516 | How To Trust Again

Chris LoCurto 0:00
How can we ever trust again after that trust has been broken? Is a relationship even possible after betrayal or deep disappointment that is coming up next?

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks, I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. We are back at it answering the questions that you have about life in business that you really want. So this time around, we've got another how-to episode. So today, we're talking about trust after something's happened to break that trust. So I don't expect this to be an easy episode. Maybe for some people. This is super easy. But I believe the questions that Brian's joining me by the way, Brian, Alex is in Sicily studio. Brian, welcome to the show. I should have shared that part first.

Brian A 1:14
Hey, thank you. Here I am. I'm just watching the magic happen.

Chris LoCurto 1:18
So Brian has got Brian says he's got some easy questions for me today. So we'll see how that is. But here's the thing, lots of people find it difficult to lean into relationships, especially after they've been lied to or betrayed. We've probably all been there, either on the giving or receiving side, and I daresay a lot of us have not recognized how much we've been on the giving side. So sometimes we need to recognize we do the giving as well. And it can be difficult to trust again. So you've likely wrestled with some questions like, you know, how do you know if someone can be trusted? How do you know when it's the right time? You know, specifically after a betrayal? what situations do you really need to avoid? How do you get your heart ready to be vulnerable? Again? How do you weigh the risks and rewards of trusting someone else? So whether in the workplace or in mainstream life, no matter what relationships are tricky to manage when you don't have trust. I mean, I think we all get that. I think we all understand that. One of the things we talk a lot about with leaders, especially in StratPlan is, you know if I can't trust you, I can't be vulnerable with you. Right? There's no way I'm going to share my vulnerability with you if I can't trust you. So to help us wrestle with this problem today, I've asked our men and Cicely Bryan to jump back in. So he is in the virtual studio with me. Bon Giorno, Brian, how's it going? John, your neck?

Brian A 2:53
We're so Italian. So, man,

Chris LoCurto 2:58
how about trusting your neck of the woods?

Brian A 3:01
Well, without trust, you don't get very far, I can tell you that even over here. I should maybe say especially over here. Everything's built on relationships. And I mean, the core of a healthy relationship is trust, right? I mean, it trust turns the wheels, so to speak. And without it, everything grinds to a halt. I I came across this quote by this minister a few 100 years ago, Isaac Watts, actually, he wrote some famous hymns, things like Joy to the world and other very, very famous hymns. He said, learning to trust is one of life's most difficult tasks, and I don't care if you've been on the giving side or the receiving side, it can be tough to trust again. And I am guilty of both sides of that equation. Breaking trust and having trust broken and man. I don't know why maybe we can get into that a little bit. Why is it so tough to trust again? Or maybe there's even for personality styles, different angles of looking at this and we don't have to go too far down each of those rabbit holes, but i don't know i Why is it so tough? Chris?

Chris LoCurto 4:20
You know, the funny thing is, is it definitely different personality styles that have a tendency to trust more. But interestingly, also, when you get into the values like somebody as you know, I'm a very high altruist. And you know, as I teach when we're talking about values, the high altruist is usually the doormat to society. We trust, trust, trust, trust because we want things to be good. You know, I'm also my highest is s on the disk. So we want things to be a specific way we want things to be great. And then the thing that we miss out on is that we put ourselves in situations where we do get hurt, you know, where we can't trust somebody and We can have a tendency to be victims in those situations. Oh, look at what happened to me. And it was in my early to mid-20s When I felt like God said, Dude, you allowed it. He specifically used dude, of course, you know, you've allowed this to happen. recognize that, you know, you have a responsibility in this. And I think that changed my leading people and coaching people and counseling people ever since is oh, wait for a second. I don't have to be a doormat. And so, you know, I, I don't know exactly where we're gonna go in the episode today. But I think it's important to recognize that yes, all of us have had our trust broken by somebody. And if we're smart enough and wise enough, we probably recognize that we have broken many people's trust as well. Right, that I think the sooner you can get to that place, you know, I always tell you to know, in staff meetings or DeVos, or conversations, I don't have a problem saying, I have sinned greatly. I have hurt people. I have done terrible things. I don't have a problem saying that. And the reason why is because the sooner I can get to recognizing I've done stupid, the sooner I can take responsibility for it, right? It's when I don't admit that I've done stupid that I've hurt people that I've screwed things up when I can't get to that. admitting it. There's no way I'm taking responsibility for it. I'm just gonna keep sitting there in victim mentality going what's wrong with me, you know, why does this keep happening? So?

Brian A 6:33
Right? Yeah. And I mean, gosh, we find these issues, these obstacles in whether it's in our, in our personal private lives, whether it's at work, I'm not Irish, found this proverb, when mistrust comes in love goes out. Man, that's just Yeah, that'll stay. That'll put you back in your goodness, real quick. And then from

Chris LoCurto 7:01
forgiveness doesn't go out there get it stays right there.

Brian A 7:05
That's what I understand. Anyway, again, I'm not Irish, but then Stephen Covey, you know, coming over on the business side, he says, When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective. I mean, so again, about you know, that trust is what makes the wheels turn in relationships. That's true, both in the office and out of the office. And we, you know, we see both sides of that next level lives. And then in StraPlan. Yeah, gosh, it's hard to get that unstuck and rolling again, once there's been a fracture,

Chris LoCurto 7:42
right? Yeah. And I will say, so we'll make a criticism here. I don't know if it's gonna be any good. When we look at Scripture. The funny thing about Scripture is, well, it's not the funny thing about scriptures. The funny thing about people is when you look at the biblical definition of love, it's not feeling it's not emotion. It's selfless sacrifice. And so, interestingly, if we look at trust, one, trust is gone. selfless sacrifice is gone. Right? I'm not going to selflessly sacrifice for you if I don't feel like I can trust you now. If we're being is close to you know, Jesus we can then I'm going to selflessly sacrifice for him, not for you, right? My focus should be on him. But if we just look at it through that aspect of If love is selfless sacrifice, and I don't trust you, that I don't feel loved. You know, I don't feel loved by you. Therefore, I'm not going to selflessly sacrifice for you as well. So just It's interesting how important that is.

Brian A 8:44
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, gosh, so many things we could get into lots of little rabbit trails to pursue, but we've got a little trust test coming up after the break. And we'll dig into three top questions, really about life and relationships in the private sphere in the private sector. But also, we'll come back around to business at the end. So something here for everyone.

Chris LoCurto 9:11
Sounds good. All right, we will hit that when we come back right after this.

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Chris LoCurto 9:55
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All right, we are back. And Brian, you gotta trust test.

Brian A 10:20
Don't know if I trust you, Chris. So I'm gonna take a little test and see. No, no, you know, the idea here, all of us have wrestled with this. And, you know, if you if you're honest, and you're looking at all of your relationships across the spectrum, that there are varying degrees of trust, with just about everybody in your life. And so a little bit of a litmus test without a length. But all of this is really just to help us see where we are in the spectrum of things. And maybe you know, it'll come into your mind, some different relationships as we go through this list. here's a couple of the little questions here for the trust test. Do you frequently assume the worst about people going back to what you said about love, love always believes the best. And so it's really a huge indicator. Do you frequently make you know, of course, sometimes we have reason to assume the worst in certain areas when trust has been broken. And we're gonna get to that, what do we do about that? We'll get to that in a second. But do you frequently just assume the worst about people? That's a big,

Chris LoCurto 11:36
you know, I'll jump in. And then I know, the goal was to run through these, but let me just kind of jump in on that one. In my younger years, late teens, going up into my early 20s, I had been hurt so many times. By loving and putting myself out there and, and I won't go into the details of all but it, you'd want a bag of popcorn, let me just say that the victim mentality for me kicked in, I had been hurt so many times that I said, forget it, people suck. I hate people and spent time just being completely distant from people and isolating all that kind of stuff. And I frequently assumed the worst about people, everybody wants to take advantage of me. Everybody wants to hurt me. Everybody wants to do something against me, right? And as I said, on the front side of the show, it wasn't until God said, Do you allow what you don't have you can have healthy boundaries. You have healthy boundaries, you know, I'm expanding on God's very simple, you're allowing this right, but what was he saying? I didn't have healthy boundaries. I had unhealthy boundaries, I was seeking worth, and man, I was a people pleaser. I was trying to help. I was trying to love people. Well, the problem is, am I kept picking, you know, people who could see that and take advantage of it, and then turn it around? And you know, to their own selfish gain in it. It ended up hurting me in the long run. So I ended up in this place of being, you know, frequently assuming everybody's out to hurt me, right? And once I finally realized that I'm allowing this with a lack of healthy boundaries, that I'm allowing this with people pleasing and seeking my worth, and people that really changed my life. And I really started to focus on Whoa, how do I get healthy? And how do I not allow myself to be emotionally attached to people's responses? If I help them greatly. If I don't? Oh, well, I didn't want to code. That's that. But if I allow them to have any impact on me getting hurt? Well, then that's my fault. And I need to take responsibility for it. So

Brian A 13:51
yeah, no, that's so good. And if you haven't heard our episode on how you know, the toxic people episode, we'll call it that we can put the link in the show notes. Go back and look at that, because what you just said a second ago is so powerful, we have to look at ourselves, constantly be self assessing, where am I hurting? Where am I toxic? How do I get the help that I need? That's going to be huge for you being able to trust again. Here's a couple of others. Do you often question people's intentions? And how often do you automatically assume that others are going to let you down? This is again, just an indicator? Do you distance yourself from others in order to avoid disappointment? I'm raising my hand on that one. Do you have a hard time asking other people for help inviting their opinions for critique? I mean, obviously, we got to be talking about people that we trust, right to invite them into that but if there's an obstacle there, it should be waving a flag of indication.

Chris LoCurto 14:54
Yeah, I always tell people listen, don't don't go seek critique from people who are unhealthy, right? Don't invite the person into, you know, into your emotional life of saying, hey, critique me on this. You're gonna get it. Exactly. But here's the crappy thing when we don't trust people, we won't listen to healthy people. We won't trust Healthy People, right? So if we don't trust, then you can be the healthiest person I know. And I still don't I'm not gonna invite you in for critique. So good questions. Good stuff. Good test.

Brian A 15:29
Well, here we go. Three big questions. You want to take the first one there?

Chris LoCurto 15:34
Okay. Let me look. Oh, gosh, no, this is totally easy. This is easy.

Brian A 15:42
Oh, did we start? Zinger?

Chris LoCurto 15:46
So the first question is my spouse was unfaithful to me? Should I ever trust him or her again? Is there any hope? Yeah, yeah. So what I'm what I'm processing and what's going through my mind right now, as I read that question is, is there anything behind this than just the answer that I need to hit? So I'm trying to go through? I, you know, that wow, that is so not an easy question. Can you trust somebody who has done something so heinous? The answer is yes. Why is the answer yes? Because people have been able to, people have been able to change people have been able to read. So let me let me put it this way. Okay. The people who are not going to be able to trust somebody who has done something that heavy duty is the person who can't see evil for evil. All right, I'm gonna make this this isn't, please don't take this as being simplified. This is just being broken down into what's doable, and what's not doable, right? So it's technically simplified, but the answer is not simplified. If I can understand evil, and I can understand evil inclination, and I can understand that we are in an evil world and that we have evil in us. You know, Scripture says, from the moment we are awoken, man has an evil inclination. Scripture says that you know, we have, an enemy out there who's trying to steal, kill, and destroy, if I can understand that, and I can understand that we can make the world's worst decisions and it's going to hurt people. And it's disgusting, and it's terrible. And I can see that somebody recognizes, you know, my spouse if that happens to me recognizes the just a massive thing that's happened. And they repent, and they are truly sorry, broken harder, all these things than Yes, trust is absolutely possible. It's not only possible, it's happened many times. We have had, you know, there are a lot more people that do stupid in the world than we think. Right? We think the ones that we know of are the ones that we see in the public eye. people screw up all the time. We hurt people all the time. We do stupid all the time. We do things we don't intend to do all the time. If I can understand that, and I can understand that a person that I do care for deeply. recognizes has moved in the opposite direction. is seeking God wholeheartedly than you. Yes, trust Absolutely. Is possible? And how can I say that? Because I know people I know, I've been doing this for decades. I know people that have made stupid mistakes that have turned their life around and have gone ballistic toward God. And that's what God wants. God doesn't sit there focusing on the mistakes of your past. He doesn't sit there going, yep, you've totally repented. You're doing a great job. You're moving. But don't forget, you did screw this up. 10 years ago, right? God doesn't do that. Man does that. We do that all the time. And why don't we point out somebody else's mistakes from years ago, because we're struggling with ourselves? We're struggling with our own worth. I know lots of people. Think about what we do for a living. I know lots of people that have made a betrayal mistake and have turned their lives around to become phenomenal. God-fearing God-centered people, but the spouse still couldn't let go. Right? They've become incredibly trustworthy, and amazing. And here's the thing, it may sound, and listen if you're sitting out there right now and you're upset at me because you've experienced some pain through this. And you're like, Chris just doesn't understand. Yes, I do. Trust me, I do. Like I say, the bag of popcorn from Trust me, I get it, I understand. If you're in that place of betrayal and hurt and pain, then hearing this is not going to be easy no matter what.

And you may not agree with me. And that's, that's understandable. The thing that I'm trying to say is, I have done lots of stupid in my life, I have done lots of painful and hurtful things in my life. The last thing I want is somebody holding the things against me that I've repented of, that I've moved on, and the things that I've done, right? The things that I'm doing now, right, I am busting my butt to live a righteous life. And God is pushing me in that direction. The sanctification process is a process. It's a lifelong process. But if somebody wants to keep coming behind me and yanking me back down into the stupid that I've done in the past, then there's something that they are struggling with. It is not don't you're not hearing me say, Oh, you didn't do something wrong. Oh, you know, you shouldn't face the reality that you screwed something up. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is when you look at how God treats sin, for the repentant person, it's moving forward, taking responsibility, reconciling the best you possibly can with whoever you've hurt, or how many people you for whatever it is, do the best you can. But my focus, if this is God speaking, is that you repent and move forward move in the direction of righteousness, right? So is it possible to trust? Yes. Is it possible to trust somebody who has not fully repented, who has not changed their focus on the worth to the person who is committed the betrayal? is seeking worth and another human being? Is it possible to trust a person who hasn't changed that? No, no, of course, not. Me is a people pleaser. Why did I get hurt so many times as a young person, I kept trying to get my worth for people. And so I kept doing the same stupid thing over and over again, thinking that I was gonna get a different result. Can you trust somebody who has not become fully repentant, understands what they've experienced? And moved in the right direction? No. Do you need to beat the living crap out of somebody who has? No, of course not. You're not doing anything that does no good whatsoever? So I'm hoping that I've just answered that question in a way. I hope I answered it well, but be I hope that I'm being sensitive to anybody who's going through this. So hit me with whatever.

Brian A 22:58
Yeah, it's so nuanced there. And I mean, there's no, there's no one size fits all. But I love the the larger category, the larger window that we're looking through is, you know, it's got it takes two people, it takes two people to trust, it really does. And somebody's turning around from being the betrayer. And the person who was betrayed, both of them have to want to accept reality, accept the consequences, and determine if, if, if there is hope for them as a couple and move forward. And we've seen it happen time and time again, you know, for so many people that, that I see over here. You know, I've been a pastor, I've worked with pastors, and you'd be so surprised. How many people fail in life? Oh, yeah. And, you know, and so the danger is, you feel like you're alone, and nobody else understands. Nobody's gone through this. You know, okay, we're not naive. Stuff happens. And, and that's not to excuse it, but we do need to see that larger picture. What's God calling you to? And what's God calling you as a couple to and so I think it's beautifully framed like that. Good job.

Chris LoCurto 24:13
So let me throw. Yeah, it is. And it's so funny, as you're talking through it, more nuances coming out. Let me throw this in there. What I have suggested to every person who has betrayed is you know, working like crazy to get on the other side of this and to, you know, repent and be righteous, right? That struggles with a spouse who has not forgiven. This is super important, and I cannot stress this enough. If you don't recognize the pain you've caused, wow. But Listen, it doesn't matter. There is no excuse there is no your spouse may have done horrid things. as well. But while they did this, that doesn't that game doesn't, it doesn't play, it doesn't play, it doesn't matter. It doesn't whatever. Yeah, until you can recognize how badly you've hurt somebody in that essence, right? Especially when it comes to this level of betrayal, right? Until you recognize, and help that person see that you get it. Here's the thing, you can have done all the great things moving in the right direction as best as possible. But if you never take responsibility for that person and go, I know what I did is disgusting. It's horrible. I can only imagine what you've experienced what you've gone through, yada, yada yada, if you if you can't do that, then you can't expect that person to ever trust you. That person. And by the way, that person will probably hold this grudge for many, many, many, many, many years. Until they understand, it's not that you get what you did. That's number one important. Number two important thing is that you get how it hurt them. No Man's have yet to that more nuance. If you're the person who's hurt, and you're waiting for somebody to tell you how much they understand, you've been hurt, you're wasting your time, you've got to move forward with your relationship with God and getting over it. If they can come back around and tell you and explain it to you fabulous, that's great. But waiting for somebody to be as sorry, as you think they should be, is a colossal waste of your relationship with God, and your growth with God. And you're moving forward. Right? It's always the time, it's that, you know, we we said the old saying bitterness is like taking a cyanide pill and hoping the other person dies. Right, that's, that's what's happening inside of you. You're getting destroyed by bitterness, and it's just a waste of time. So instead, if you're the betrayer, you've got to let that person know that you get how much they hurt, that will be a massive step right now, doesn't mean that they get to pull you back down every two weeks, you know, because they're still in it, you know, we got to move forward. If you're the person who's been betrayed, you've got to understand you took a cyanide pill you got to focus on it doesn't matter if that person never changes. Hopefully they do change. But you've got to get over the pain that you're experiencing so that you can become normalised if there is such a thing, you know, in your relationship with God. It's all that makes sense.

Brian A 27:45
No, it's so good. It's so healthy too. So that's kind of the big ugly elephant in the room, and maybe one extreme on the trust spectrum here. The second question is,

Chris LoCurto 28:00
easy question. By the way that was,

Brian A 28:03
we had to deal with that. We had to deal with it. Now that the big ones have been dealt with, let's go on. Here's the second question. I've been in and out of relationships. And man, people are just fickle, and unreliable. Is this all there is you can kind of, you know, kind of hear what's going on under the surface there. Yeah,

Chris LoCurto 28:25
I am going to give you a gut punch. You know if this is what you believe, the gut punch is you're choosing the wrong circles. Okay? If you are, if you're around, you're either choosing the wrong circles, which is a big part of it, or you are colossally in victim mentality. Okay. So if that is the belief that you have chances, I mean, you're in victim mentality, most likely, either way, you're in victim mentality, right? I'm a victim of these people in these situations. But there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it, you're in a victim mentality. But a good part of that can be because you're choosing the wrong people to be around. You have convinced yourself you have the right circles. And yet, you just keep ending up with unreliable people, all of you people pleasers out there. You're making this mistake on a continuous basis. All of you, high SS who are so loyal and supportive of people and just keep getting run over. You keep making these mistakes, right? So are people just all unreliable and fickle? No, not at all. There are plenty of healthy people out there that are working their butts off to be healthy, right? But if you're not finding them, there's a reason you're either choosing the wrong people to stick around. Or here's another gut punch. This may be you. Maybe you're being unhealthy and the only people around you are unhealthy people. Right. If you are being really unhealthy then Healthy People may not want to be around you. You know, if you're constantly narcissistic and focused on you, or if you're constantly complaining, or you're constantly doing stupid if you're constantly unreliable, you can't be shocked that you don't have reliable people around you, I can tell you that's not going to be, you know, one of my inner circles is somebody who's not going to be in my inner circle, who's constantly unreliable. Somebody is not going to be in my inner circle, who's, you know, I can't trust their word. Oh, love them to death. But they won't be in one of my inner circles.

Brian A 30:33
Yeah, I, for some reason, I can't stop thinking of Meet the Fockers. Anyway, moving on. Do we have the park? Well, he's like, talking about coming into the inner circle with the family circle or whatever. circle of trust. Me, man. Well, the third question, the final question. Here, I'm in a relationship with someone who seems to only have their best interest at heart. And what goes through my head when I read that is, you're in a relationship with someone and it feels like and I use that very lightly, because I know how we talk about that. Well, it feels like, it feels like they're always making a withdrawal. They always they're needy, or they have negativity, or they're always pulling, but there's no if I can say just, it sounds really economic and transactional, but there are no deposits going on, they're always looking out for themselves, and they don't seem to care about the other person is that are we? Are we in the same category as the question we just answered? Or? Where does that put us?

Chris LoCurto 31:46
know the man, I don't think we have enough time to hit every angle on this. And I'm not even sure I can. So let's assume you're not if you're married, then something that you know is a commitment that you've made. This is a covenant that you've made, you've got to work the best you possibly can to. Okay, gosh, let me back up even more arguments, let me ask this question. Are you sure they're the ones that seem like this one? Right? So, step one aspect of this is, are you a victim? And you're saying that there's something? Are you setting their reality? And they're not actually this way? Right? If they are you struggling with narcissism? Are you struggling? You know, with being so selfish and self-centered, that you want them to be this way? Now, if it is you, well, then you've got to get into a process as fast as you possibly can to try and solve this and understand where that's coming from. Right? You know, because what is narcissism? Right? Well, I think one of my easier definitions of narcissism is being so self-focused, at the expense of others, right? I'm so focused on me, that I'm focused on me too, to your expense, right? I'm willing to hurt you in the process, whatever it is, to focus on me. And I have some of those in my life. And it is the closer they are to you the tougher it is to deal with that experience right. Yeah. When somebody's willing to throw you under the bus at their own, you know, to save themselves is Gosh, it's so difficult. It's so tough, right? So the questions are, gosh, where am I? If it's you, you've got to recognize you're so focused on yourself and, and what are things that you're going to see when somebody has their own interests at heart, constantly drawing people's attention to them, constantly telling stories about themselves? Constantly, one-upping experiences constantly, you know, just in the Hey, everybody, look at me pay attention to me, this is about me. What can you do for me? There's all of the Mimi Mimi me's, right? Those are easy to recognize. One that's not as easy to recognize as narcissism is throwing people under the bus for self-preservation. I'm going to self-protect, and I'm going to attack you at you know, so I'm going to flip this around. I may have done something stupid, but instead of taking responsibility, I'm going to pummel you. I'm going to take you down, I'm going to attack I'm going to Control I'm going to manipulate I'm going to go ballistic. You're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. Even though it's incredibly obvious that I'm the problem because I self-sabotage. It's like a double whammy there. I mean,

Chris LoCurto 34:36
it's even so I can't stress this enough. It's self-sabotage to the point that it's hurting somebody else. The intention is if I can hurt you so that I can self-preserve, you know, so I can defend myself. I'm okay with that. As long as I'm protected That's so thinking about that. It's such a level of self-sabotage that you will destroy a relationship with someone or many people so that you're self-protected. Oh my gosh, it is one of those things that I get, I can understand it. But I don't understand why it continues. And it's something that in my decades of coaching and leading people, it's one of the tougher things to turn around. And I believe I've come across some really good information lately. That points me to the reason why. And I believe when you look at those types of levels, they're usually very childish. So the response you can be 40 years old, and have the response of a five-year-old, when we usually see people responding in that emotional behavior. And that irrationality and that level of attack, it's usually when you see how it's done, you can look at a very intelligent person and go, you're responding like you're five, this is ridiculous. Well, there is ongoing studies that are showing that you can actually do so if you get into the limbic system, the amygdala is in the limbic system, and the amygdala is responsible for response, right? And so a lot of times people will say it's a fear response or anger response, I believe it's all response, whether it's, you know, love, or a good response or going postal, right? It's this scale, but what we tend to see is a lot of the negative response coming out of the amygdala as well, right? So what the research is showing is that you can store in your brain the ability to respond in a way that was created when you were younger.

So in other words, without going crazy in-depth on what this means to simplify it, I can have a tendency at 52 years old, if something happens. And I go straight back to when I was six. And the same type of thing happened, it was so bad that it burned into my brain. And obviously, this is not technical speak, but burned into my memory, this response that I had, I can go right back to that response. Yeah, at 52 years old, right? And so we see this from time to time, where the emotional age of the response is really young. And I've been seeing that for years, and I have not been able to put my finger on it until recently when I feel like this aligns incredibly well. And some of the research that I'm seeing aligns really well, that that the super-intelligent, mature adult human being is responding so young. And it just doesn't make sense. Right? I don't get it. Well, now it's starting to really make sense that the brain is recalling an emotional response from a young age, and it's forcing it to happen. The crazy thing is I've had conversations with people discussing the emotional age side of it, do you know, outside of them losing control, right? And they can recognize it, they can recognize that? Yes, I was acting like a five-year-old, I was acting like a six-year-old. Do you recognize that? You know, this is something that happened to you when you were younger, you're bringing something forward? And it's it lands very well, people like oh, yeah, because of this, this? So do you see that your response was that of a child, and man after being able to walk through this process, if everything aligns, and again, it, you have to have been working on stuff like this for a very long time to see this and recognize it, then? I haven't seen anybody go, No, that doesn't align at all. So does that make sense? Questions? thoughts, comments?

Brian A 39:08
Yeah, no, I mean, it goes, it goes right into how we talk about root system impacts core impacts from our past all of that. Yeah, gosh, there's so many, so many different ways we could go and nuances here too. All of that. I think we've done a good job of covering broad strokes. You know, we wanted to get in a little bit into the business side, but I think we're running out of time here. I just want to mention this in passing from Peter Drucker. He said leaders understand their job to make the team function, they accept responsibility and don't sidestep it. This is what creates trust and what enables you to get the task done and I just say, Man, I got that for the business side of this. And you know, That's something you know, you even mentioned at the beginning that you model here, and it's something that becomes part of the culture is we're able to build trust among team members. Because we accept responsibility. We don't sidestep it, we call it out. point at it, you know, we're transparent with it. And this is what enables us to get the task done. And there might be some leaders out there struggling with that on their team, maybe a team member broke trust, or, you know, and we're gonna get into some other topics here as we go through the spring, about gossip and unruly team members. So be looking for those episodes. But yeah, this is this can be a huge issue inside of the business as well.

Chris LoCurto 40:43
Yeah, let me just quickly throw on that, because you're right. I mean, that could be a whole nother episode. So let me just quickly throw on that. The context that you just shared as maybe somebody broke trust in a business setting, right? What if somebody is one of the people that have experienced one of the three questions that we've had, and their struggle with trust is with people, period? So maybe, you know, if, if I'm struggling to trust you, Brian, but you've never broken my trust? What, do you do with that? Yeah, this is why it's so important to understand the trust factor, right, and how much that affects things. If I can't trust people in my personal life, because I've been, you know, just steamrolled over, and I've experienced just the worst crap in my life, and maybe I am being a victim, you know, as well. But I'm going to carry that over into the business place into your business, you know, where I work for you. And you're expecting me to trust these people that I work with, and I can't get there. Right. So it's even more vitally important to understand we're not even talking about a one-to-one relationship when it comes to the workplace. Because we all bring our root systems into place. And so I may not be trusting the people, the very people you're paying me to trust, you know, to work with on a daily basis, because of the stuff that I experienced in my, in my life.

Brian A 42:04
Yeah. And just to put a nice tidy bow. Here's something

Chris LoCurto 42:11
like the bow is like, just in 14 different directions, right? It's just a mess thrown on top.

Brian A 42:17
The boat is gonna be nice and tidy. It's what's under the boat. It's so nuanced. I mean, we tried to tackle some really big things here. But this is something that I think and, you know, feel free to push back. But fear leads to more fear. Yeah, trust leads to more trust, and love leads to more love. And you know, you've got to start somewhere. If you're struggling out there, trust others. Focus on yourself, get yourself healthy, and recognize where you're being fearful. And it's not based, in fact, in reality, and test the waters you know, Ronald Reagan's solution was Trust, but verify,

Chris LoCurto 42:59
verify. Exactly, yeah. Folks, if you are struggling with trust, and you're, you're listening to a person, you know, this show is based on all of the things that I've screwed up in life, and God has graciously and mercifully taught me how to fix things, right? And so the things that we teach are not Oh, we don't make mistakes. No, we screw up a lot. We just learned how to fix them, we learn how to do something about it. You're listening to the person who has experienced the same trust issues you have. How am I able to trust people now, because I have learned how to solve that I've walked through processes, and this isn't stuff that we teach, especially through Next-Level Life. But I've learned how to not be a victim. I've learned how to take responsibility. And I've learned how to not emotionally handcuff myself to my worth being in other people. So you've got to discover you know, where you truly come from, and how to not be emotionally handcuffed. So good stuff. Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining me again.

Brian A 44:04
Easy peasy.

Chris LoCurto 44:05
Easy, easy peasy. It was so funny. Before we started the show, we got three easy questions. I do think those were great. I think those are great questions. And, folks, if you're listening to this, and there's still some struggle you're experiencing podcast at Chrislocurto.com send a question. You know, let us know. Because we try as much as possible to answer this and as well-rounded ways as we possibly can making sure we cover everybody in what they're experiencing. But I'm sure that we were missing something. So if you got something let us know. Brian again. Thanks for joining us. Joining us again soon on another episode as we dive into more of this stuff, so can't wait folks. That's all the time we have. I hope this has helped you. As always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your Life, and joins are the next steps.