The Practice of Trust

BY LEO BABAUTA

In this chaotic world, we worry, we avoid, we try so hard to “do it right.”

At the heart of it, all of that worry and anxiety is because we cannot trust.

We don’t trust others: we judge them and try to tell them how to live their lives, we get frustrated with them when they don’t do things the way we think they should.

We don’t trust ourselves: we avoid saying things because we don’t think we can handle it if they get upset, we try to get things just right because we don’t think we can handle failure or being judged.

We don’t trust the world, so we’re constantly anxious about it all.

There’s nothing wrong with that — we’re human. We’re wired to see threats everywhere.

But what would it be like to practice trust?

Trust others to live their lives. When we’re frustrated with them or judging them, we can remind ourselves to practice trusting them, remind ourselves that we can’t control everyone’s behavior nor do we really know for sure how anyone else should act. Heck, I don’t even know for sure how I should act!

Trust myself to deal with whatever happens. Pandemic, lockdowns, political strife, all kinds of difficulty has come our way, and we are surviving. Trust myself to handle whatever chaos arrives, whatever failure might happen, whatever difficulty comes.

What would it be like, to practice this kind of surrender and trust?