Trust is invaluable, particularly when it comes to our interpersonal interactions with others. Trust is the bedrock of developing and maintaining healthy relationships. So how do we know who not to trust?
There will always be people we can trust and sadly, those who we simply cannot trust. Often times, our instincts tell us who is honest and sincere and who is not. And of course, since things are rarely that simple, sometimes people are in the middle — they can be trusted, but perhaps not all of the time and on all matters.
Here are the traits or “types of people” we need to be leery of:
1) The constant complainers: These are the people who never stop complaining about everything. Every day, they find some reason to complain about something or someone.
2) The blame gamers: Its never them. Its always someone else. They shift blame with ease and rarely accept their own behavior as the problem
3) The gossip mongers: if they talk about others behind their back, they talk about you behind your back.
4) The serial “jokers”: The person who is insulting you…but telling you they’re always joking. And when you defend yourself, they shift it back onto you and say that you have no sense of humor.
5) The “do as I say, not as I do” folks: This can be particularly maddening, because they change the rules as it suits them. These people are quick to tell us what to do and what not to, but then they go and to that very same thing themselves.
6) The emotional manipulators: These folks are always playing an angle. They use tactics to get others to do what they want and that includes lying and bullying.
7) The chronic liars: If someone, whether they be a “friend” or a well-known public figure, continually lies and stretches the truth, its an immediate reg flag that they can’t be trusted. Pathological liars are often narcissistic and that can be very toxic to be around.
8) The destroyers: A person who needs to blame and vilify others is very dangerous. They are the destroyers and in their pathological need to gain power or be liked, they will scorch the earth in front of them. Anyone who speaks negatively all the time, typically creates false problems to manipulate others into doing what they want — they destroy peace and happiness without a second thought.
Relationships are vital to our happiness, so its important that we choose our friends wisely. Its not pleasant to realize that a friend is not actually trustworthy, but in order to have peace and positivity in our life, we do need to be aware of who we spend time with. Trust between friends and family is a beautiful thing, so having that faith between people is a true gift.
“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” — Stephen R. Covey
“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I.’ And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I.’ They don’t think ‘I.’ They think ‘we’; they think ‘team.’ They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.” — Peter Drucker
