It starts with you

I was out with my son the other day and we walked past a pile of rubbish.

'Why is this place such a mess?' he asked, as he waved his hand towards the rubbish.

'Because you just walked past it, that's why.' I replied.

'But I didn't put it there!' He was quite incredulous.

'No, but if you picked it up, what a difference that would make.' I said, with a smile.

It reminded me of how often we wave our hands in disgust at things going on in the world. How easy it is to point the finger of blame, but not take a moment to ask ourselves if:

1. we might have played a role in it somehow, and
2. we could do something to make a difference

I am constantly amazed at the number of trust issues that come up, from all around the world. In the US right now, it's all about US Senators admitting to extramarital affairs. In the UK, it's politicians abusing expense accounts, in Australian politics it's lies and accusations about emails. And that's just trust issues in politics, and there are plenty more of those!

Every day I receive alerts about trust issues, breakdowns in relationships, betrayal, lies, people constantly crying out because their trust has been betrayed in some way. It's sad.

But here's the thing. I challenge you to look inside yourself, for we have all been, at some point, the one responsible for breaking the trust of another. It is easy to wave the hand, point the finger at others, but if we look, just for a moment, and think about it, maybe we're contributing to the global decline of trust.

Just as we are all slowly beginning to do our bit to help the environment, recycling our paper, turning the lights out, finding more economical ways to travel and reducing our carbon footprint, we also need to each be doing our bit to reduce the rubble, the collateral damage, that a breakdown of trust causes in all of our lives each day.

If you want a more trusting society, be more trusting yourself. If you want your children to develop trusting relationships when they are older, trust them. If you want your shareholders to trust you, be trustworthy. If you want your customers to trust you, extend your trust to them. If you want your employees to trust in your leadership, trust them.

It starts with you.