Trust.

To build trust, one needs a lot more than facts. That’s been known for quite some time now, yet it isn’t as widely used as it should be.

I’ve tried to talk to a friend about my mind over matter philosophy of not believing I get sick, and about Wim Hof. She’s a real sceptic, which I love about her. As I tried to convince her about there being something about the Wim Hof method that is worth looking at. I stated “There have actually been a number of studies conducted on this.”, which one usually does when one wants to bring up hard facts. She shook it off saying that there are studies showing that pot helps recovery for alcoholism.

That’s when it struck me. I can’t rely solely on studies anymore. If I can’t trust science to convince people, what can? I think a lot more people, especially politically engaged people, have been asking the same question.

I think the answer is listening. Listening to the concerns and the critique. Trying to understand why they don’t believe what we believe. Why they don’t see what we see.

If getting them to see or believe the same thing as ourselves is the end goal.

Because it needn’t be. It’s completely fine if we don’t believe the same things. It might even be healthy. But if we think that what we know can create value, we can only lay our stuff out on the table, and then listen to why it won’t be received.

Start listening.