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My intention with each of these posts is that you’re challenged to interrupt the noise and routine in your life, just for a moment, to think more deeply about what really matters in life… your relationship with yourself and with others in your professional and personal life.
Welcome to the final episode in the Tap Into Trust in 2021 Series
Each month through 2021, I’ve made a commitment to Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO of Trust Across America-Trust Around The World (TAA-TAW) to research and explore a specific topic that focuses on how trust impacts almost every measure of success in our professional and personal life.
I will be using the acronym TAP INTO TRUST which is an initiative from TAA-TAW.
Each letter in the acronym TAP INTO TRUST represents a one-word topic. Here’s the video for Episode 12 on Tracking. (If you’d rather read than watch, the transcript is below).
TRACKING TRUST
Here’s an aspirational action-based statement to think about and put into action for this month around this topic of Tracking:
I measure myself by my purpose, values, and performance. I periodically review these with a trusted third person for candid feedback.
In his wonderfully written book ‘The Happiness Trap’, author Dr Russ Harris writes this:
“We advocate a values-focused life. Yes, we set goals, because goals are essential to a fulfilling life – but we set them guided by our values.”
Harris also provides this elegant and practical definition of values:
“Values are our heart’s deepest desires: how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us. They are leading principles that can guide us and motivate us as we move through life.”
You see, unless you are clear on what your values are, you can’t be guided by them in your decisions and actions.
Cynicism over Corporate Values
Sadly, I reckon values get a bad rap in our personal lives because of the cynicism often surrounding publicised failings and breaches of espoused corporate values like ‘We put customers first’, when in reality for many firms, customers come a distant placing behind internal company politics, job protection, profits and returns to shareholders.
However, being clear on what your personal values are provides clarity and a blueprint for decision making and action taking, for goal achievement and for living a meaningful, flourishing and prosperous life.
For example, one of my core personal values is Learning – I have a love of learning and have been and will continue to be a life-long learner.
I share that with you to demonstrate this point… Learning and researching is such an important part of my creative self, that if I’m not acting on this core personal value, something in my life just feels empty.
Clarity of Values Helps Track Trust
What about you? Are you clear on your personal values so that you can track and measure your decisions, actions and success based on those values?
In the context of trust, tracking our decisions, actions, performance, and success is so important.
Let’s take a look at The Intentional Steps to Trust.
When we base our decisions and actions on applied positive intentions to make life better for others in some way, we can then become clear about what we can and what we cannot promise to others. With clear and intentional promises, we can then make clear and intentional decisions and take intentional actions to live up to those promises.
Trustworthiness and The Intentional Steps to Trust
You see, with clear and intentional decisions and actions that live up to our promises, we are more likely to achieve intentional results … results upon which others will measure our trustworthiness – not just on the results, but on our actions, our promises, and their assumptions about our intentions.
This then shows why tracking is so important to being trustworthy – to be worthy of others’ trust.
As we track not only our results, but the way in which we achieve those results through our character being demonstrated by our words, our decisions, and our actions, we are adding to our sense of self-trust … that we are living our life through aligned personal actions and achieving results that earn us the trust of others.
Again, this is why being clear about your personal values is so important to the level of trust you have in yourself … your self-trust as well as your propensity to trust others, and your capacity to earn others’ trust.
So the first component of our aspirational action-based statement for Tracking has been to measure ourselves by our purpose, values, and performance.
Review for Candid Feedback
Let’s take a look at the second component of this topic on tracking, which is to periodically review your values, decisions, actions and results with a trusted third person for candid feedback.
Personally, this is something Liz and I do regularly. We review the week or month that’s been and plan for the weeks and months ahead by asking this question:
‘How have we lived up to our positive intentions to make life better for others and to living aligned with our personal values?’
This might sound like a bit of nonsense, but the reality is, as we go through each of our core personal values and answer that question by reflecting on our actions and results rather than just on what we intend to do, we are holding ourselves accountable and responsible for living more meaningful, flourishing, and prosperous lives.
And when our tracking shows us that we might not have succeeded or lived as aligned as we would like to have with our values, which happens, because none of us are perfect, we work out the best way to fix what might have been damaged or broken and move forward.
When Trust is at Risk … Everything is at Risk!
But, without a commitment to tracking how our decisions, actions and results are aligned with our personal values, any breaches of trust or damage to our relationships, both personal and professional might just go unnoticed … which places trust at risk.
And, when trust is at risk, everything is at risk.
So, for this next month and beyond, make sure you’re tracking your intentions, decisions, actions, and results by measuring how well you’re living your life aligned with your personal values.
Summarising the Tap Into Trust in 2021 Series
When I made the commitment to record these monthly Tap Into Trust Series Episodes, I had no idea how enjoyable the researching, writing, and communicating each month for this series would be.
More importantly, it’s been a constant reminder to me just how important trust is in our lives, and that living a meaningful, flourishing, and prosperous life is much easier when you have trust at top of mind and when you’re making your decisions and actions aligned with your personal values.
Well, that’s it for the series, I do hope you’ve enjoyed being part of this with me.
A Gift Copy of the eBook of the Series
If you’d like to receive a gift copy of the 40 page ebook that covers all the content I’ve presented in this series, just email me david@davidpenglase.com and I will send it out to you.
Lastly, again thanks for watching. Right now the world needs each of us to be earning, building, and maintaining trust in our work and in our personal lives … because when we do, we make the world a better place to live and work in.
For now, until next time, my very best to you.
