spent years chasing an impossible standard, believing that trust was something earned through flawlessness. I thought if I could just get everything right, if I could anticipate every need and meet every expectation, then people would trust me. And I expected the same from others. But perfection is within no one's grasp, and the harder I reached for it, the more it slipped through my fingers like sand.
Grasping at perfection leads to unrealistic expectations—of ourselves, of others, of how life should unfold. I've learned this the hard way. When we build our trust on the foundation of perfection, we're building on shifting ground. Expectations very often lead to disappointment, not because people are inherently unreliable, but because we've set them up to fail from the start. Disappointment is a perceived outcome that often ends badly, leaving us bitter and withdrawn, wondering why nothing ever works out the way we hoped.
For the longest time, I placed my trust in outcomes. I trusted that if I did everything right, the result would be what I wanted. I trusted that life would unfold according to my carefully laid plans. But trust in an outcome is never a good idea. Outcomes are beyond our control, shaped by countless variables we can never fully predict or manage. When we tie our trust to results, we surrender our peace to circumstances.
A better idea, I've discovered, is to trust the people behind the outcome. This shift changed everything for me. Instead of fixating on whether things would work out exactly as I envisioned, I began to pay attention to the character of those I walked alongside. Were they honest? Did they show up when it mattered? Did their actions align with their words? This wasn't about demanding perfection from them either—it was about recognizing their humanity and choosing to trust the substance of who they were.
Of course, people's actions can lead to disappointment also. We're all fallible, all capable of making mistakes or poor choices that affect those around us. But here's the grace in it: we can choose to no longer trust a person when their actions consistently prove them untrustworthy. This isn't cruel or judgmental—it's wise. No longer trusting a person gives us a choice to make, a decision that honors both their reality and our own wellbeing.
The choice revolves around another's actions and attitude in the current situation. Not who they were five years ago. Not who they promise to be tomorrow. But who they are showing themselves to be right now, in this moment, through what they do and how they show up. The current reality of another person's actions is how I should be choosing whether to trust someone. This grounds my trust in truth rather than fantasy, in what is rather than what I wish would be.
This journey has taught me that trust isn't built through perfection—it's built through being real. When I stopped pretending to have it all together and started showing up as my authentic, imperfect self, something beautiful happened. People began to trust me more, not less. Because they could see I was genuine. And I began to trust others more wisely, not based on idealized versions of who I wanted them to be, but on the evidence of who they actually were.
There's a profound freedom in releasing the burden of perfection. It allows us to trust with open hands rather than clenched fists. To trust the process of being human alongside other humans. To extend grace while also maintaining healthy boundaries. To believe in people's capacity for goodness without being naive about their capacity for failure.
Only one person who walked this earth was perfect. The rest of us are doing our best, stumbling forward, learning as we go. And maybe that's exactly where trust is meant to be built—in the honest, messy, beautiful space of being real with each other.
