It's all about trust

Trust is one of the essential things that challenge me everyday - again at home as well as on travels. Or better said: on travels I try to train all sorts of trust and take my learning back home in my everyday life. To be honest, trust has been as issue for me for a while. And I feel that I’m by far not the only one. But traveling helped and still helps me to get better with that.

And by that I mean different kinds of trust and faith. There is the trust you need to have in people and in mankind in general whether it is a random stranger, a new acquaintance or a dear friend. It is the confidence in yourself and your abilities to handle situations. And for me there is also the faith in a good outcome according to the principle „Everything will be ok in the end. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.“

Some are doing better in one or the other facet of trust than others. But in general I feel that we are confronted with so many things in our lifes that damage the trust so that it’s hard to build confidence in new people, new situations or in an optimistic viewpoint. 

Having faith in people is the hardest part and yet the most important. We probably all have experienced situations when our trust was betrayed and we swear to ourselves that we’ll be more careful next time. A sum of these experiences lead straight into building a big defense wall around us because we mostly remember the big disappointments instead of cherishing all the small positive encounters we have everyday. 

That is one of the reasons why faith in people is hard to build. And I think another reason is that we’re daily confronted via media with news about the evil things people do to one another. News channels and papers mostly look on the bad side of life in the world. And of course that enforces the impression that there are not many trustworthy people out there and that we all have to be attentive of whom to trust.

I traveled through countries that have a pretty bad reputation because of horrible incidents that were covered worldwide in the media. Just to pick an example: India and it’s rape cases. That were cruel crimes, no doubt, but it would be fatal to see a potential rapist in every Indian. So I need to throw my prejudices overboard and build a general trust if I wanna visit the country. I really want to get in touch with people and I need their help while being in their country. I would be lost without them and my travel would lose a lot of it’s color if I was afraid of the people. On travels I have many many more touchpoints with other people. That makes for a good opportunity to build up general trust and take all the positive experiences back home. With that approach I experienced so many valuable, gorgeous moments against any odds. And instead of saying to myself to be more careful next time, I’m encouraging myself to be less skeptical and have more trust.