T Is for Trust

“Could making the effort to see the best in others—even for just one weekend—help me rein in my cynicism enough to stop mistrusting the world?” ~ Alina Tugend

What would happen if we consciously trusted more? Alina Tugend, who admits her instinct had been “to be wary of just about everyone,” writes about her personal experiment in trusting more and being less pessimistic, with some unexpected benefits:

“I was letting go of some of the pessimism I’d allowed to build up in my life. Freeing myself of my ‘everyone’s a jerk’ mentality was indeed feeling like a far less taxing way to live, and as the day went on, I noticed that I wasn’t getting as heated over little perceived injustices. In fact, later that afternoon, when another driver pulled into a parking space I was about to take, I didn’t immediately assume he intentionally stole it from me. Instead, I took a moment to see it from his view—maybe he thought I was just idling on the street or that I’d stopped to make a phone call—and it actually seemed like an honest mistake. By the time I found a new parking spot, I was over it. The draining, time-consuming anger I would normally have felt in this situation had vanished.” Read more

There’s only so much we can do to increase our physical energy, especially as we get older, and we can’t create more hours in the day. Tugend reminds that what we may have more control over than we realize, however, are the “draining, time-consuming” emotions that so often interfere with getting the most out of daily life.

This post is part of the April A to Z Blog Challenge. For more on my 2016 theme of Private Revolution, see A Is for Ambition. Click here to read all posts in the Private Revolution A to Z Challenge blog series.