Are You Trustworthy?

This week I know several people who are dealing with trust situations.  One of them is having problems with a friend who is talking negatively about her to others, another is feeling betrayed by a client who is acting in an untrustworthy manner, and a third is struggling because he has a relative who says he will do things, and then always lets him down.

Since trust seems to be the topic of the week, it seems like a good time to talk about it.

As we all know, trust is one of the most important ingredients in every relationship.  Being able to trust someone implies they are accountable, predictable, honest, reliable, and honor their word.  For any kind of relationship to happen all people involved must be able to trust one another.

Whether it’s with your family, friends, clients, customers, employees, or vendors, if there is no mutual trust, there is no solid foundation for your relationship.

This is something we all know, but sometimes forget.

Occasionally it’s helpful to re-evaluate things we take for granted in order to see where we currently stand.  We may have terrific intentions, but not be living up to our expectations.

The question is, are YOU trustworthy?

Here is what to look at.

Are you accountable?

Accountability means that you accept responsibility for your actions, and will always be accountable for your behavior. You can be relied on to follow through and make things right.  Your word is your bond, and if something goes wrong, you do not pass the buck or blame others. You own it!

Are you predictable?

Predictability implies a consistency in your behavior.  Some people think that being predictable is boring, but in matters of relationships, people have to be able to predict that your behavior will be consistent.  When customers come to your shop they want to know that they will always be greeted with a friendly smile and courteous service.  When you go to a restaurant, you have to know that the food will consistently be good, every time. When you have surgery, you need to know your doctor will always do an excellent job. There is no room for variation or “a bad day”.

If your friends, family and clients can consistently predict that their experience with you will be positive, they will stay loyal.  However, if the quality of your interactions, service or product is sporadic and inconsistent, people won’t know what to expect. They will feel uncomfortable and leave.

Are you reliable?

Reliability means that you are dependable. You do what you say you will do, every time, with no excuses.  People can count on you, and know if you say it, it will happen.  For trust to exist, everyone you deal with must know they can count on you to follow through.

Are you honest?

Honesty means you tell the truth, and if you say something people can count on it being true.  If you lie, people will know, you will have no credibility.  If they can believe what you say, they will never trust you. 

We all know that trust is slow and difficult to build and very easy to break.  Once it’s broken it takes a long time to rebuild, and sometimes can never be fully repaired.  If you are having trouble with a relationship, I would bet that someone involved is not exhibiting one of these qualities, and somehow the mutual trust has been broken.

You might want to ask yourself how predictable, accountable, reliable and honest are you.  Can all the people in your life consistently count on you to honor what you say, know it is true, and expect follow through of appropriate action in a timely manner?

You also might want to look at how trustworthy the people you deal with are.  Can you count on them to fulfill their part of whatever your interaction with them is?

The question to ask yourself is, “am I trustworthy?  Do I deserve, and continue to earn, the trust of others?”  Also, do I surround myself with like-minded people?”

It’s something to keep in mind and examine frequently.

Please comment so others can benefit from your wisdom and experience

For FREE worksheets on ways to empower yourself, see the Resources Page on our Inside Jobs Coach website.

If you'd like to bring positive changes into your life, we have the perfect thing for you.  Check out The Rapid Power Pack, and begin to create the life of your dreams.

Do You Feel Invisible?

Do you sometimes feel invisible?  Does it seem like people only notice you when they want something from you, and they ignore you or disappear when you have a need or want of your own?

This is a really painful, lonely, difficult place to be, and it’s amazing how many people feel this way.

If you were raised in a family where people didn’t value your needs, yet expected you to meet theirs, this might be one of the reasons you feel this way.  As a child you may have been taught that the only way to get noticed and receive positive attention was to suppress your needs and focus on those of others.

Now that you’re an adult, you might still be looking for love and approval by giving to, and taking care of, others, as you were taught to do when you were small.

If you were raised to be a caretaker of others, you most likely weren’t raised to also take care of yourself.  The unspoken bargain, what you hoped would happen, was that if you were there for people, they’d be there for you.

Unfortunately, it seldom works that way!

Now, taking care of others is a good thing.  It’s wonderful to be giving, supportive and compassionate to people.  The missing ingredient is that you might be forgetting to also give these wonderful things to yourself.

If this sounds familiar, it’s time to look at why people don’t give you the same consideration and support that you give them.  Could it be because you unconsciously treat yourself disrespectfully, and model this behavior for others?  Without realizing it you’re teaching people how to treat you.

The good news is that you are now an adult, which means you have the power to make things different.  Even if you were taught to disregard your wants and needs as you focused on others, you can now change that early patterning, and begin treating yourself with the respect you deserve.

Imagine what it would be like if you stopped ignoring yourself and started occasionally putting your needs first.  Setting boundaries around behaviors you will and will not accept from others?

Some things you can do to turn things around are:

·        Look inside yourself and begin acknowledging your feelings, wants and needs.  Tell yourself that what you feel is as important as what others feel, and act accordingly.

·        Start speaking up for yourself.  Once you’re aware of your feelings, wants and needs, Speak Up and make sure others are aware of them too.  If they continue to ignore you or get angry when you do this, you might be in a toxic relationship that you will need to re-evaluate.

·        Start taking care of yourself as well others, and modeling for them how to give to you as well as take from you.

·        Stop accepting one-way relationships, where the other person talks about him/herself for hours, but doesn’t listen when you begin to speak.

·        Give people the opportunity to be there for you.  Take a risk, share your thoughts, and encourage others to respond.

When you change your behavior, some people will be happy to see that you’re stepping up and being assertive.  However, others will probably be angry and confused. If you patiently demonstrate your boundaries and hold them firm, you will model for others how you expect to be treated.  Eventually people will modify the way they treat you, and their respect for you will grow as you demonstrate your self-respect.

There might be some people who just want to be in a relationship with you for the way you take care of them, and as you grow stronger they will probably fade away and find someone else to abuse.

Always remember, you are a lovable, valuable, capable, competent person, and it’s time you and everyone else acknowledge this.

The bottom line is that key to being visible is to respect yourself, take control of your life, and make sure others are aware that you are as important as they are.

Please comment so others can benefit from your wisdom and experience

For FREE worksheets on ways to empower yourself, see the Resources Page on our Inside Jobs Coach website.

If you'd like to bring positive changes into your life, we have the perfect thing for you.  Check out The Rapid Power Pack, and begin to create the life of your dreams.

Are You Happy?

Ben is one of my favorite clients.  We’ve worked together for six months, and during that time he’s achieved many business and personal goals.  He has the vision to know what he wants and the determination and motivation to do what it takes to get there.  As a result his life is much different than when we began working together.

However, Ben is not happy.

During our last conversation Ben shared how bewildered he is that after achieving so many of his goals he’s not as happy as he had expected to be.  This led us to a discussion of happiness, and just what it is.

Ben assumed that happiness is something you achieve. He believed that if he accomplished his goals, grew his business and acquired more money and possessions, happiness would automatically follow.

However, happiness isn’t something you GET, it’s something you MAKE.

How often have you achieved a long-term goal, expecting it to make you happy, just to find that after a short period of feeling successful or proud, you then felt empty and lost?  This is because once you achieve a goal you set another goal, and continue to want more. Many people lead an “if only” life.  They say “I’d be happy if only I had__________________.”  However, when they get that thing or achieve that goal, they’re surprised and disappointed to discover they feel the same as they always did.

It’s also about self-esteem, and the ability to love and value yourself, even if you’re not perfect.  If you appreciate the incredible human being you are, and accept yourself even with all your imperfections, you will find inner happiness that’s based on who you are internally rather than external stuff.

Happiness is about attitude and choices, NOT STUFF!

We each have the option of focusing on the positive in our life, or on the negative.  We can look at all our blessings, or choose to only see what’s lacking. Along with that comes the choice to be happy and feel blessed, or feel miserable and incomplete.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you need to do away with your dreams and goals or stop striving to improve your professional or personal situation.  It simply means you can’t be disappointed if you don’t expect the achievement of your goals to alter how you feel about your life.

Choosing to be happy is something you can do, regardless of what you have.

Once Ben understood that growing his business and having more money to buy more toys wasn’t his path to happiness, he set about finding what would enrich his life. To recognize his path to happiness he:

Wrote in a Gratitude Journal.  Ben wrote every night about the things that had delighted him that day. He was pleased to discover that his life held many things that brought him joy.  He was also surprised to note that they were the things money couldn’t buy, such as reading to his son at bedtime, enjoying the beauty of nature, or cuddling with his wife on the couch.

Looked at his values and needs to determine what was most important to him.  Ben then found ways to incorporate those things into his daily life. He realized that his values reflect his personal needs.  He understood that when he was being true to his values he was happy.  When he acted in a way that went against his values, he was miserable. (for FREE worksheets to help you identify your values and needs, go to our website at www.insidejobscoach.com and click on Resources).

Reviewed his goals to find the personal motivation behind them. For example, Ben wanted to make more money so he could buy a boat and house at the lake.  However, when he really looked at this goal he realized that the boat and lake house represented fun things for his family to do together.  What will make him happy about achieving these goals is not having the things, but what they will bring, which is quality time with his loved ones.

Gave to others.  Ben realized that he was always happy when he was giving his time and money to his community.  He noticed that when he was doing something for others he felt lighthearted and carefree, so he found ways to do this more often.

As Ben looked at each of his wants he realized that they all stemmed from just a couple of his deep personal needs.  The needs he wanted to fill were those of connection to family and friends.  Realizing this gave him the option to choose to be happy with what he had, and find ways to meet his needs without accumulating more stuff.

So, What About You?

Are you choosing to be happy, or to focus on all you don’t have?  What is happiness to you?  What really makes your heart sing?  What deep needs are you trying to meet?  Once you know the answers to these questions it will be easy for you to choose to be happy, every day.

It’s something to think about.

Please comment so others can benefit from your wisdom and experience

For FREE worksheets on ways to empower yourself, see the Resources Page on our Inside Jobs Coach website.

If you'd like to bring positive changes into your life, we have the perfect thing for you.  Check out The Rapid Power Pack, and begin to create the life of your dreams.

Don't Push the River!

“Don’t push the river!”  This phrase jumped out at me from my morning newspaper, and I had to smile.  Of course, it’s exactly right, and is just what I need to think about this week. 

So often in my life I see things moving in the direction I want them to go, but they always seem to be going too slowly. Once I know the destination, I want to speed ahead at 100 miles an hour so I can get there quickly.  Forgetting that a very important part of the process is the journey, and all the things that will happen along the way that will prepare me to arrive at the destination.

I know that on a larger scale everything is under control and that things always unfold in their own way and their own time.  If I rush them or try to bypass any of the steps, the outcome won’t be the same.  It’s impossible to ‘push a river’ to make it go faster.  It flows at it’s own speed, sometimes slowly and sometimes roaring along, and reaches it’s destination when it’s ready. Trying to push it is totally ineffective and an exercise in frustration.

However, knowing this and being patient enough to live it are two different things. The quote in my newspaper was the reminder I needed to take a deep breath, step back, trust the process and once again allow things to unfold.

It’s something to think about.

Please comment so others may benefit from your wisdom and experience.

For FREE worksheets on ways to empower yourself, see the Resources Page on our Inside Jobs Coach website.

If you'd like to bring positive change into your life, we have the perfect thing for you.  Check out The Rapid Power Pack, and begin to create the life of your dreams.