What is trust? It depends. There is more than one kind of trust. Today we look at three kinds of trust…simple trust, blind trust, and authentic trust.

Simple trust is the trust of a young child. It is instinctual and automatic, at least until it is betrayed. We are born wired to trust that someone will care for us. It is not discerning, and in place only for that phase of our life. It is not really available to us after the innocent phase of our childhood.

Blind trust includes someone ignoring the realities and putting their head in the sand….i.e. blindly trusting. This is what leads to blind spots and being blind sided. We will explore this type of trust more in a future blog post. Blind trust is very common in today’s world…very often the type of trust in place in relationships.

Then there is authentic, mature trust.

Simple trust is unreflective. Blind trust is self-deceptive. But, authentic trust is both reflective and honest with itself and others. Simple trust is devoid of doubt. Blind trust denies the possibility of doubt. But, authentic trust does not exclude nor deny doubt, but rather accepts it and goes on to transcend it in action.

Authentic trust is a committed openness rather than a mere lack of discrimination. There is no particular obstacle, disappointment, or apparent betrayal that will automatically bring such a trust to an end, because this kind of trust is a choice. Authentic trust is self-confident with a focus on one’s own responsibilities in trusting.

Authentic trust involves all three intelligence centers–the head, heart and body. It is both an emotional reality and an embodied experience, in addition to being part of the mind. It fully embraces mind, heart, soul and body.

The sense of betrayal that we can experience when losses and disappointments cloud our experience can and does happen. Perhaps this is where doubt starts to take up residence.

At times, you may be overwhelmed with doubt as to whether you can traverse the transformational path of mature trust. Or, perhaps not. We will be exploring the dynamics of this. It is an important consideration.

How we choose to engage trust on a moment by moment basis has a major impact on our legacy. It has a profound influence on our current relationships. We will continue to explore this in future posts.