There you’ll find articles about the difference between trusting and being trusted; how to think about the relationship between trusting and risk-taking; and think link between trusting someone and personal growth.

Most of it’s written from a business perspective, but of necessity given the nature of the subject, some of it is from a psychological and introspective.

If I try to translate Chopra’s somewhat Delphic utterance, it carries an overtone that you can only trust yourself. I find that to be not helpful.

Let me suggest that if you only look within, and if you seek to not be harmed, then you will never be fully human either.

To trust is to risk, and you can’t fully mitigate risk and still have trust. Ronald Reagan was obfuscating when he said “trust but verify.” If you have to verify, it ain’t trust. And if you can’t stand being hurt, then don’t trust. But then you might as well be Robinson Crusoe.

The real issue is not to find only your own inner grounding; that is necessary, but not sufficient. It is to find sufficient inner grounding that you can go out and engage in the world and endure the possibility of heartache and betrayal that may happen–and still go on.

So AnnMarie, if you’re having trouble trusting someone you love, look at it this way: trust them, or not. Don’t be stupid about it; if ten friends say he’s a jerk and he hits you and lies about where he’s going, don’t trust him.

But if he’s not a jerk, then if you don’t trust him, you’ll never know, and he’ll never feel you trust him, and generally you’ll live a neurotic life.

If you do trust him, what’s the worst that can happen? He’ll be unfaithful, maybe take money from you; it’ll be bad, but not fatal. You can recover, as long as you have enough inner strength (what I suspect Deepak is talking about) to walk away and learn from the experience.

Better to have trusted and lost than never trusted at all? Definitely.