The Importance of Trust
This weekend I was making some picture frames. Picture frames are a fun little project for me, and a great way to use up some excess scraps of wood. As I was going through the motions to cut the pieces for the frames I was thinking about how easy everything was coming together compared to the first picture frame I ever made. It got me wondering why and I realized, it had to do with the trust I had in myself to make picture frames.
Trust is an often overlooked concept. There are many articles and books written about how essential trust is in the workplace, in leadership, in relationships, in life, everywhere. If there are so much literature on the topic, then why do I say it is overlooked? Because its importance in our every day lives is overlooked. We think about how we need to build trust with another person, or how we lose trust and no longer want to be around the individual who lost your trust. But what does trust really do for us on a day to day basis?
To start, what is trust. Trust is a belief that something is true. I say something because we can have trust in many different things. We can trust other people. Generally that means we feel we can rely on them to make good decisions for you. This can be represented in a relationship where the trust is rooted in love and would trust this person with your life. In the workplace you may trust your manager to have your back, or your leadership team to make the right decisions for the company. In your mind you have a trust bank for every person in your life which dictates which types of decisions you may trust the other person with. The trust bank is great because it enables us to get things done with the help of other people. If you didn’t trust anyone you wouldn’t be able to rely on anyone to help you.
People trust is an easy one to wrap ones mind around. Another thing we can trust are ideas. Generally ideas gain credibility for trust based on their social acceptance. For example, we all use some form of currency to transact. If you’ve ever thought about money, it really seems like an odd thing. We have a piece of paper, or in many cases a number in an account that has no tangible form, and it represents the value of a good or service we purchase. But think if your local coffee shop did not trust money and instead required you to pay for a cup of coffee with something of value to them. That would require bartering with the coffee shop cashier and negotiating the value of the item you have to trade for coffee. This system would be time consuming, error prone, and unfair. So instead, as a society, we have money that we all trust represents a certain value that we then peg goods and services against to represent how much something costs in relation to a dollar.
The last thing I’ll discuss is trusting ourselves which is the most important thing for us to trust. Life is full of uncertainty. We forge ahead in life trying to do our best and we inevitably face an obstacle that stops us in our tracks. So what do you do? Panic, turn around, give up, or have faith in yourself that you’ll find a way to overcome. One of the biggest obstacles I face on a consistent basis is myself. For example, I recently finished a mid-century modern end table I’m calling it the Calvert Square End Table but I’m going to bring you back to when it was nothing more than an idea. I’ve never built anything quite like it before and anytime I am working on something new to me I get nervous. I sit and ponder, sketch, look up designs, and procrastinate longer than I should because I am scared that I will screw something up. Eventually I started and once I got building I thoroughly enjoyed the process of making the end table. I had a sketch and an idea, but I needed to figure out proportions and details on the fly that were pleasing and strong at the same time. But I had faith in myself that I would figure it out and in the end I did. Now I trust myself even more to build the next one.
Back to my picture frames. Picture frames are one of those things that are deceptively simple, after all they are just four pieces of wood with each end cut at a 45 degree angle. Easy enough, just cut 4 pieces and glue them together. But, all four sides have to be a perfect 45 degrees adding up to 90 degree corners equaling a perfect rectangle. If you are off by a fraction of a degree it will compound by every piece you cut, so four sides, each end cut at 45 degrees equals 2 cuts per side times multiplied by 4 equals 8 potential error spots, and that’s just in the miters. If the parallel sides are just slightly different lengths everything will be off again. It’s so easy to jump in and make a few cuts, lay everything out and clamp them up only to realize the frame is not at all square and the picture won’t fit. So how do I make sure to keep my picture frames error free for a perfect fit? I don’t let myself think. I trust that I will do it right by removing my human error. I set my miter saw to 45 degrees and leave it there. If I make every cut with the same exact setting, even if it’s off by a tiny bit, the frame will still add up to 360 (90 degrees for each corner). Second, I setup a stop block to ensure I cut every piece exactly the same length. That way if I want the frame to be 12 inches long and I mess up and cut it at 12 1/32, every single piece will be 12 1/32 instead of one at 12 and another being 11 31/32 thereby adding small gaps in the corners when it comes time to glue up. Do I trust I can make a perfect picture frame freehand cutting each board? No, not at all. But I do trust that I can follow a process to ensure I’m being consistently which is the most important part of making a picture frame.
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