Are We in a Trust Recession
Are We in a Trust Recession
You've said "we should get lunch sometime" to somebody you had no intention of having lunch with.
I have too. Both of us knew it at the time. It's a script. You run into a neighbor at the mailbox, there's a beat where somebody has to say something, and that's the line that comes out. Nobody's offended. No lunch occurs.
Jana got curious about that a few years ago and asked herself why she was even saying it, since she didn't have time to have lunch with that person and wasn't planning to make time. And I pointed out that a bigger part of it was that she didn't want to put makeup on.
So she made herself a rule for a year. If she said she'd show up, she showed up. Hell or high water.
She learned very quickly to stop saying it.
Your word is a currency and you've been printing more of it
Every time you say you'll do something and don't, the thing you said gets a little cheaper. Not to the neighbor. The neighbor forgot about it walking back to the house.
To you.
There's a version of this happening in your own head where some part of you is keeping a ledger, and that part has started marking your statements down. It's the same reason people set up trusts at banks. Credibility is a thing you hold, it can go up, and it can go out.
You lose it in small amounts. That's what makes it hard to see. Nobody has ever gone bankrupt in one afternoon of skipped lunches.
The alarm
For years Jana's alarm went off at 4:00 and mine went off at 4:30.
That thirty minutes isn't because I need less sleep. It's because it takes her longer to get to the same start line. Putting on pants takes longer when you're paralyzed. So does putting on shoes, and so do a lot of the small things most people never think about, and she built the extra half hour into the schedule years ago without comment.
She's faster than me going down a hill, though. Every time. Not close.
Nobody sees the 4:00 alarm. People see her on a stage or on a water ski or getting a medal, and they call that inspiring, and it is. What I see is somebody who set an alarm thirty minutes earlier than she had to, for years, so nobody would have to wait on her. Jana isn't the inspiration everybody else sees. She's the inspiration I see.
Anyway, the alarm.
Setting it is a decision made by a person with the whole picture, sitting up, thinking clearly about what tomorrow needs. Then it goes off and a completely different person is in charge, one with no long-term interests whatsoever, and that person opens negotiations.
Nine more minutes. It's fine. Nothing's happening at 4:00 anyway.
We've both been on both sides of this. When we're getting up when the alarm says to get up, everything else is easier. Not because of the extra hour. Because the day started with us doing a thing we said we'd do, and the ledger got a deposit before dawn.
The alarm is 5:30 or 6:00 now, and that's the second half of this. One of the things we decided we wanted to experience this year is more and deeper relationships, and those happen at dinner, and dinners run late. Sleep matters. So the wake time moved.
That isn't the ledger slipping. That's a decision made once, on purpose, by the person with the whole picture. The 4:00 alarm was serving a different year.
Someday
The bigger version is the calendar entry you never make.
When you were five or six you wanted something. Maybe not the specific thing, that part usually changes. But you knew how you wanted life to feel.
Then you got busy. Busy performing, busy being something for somebody else, busy being busy. And the distance between you and that feeling got a little wider every year, and at no point did anybody announce it.
What that teaches, over enough time, is that your own wants aren't the sort of thing that go on a calendar. Everybody else's do. Yours are a someday.
Jana put it better than I did on the recording. We stopped trusting that our dreams even mattered.
I did this to Tony Robbins for years
We went to the Jason Wojo Business Conference this past weekend. Wojo is our mentor and we're in his paid mastermind, so take my enthusiasm with that attached. One of the things he said there was that money equals accountability.
He's right, and I've written about that before. Put real money on something and you show up different. That's not the part that got me.
The part that got me came later, when I was thinking about all the programs I've bought and then quietly rebuilt.
I did this to Tony Robbins for years. Bought the thing, went to the event, and then took the material home and adapted it, because my business is different and my life is different and I'll just take the useful parts and make it work my way.
I've always explained that to myself as independence. Maybe a little arrogance, which I'd have admitted to.
It was neither. I didn't trust myself to learn the system.
Systems are systems because they work. But learning one is uncomfortable and slow and you're bad at it for a while, and somewhere in there I decided it was easier to conclude that the system didn't fit me than to be a beginner at it. I like systems. I like anything that makes something easier. I just didn't want to be the guy fumbling through the first three weeks of one.
That reframe cost me nothing and about fifteen years.
The trust recession
We picked up a phrase at that same conference that I keep coming back to.
We're in a trust recession. And it isn't just us.
Think about how much personal development material the average person has been handed in the last twenty years. Programs, books, systems, morning routines, ways to be your best self. Most people have tried several. Most people have finished fewer.
So there's a pile of evidence sitting there, and the pile says these things don't work. It doesn't say I stopped on day nine. It says the program failed.
That's learned helplessness, and it's the most reasonable conclusion available from the data. Nobody's being stupid. They're reading their own history accurately and drawing the wrong lesson from it.
The boring runway
Here's where it actually breaks, and it's never at the start.
The start is great. The start is the part where you buy the shoes. Then comes the middle, the long flat stretch where you're doing the reps and nothing visible is happening, and that stretch is where people quit.
But the middle is also the only place confidence gets built. Not the finish. The finish gives you a result. The middle gives you evidence, one small deposit at a time, that you're a person who keeps doing the thing after it stops being interesting.
The trouble is that the middle looks like nothing from inside it, and if you're only measuring by results, you'll conclude you're failing when you're actually just in week three.
So count differently. The evening half of our formula opens with what did I do well, and there's a reason it comes first. When you start something new, your attention goes straight to what went wrong, and it will find plenty, because you're new. Asking what went well first isn't optimism. It's the only way to notice a deposit small enough to miss.
I did one thing I said I'd do. That's the whole entry. Tomorrow I can do that again.
Living Lucky® Practice
Seven Days of Kept Promises
One line a day. Something you said you'd do and did. Make it small enough that you'll actually finish the week. The point is the record, not the size of the thing.
At the end of the week
Read the seven lines back. That's the evidence. What does it say about the person who wrote it?
The Living Lucky® Practice
Exercise: for the next seven days, write down one thing you said you'd do and did. One per day. That's it.
Reflection question: where am I still living in the gray area, saying yes to things I've already decided not to do?
Journal prompt: when I was five or six, how did I want life to feel?
Action: the next time you're about to say we should get together sometime, either put a date on it or don't say it.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a motivation problem and a self-trust problem?
Motivation is usually the symptom. If you've broken enough small promises to yourself, some part of you has stopped believing your own intentions, and that shows up as not feeling like starting. Chasing motivation at that point doesn't work, because the issue is a credibility problem rather than an energy one.
Does hitting snooze really matter that much?
On its own, no. As a pattern, it's the first commitment of your day and you break it within seconds of making it. That teaches you something about how seriously your own decisions get taken, and it's a cheap place to start rebuilding.
Why do I keep quitting programs partway through?
Most people quit in the middle, where the work is repetitive and nothing visible is happening yet. If you're measuring by results, the middle looks like failure. Counting small completed actions instead gives you evidence during the stretch where results aren't available yet.
What's a trust recession?
The idea that a lot of people have tried enough programs and systems without finishing them that they've accumulated real evidence that these things don't work for them. The conclusion is reasonable and the lesson drawn from it is usually wrong.
Why does paying for something make me more likely to follow through?
Money creates a return you want to collect. It also moves the decision out of the category of things you can quietly renegotiate with yourself. That's most of what accountability is.
How do I start rebuilding self-trust?
Make one small promise you're certain you can keep, keep it, and write it down. The size doesn't matter and the writing does, because the whole problem is that you've stopped noticing the deposits.
One more thing
Jana wrapped the episode by saying we'd probably have to come back to this, because it's a lot bigger than twelve minutes.
She's right, and I'll add one thing before we do.
The gray area is the expensive part. Not the broken promise. The vague one. Saying maybe when you mean no, saying soon when you mean never, saying I'll start Monday on a Thursday afternoon.
Decide up front. Yes or no, out loud, at the mailbox.
Your neighbor will be fine either way. You're the one keeping the ledger.
We Create Our Luck®.
We went deeper on this on the Living Lucky® Podcast, Season 11, Episode 25.
