Would You Lend a Stranger $1000?

How many people did you trust today? Stop and think about it, right now. Maybe you came up with a couple of family members, there might have been a couple of people at work you were relying on who came through for you…you probably came up with a number under ten, no? But let me ask you – did you buy something from the supermarket today? Aren’t you trusting the supplier, the packager, and the store itself that they’re not messing with your product? If you stopped by the bank or deposited a check, aren’t you trusting the employees there not to misappropriate your information? If you even just stepped foot on the street, aren’t you trusting that every driver will drive safely rather than go careening around the area?

In camp, this week is Trust Week. In Yagilu, we introduce trust as a series of concentric circles. Each level of trust needs to be earned. On the outside is the trust we place in fellow members of society; it’s pretty easy to earn that trust, to the extent that we basically assume people around us are trustworthy to that extent. That doesn’t mean we’ll lend them $100, but we’ll at least trust that they’ll play by the rules of society.. Without this level of trust, imagine – you’d never be able to leave, unable to rely on the drivers in the street that they’re alert and able to drive safely!

The next level is acquaintances. These are people we’ve spent more time with, have a stronger rapport with, and can usually assume we’ll continue interacting with them down the line. The stakes are higher here, but so are the rewards. If an acquaintance shows he was reliable when you asked him to do something relatively small, you’ll likely be able to trust him with something bigger down the line. For example, if he took care of your computer when you stepped out for a five-minute break, you can probably trust him when you step out for an hour. You might consider lending them $100, but it’s unlikely you’ll agree to lend something like $1000.

In a word, trust means … other-focusedness.

The next three levels are friends, family, and spouse. Each ring has higher stakes with the potential for higher returns. In camp, we focus mainly on trust for friends, but the ideas extend both in and out of the concentric circles.

What does it mean to trust? And what does it mean to be trustworthy? These are the central questions we grapple with over the course of the week. We start by discussing many of the above ideas at a Yagilu-wide group meeting. But most of the real work happens during the daily activities. The group initiatives create opportunities for people to experiment with trusting their friends; they get increasingly more difficult as the week goes on, helping people increase their ability to trust. At the same time, everyone is working on making themselves more trustworthy. How do they do that?

In a word, other-focusedness. By consistently communicating their ability to think about someone else, they become more trustworthy. In all situations, demonstrate that you’re trying to figure out what someone else needs. In a group initiative, they need you to give them your full attention; if you’re not, they might end up falling to the ground. They also need to hear, verbally, that you’re focused on them; they need to hear encouragement from you (we call this type of interaction a PVR – positive verbal reinforcement. It needs to be positive – no backhanded compliments, it needs to be verbal – spoken in a way that the target can hear it, and reinforcing – helping him feel like he’s being supported). Sarcasm is taboo this week; by design it isn’t positive, and is almost always negative and insulting. The fact that it’s funny doesn’t make it ok to hurt someone else.

While these ideas hold true throughout the week in all activities, the group initiatives actually express it physically. Towards the end of the week, groups of campers take turns helping each other ‘float’ through the air. Each camper relishes the sensation of feeling totally supported by his friends, knowing that he can rely on each of them to do everything necessary to keep him safe and ‘afloat.’ In a nutshell, that’s trust.

Throughout the day, while building, working out, hiking, or just hanging out, campers are asking themselves: “Did I just earn trust, or lose trust? Was my comment supportive, or destructive?” This often sets up powerful conversations, with campers honestly expressing both positive and negative feelings (!!!) to their friends and really being heard.

This week is a transformative one for so many campers. Learning these skills explicitly gives our campers the opportunity to approach their relationships with real tools to succeed. Alumni have reached out to tell us that they interact with their wives based on the way they learned to earn trust in Yagilu, years before dating and marriage was on their minds. Campers have banished sarcasm from their repertoires and became forces of pure positivity among their friends and family. Try it for yourself; TRUST ME, you won’t regret it.