“Trust” by Iyanla Vanzant (2015) was a spiritual read. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more overwhelming for organizations and individuals, I kept thinking about the need to go deeper on trust. She just launched her new book Spiritual Hygiene, but her earlier book looked so straightforward. I felt I had to read about Trust, soak it in, and see how it could be applied at the skill level when working with AI. This personal development book did not disappoint, especially because her “rough and tough” background is so different than mine.
Overview: She breaks the book into four essential trusts – trust in self, trust in God, trust in others, and trust in life (the process). She uses personal antidotes to illustrate trust in self as the foundation to be able to build upon.
- Broken trust starts early (childhood experiences, betrayal, disappointment)
- Many people operate from fear instead of trust
- You must heal past wounds to rebuild trust
- Trust requires awareness, responsibility, and consistent action
Key Message: If you don’t trust yourself, you can’t truly trust anyone or anything else.
Supplemental Information:
-
- Buy the book TRUST: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/601572/trust-by-iyanla-vanzant/
- See Iyanla in action (Process Loss) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctZHSa4Qhd4
- Website: https://iyanla.com/
Where it Falls Short: While Vanzant provided some points to reflect and exercises to identify where trust may have been broken, I missed the concrete action to take to rebuild self trust and set boundaries. She showed us how others did it through their antidotes, but I think that providing habit renewal activities would make it much more practical in terms of application. I was referred to Reina’s work on Trust and Betrayal, and that’s where I’ll dig into next.
Overall Assessment & Why: I rate it a 8 out of 10 in terms of a personal a development book. It allowed me to step into the space of trust building with a clean structure to critique and grow from there. One special point. Don’t just ask “Do I trust them?” Ask “Do they demonstrate trustworthiness?” When it comes to AI, the models keep getting better, but my perspective is that you need to validate with multiple sources to trust it. And I fear for the younger generation who haven’t had enough life experience to trust themselves and their intuition!