While speaking at a recent leadership conference, I met a woman who shared with me how badly she had been burnt by her soon to be x-husband. While she’d had suspicions for a while about his infidelity, it wasn’t until she caught him in bed with another woman, her neighbor at that, that she was forced to confront the extent of it.
“Looking back,” she said, “I knew he was with other women. I just couldn’t bare to believe it.”
It’s a story I’ve heard before. In business, in love, in life… ignoring our instinct and paying a steep price.
I’m not writing this to caste shadows of doubt over the trustworthiness of the people in your life. However, this woman’s painful experience prompted me to reflect on why it is that so often, too often, we don’t tune in to our instinct when it comes to whether to trust the people we encounter, work and even live with. That is, where we let our fear of the fallout from trusting our gut instinct cloud our better judgement. [Read more…]