The Importance of Trust and Associating With the Right People
Who do you trust? Do you trust yourself? How about your family and friends? What about your coworkers and neighbors? Your government? The list goes on and on.
The problem is, in the last 50 years, at least in America and the UK, studies have shown that our level of trust of our fellow man is lower than ever. Not surprisingly, this also has led to a decrease in overall happiness.
If you bother to read the news, the evidence to support suspicion of others is all too apparent. Case in point, Bernard Madoff, until this week, was a highly respected Wall Street money manager and previously chairman of the NASDAQ, has been caught in the biggest ponzi scheme ever – to the tune of 50 billion dollars – more or less stolen from investors, both rich and common.
When something like this happens you begin to think, ‘well, then who can I trust?’ and you answer, ‘maybe no one.’
So how does this apply to the internet marketer? Well, I suppose it makes our job of earning another’s trust just a little bit harder. Since no one is a mind reader, none of us can ever be truly sure of another’s intentions – and in the case of Madoff, he came across as a great caring guy. The ideal con artist persona.
In the end, it seems that when it comes to money, human nature’s tendancy to be greedy supercedes moralistic behavior. At least for those who don’t believe in abundance for all and think there’s only so much pie to go around and damned if they aren’t going to take as much as possible.
Apparently it pays off for a while – but then remember the saying, there’s no honor amongst thieves.
Another saying, ‘if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is’ should have an asterik to the disclaimer * human greed often supercedes honesty and fairness.
So this guy Madoff, now 70 years old, who defrauded all these people – some who’ve been ‘friends’ for decades – along with charities, got caught due to the economy tanking. He had a good thing going until then – maybe would’ve died before ever getting caught. So why’d he do it? I’m sure there’s a much bigger picture to this than the press will ever know or report.
Why? because unless he was blinded and insane from the idea of having more money than he could ever use, which I doubt, then there is more to this than meets the eye. For someone who makes $10 million a year and makes an extra $100K a year doesn’t get the same amount of happiness as a person who earns 30,000 a year and then makes an extra $50,000. Once you get past the poverty stage, the greater the amount of money you earn compared to the amount of increased happiness it brings diminishes more and more.
So back to trust. I for one think you should listen to your intuition, your heart, your gut, whatever you want to call it. Then add in some common sense logic and go from there. Get to know the people you deal with. Find out as much as you can about their values, morals, and aspirations. Do they mesh with yours? Are they a good person? . . . Are you?
