonna incrementally build vulnerability. I mean, a sign of somebody who has actually unprocessed trauma can be that they open up too quickly and they present a trusting demeanor. Very quickly without having any earned level of trust in that relationship, it's kind of this carte blanche, you know, they either are gonna trust everybody or they're gonna trust nobody.

And I would see that working with kids that were in state custody for years. They would be like, wow, I haven't earned this level of trust and you're sharing this with me. Be vulnerable. Find ways to be vulnerable and then be honest. That's number seven, is to be and work on that, not only on. Honesty about facts and things you're gonna do, but work on the emotional honesty part as well, cuz that's gonna build trust in yourself.

And trust. Get trust from other people. So what one tip resonated with you the most today? Think about it. I want you to teach that to somebody in the next 24 hours and take a emotional risk based [00:25:00] upon it. Do something, take some kind of action. So my rule is 30% of transformational change is going to be insight.

You're gaining insight in this podcast today, but 70%, the most important part is action. There's no transformation without action. Hope will start to overpower your fears, but it won't transform your life. Action will transform your life. Hope propelled action will transform your. Have me out to speak live or over zoom.

Love to be involved and help your company out. Great topic for people to discuss trust. I'm gonna sign off today the way I do always make it your mission to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone, you decide your legacy. No one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time. [00:26:00]