Once something is broken I go about assessing the damage and finding a suitable repair. I do this in my relationships as well as with my Jeep. I have realized that I had a limiting belief in the area of making repairs to relationships and thinking about it in terms of my Jeep made me realize that.
My limiting belief was; if I make a mistake that breaks trust with someone I have exposed my imperfections and therefore I am weak or unworthy of love and/or connection.
Ouch, right?! I'm not sure where I got that but I do know that it is engrained in my being and also does not serve me or my goals. It puts me in a position where I am not allowed to make mistakes and if I do I have to pay the price of being cast aside as unworthy, unable to achieve my goals.
Let's jump over to where I found a new perspective and the new belief that I am replacing that limiting one with. Let's say I go out wheeling and I break my tie rod on a big rock. The day is lost because my Jeep is busted. When I assess the damage I see that it is just a tie rod and I can easily get a new one to replace it and be back on the trail. Now when I look at replacing my tie rod I am thinking about how I can prevent the next one from breaking. I'll get a bigger one and see if I can raise it up higher so that it is out of the way or even protect it with a skid plate.
I learned that there is something called a tie rod flip kit and custom steering knuckles. This combination of a beefier tie rod and new steering knuckles makes the new tie rod stronger and pushes it up a few inches. Now when I get back out on the trail it is much less likely I am going to have that problem again!
The effect (before and after the breakage) is that my Jeep is now more sturdy and harder to break. The same is true with our relationships and trust. Once trust is broken you must find a way to repair it and it will make your connection stronger. Thinking about it outside ourselves is the best way to see how it really works. You tell a lie or don't tell the whole truth and that damages the trust between you and another person. When you confess to that person that you have not been honest and explain why, they can see that you made a mistake and care enough to go through the hard steps of apologizing and making it up them. This represents making an upgrade to your trust relationship with that person. They now know that you care enough to go through the difficulty of confessing, apologizing and making it up to them. Therefor, you will have a stronger relationship!
