Trust.

Would you trust yourself to drive across the bridge in the picture? What about your 15 year old son… would you trust him to drive across that bridge? Your son needs to know that you trust him. A man needs to know that people trust him.

My dad remembers very clearly how his dad gave him the keys to his first car when he was 15 or 16. As they pulled up to a bridge (similar to, but probably shorter than the one in the picture) in my grandpa’s truck, my grandpa parked the truck, got out, and asked my dad to drive across the bridge. “No way, I can’t do that,” he thought. He didn’t trust himself. My grandpa told him that he could do it, and that he trusted him. After my dad drove across the bridge, he was given the keys to that truck.

My dad wasn’t being asked to prove that he could do something in order to get the keys to his truck, even though that’s what it seemed like at the time. The bigger lesson was that his dad actually trusted him with the truck. I believe both my dad and my grandpa grew closer to being true men that day.

How much do you trust your co-workers, your employees, your family, and/or your children? Do they know that you trust them? How? I think we need to learn to trust others in order to help them grow into adults. Especially men.

Do you have any stories of someone putting their trust in you and having it change you for the better? Or maybe it was the opposite. Please share!

Thanks to sweetmarias.com for the photo above