BUILDING TRUST: Fostering Sustainable Relationships

By Camea Davis

“Stepping Stones
stepping stones”

My father’s raspy voice always reminds me that small steps make a big difference. He calls them stepping stones. Placing one foot on only the very next stone is enough. Eventually you will get very far. Step by step. 

This reminds me of James Clear’s work and best selling text “Atomic Habits,” which explores how to get one percent better each day. Building incremental habits that equate to a life well designed to reach one's goals. I’ve been studying James Clear’s work to get better at building trust with myself, step by step. Trusting others has its place. Trusting oneself is central to having sustainable habits. I have to build a relationship with myself that assures me I can count on me to show up and do what I say I will do for me, with no external accountability. The high public accountability tasks are easy to complete—call so and so, teach the class, perform the poem, organize the meeting. Easy. Students, colleagues, and audiences trust the contract (syllabus, ticket sales, or job title) set for the terms of our engagement. I will be there. I maintain that expectation to meet my external accountability measures and it all manages to get done. 

Yet day to day, my personal academic or creative writing which has low external accountability easily gets crowded off the day's agenda. My planned healthy food choices may or may not be what I eat. My intention to be mindful and well rested is dismissed with external urgencies. So many things I desire and commit to in my mind can be compromised by those nifty negative thoughts to evade or skip it just for now. In walking the stepping stones to building trust with myself, I have to show up for myself every day. I have to become a person that does what I say I will do even if it’s only for myself; heck especially if it’s only for myself!

One way to build trust with oneself is to develop atomic habits. Clear articulates in his book, numerous blogs, and podcast interviews that to create lasting behavioral change humans must do the following: 

  • Make it obvious 

  • Make it attractive 

  • Make it easy 

  • Make it satisfying 

And in doing all the above he argues we must create a clear implementation plan that details when and where we will do what action. This idea of an implementation plan can generate trust and deepen sustainable relationships with self and others as we practice. In practicing, making mistakes, and trying again it’s urgent that we relinquish our perfectionist tendencies to be 100% perfect or a total failure. For me, this habit building to deepen trust with myself is taking time. It’s taking repeated attempts.

Additionally, knowing that I need to deepen my trust with myself on a daily basis reminds me that in this generation committed to the hurry from one accolade to the next at the pace of a toxic grind culture, it’s okay to prioritize personal wellbeing. While we are busy being in external relationships it’s too easy to forget the internal work we require to remain fully human, which serves us in our broader artist, activist, social movement work. It’s both and not either or. It’s all possible one stepping stone at a time.