The 'Truth Council' for Difficult Decisions
Finding people you trust for the bigger questions in life
People often want to lean on others to solicit feedback, sometimes for validation and other times for insight. People however need to feel sufficiently safe with someone first so that they confidently know the people they choose are reliable and trustworthy.
Melinda French Gates, a philanthropist, businesswoman, author, advocate for women and girls and the founder at Pivotal Ventures, strongly believes she can go to her closest friends, because, “They are my truth council.”
She explains precisely why she considers them helpful and assets in decision-analysis.
“Whenever I'm going to make a really hard decision or make a big transition,” French Gates told Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King in an interview, “I know I have to have the courage to tell them…and they're honest with me.”
Trusting friends to be a “truth council” may sound like a given yet it’s doubtful all people will label all their friends in this manner.
French Gates has learned however from repeated experiences that she can trust her friends with her biggest concerns and life decisions.
This means, she states, that it becomes incumbent on her to summon up the courage to bring up what is at the forefront of her mind, being vulnerable and transparent so that she can benefit from her friends’ intellect, understanding, clarity and honesty.
There is an important reality for an unquestionably trustworthy friend — or council —that French Gates speaks to succinctly.
“You actually need a friend who will tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it,” she has learned, has come to value and now advises others.
That willingness to tolerate “hearing it” is necessary if a person is to benefit from what is true, nuanced, protective and insightful.
What helps French Gates feel safe with her friends is how connected the relationship is on a deeper level.
"I’ll say about my friends, they have a perspective on me, and I have a perspective on them,” she points out. “When you have a longtime friendship, you've kind of seen it all with the other person."
Time, experiences, depth and width of observations, interactions, conversing, learning: There clearly are no trust issues, at least not significant, creating doubt or a divide.
Many people deeply trust their friends with their most puzzling, uneasy and stressful of concerns. questions, decisions and transitions. Many friends are truthful. Yet are all close friends ones that will sensitively be honest and helpful, with your best interests in mind, to where you know what they are saying is understanding, direct, clear and beneficial?
Probably not.
Identifying or developing a trustworthy truth council, as French Gates says, might then be for some people, a worthwhile task to add to their to-do list.
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