[Vulnerability & Power - XI]
I’ve always appreciated Brene Browns assertion that the most important tool for “braving the wilderness”—which means having courage to be true to oneself when it would be easier to give into the pressure of simply going along with the group—is TRUST.
Trust is having the faith that something valuable to me can be vulnerable to you. This thing, information, conviction, detail, or truth about me is a massive risk to air out in your presence. If I can’t trust it in your presence then we literally cannot truly commune (the root word for community) together.
The opposite of trust, of course, is distrust. What’s important to me is not safe in this group.
I’m am yet to see a community of authentic belonging—a group of friends, a family, a church, a recovery group, or whatever—exist with a spirit of distrust. It just can’t happen.
There’s an interesting catch: distrust can look like trust at first because it forces compliance and conforming. Don’t be fooled.
