Are you quick to trust others? If you are, chances are you haven’t been burned. By “burned”, I’m talking about having a bad experience with trusting others. If you take someone into your confidence, and you trust him with a secret, and he tells someone else that secret, and you find out. Well, you’ve been burned. Say you have a kind of emotional scar. Since the relationship has been hurt, in extreme cases you might even say the bridge has been burned between you and your friend.

　　This happens to people lots of times. It even happened to me before. I trusted a close friend with a secret, but he violated my trust and told someone else. After I found out about what he did, our friendship was never the same again. Well, I hope you haven’t had a lot of bad experiences when it comes to trusting others. I also hope you have a lot of friends you can trust, and a lot of friends that trust you. But I was thinking about gaining someone’s trust, it’s not that easy like building a bridge or relationship. You make small promises and keep them, and the trust grows. As the trust grows, you can make bigger and bigger promises. And if you keep on keeping your word, well, the trust keeps on growing.

　　Talk about it:

　　Have you ever been burned? Are you the type of person who rushes into a trusting relationship? What kind of things do you do to show you are trust worthy? Have you ever burned a bridge unintentionally, and found that it takes a long, long time to repair the relationship? Are you good at keeping secrets? Do people know that they can trust you? Do you believe that a man is as good as his word? What can you do to earn a person’s trust?