“Trust me. You’ll be fine.” Those were the words I heard rattling around my head as I stood on a cliff overlooking a 35-foot straight drop into the lake.
Our FBI SWAT team had spent the day doing tactical training and now we were enjoying a few hours of downtime. We had been boat cruising around the lake in Tennessee on a team member’s boat until someone thought it would be a “good idea” to jump off a nearby cliff.
Before I knew it, I was standing in line strapped snuggly into a borrowed life jacket awaiting my turn. Every few minutes a guy would jump and disappear over the edge. It seemed like forever before I would hear a splash. Finally, it was my turn.
And yet, there I was hesitating and trying to work out why I had agreed to this crazy idea and if I actually did trust my friend.
In her May 3, 2021, article published by National Public Radio, Rose Eveleth discusses the challenges of being open-minded – something we all need to work on.
Eveleth says one of the areas to practice when it comes to being open-minded is to “be curious.” She quotes Charan Ranganath, the director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at UC Davis, as saying being curious “requires an active choice when you encounter something you didn't know, or that doesn't match your worldview. Do I just assume this is something I already knew? Do I assume that something bad has happened and I need to be afraid and hide? Or do I want to be curious and explore?”[1]
When I read those questions, I couldn’t help but think of the one thing that would allow me to “be curious” when it came to overcoming my fears and embracing new encounters, new people, and new ideas: trust.
To continue reading, please click here: mrchrisfreeze.com/blog.
For information on "(Re)Building Trust: Lowering Your Risk by Raising Your Leadership," please contact me at chris@mrchrisfreeze.com.
Comments (0)