TRUST

One of my favorite movies is Field of Dreams. In this baseball movie, Kevin Costner follows the urging of a mysterious voice to build a baseball field on his farm. He does this at a great expense, almost losing his home and life's savings, but trusts the voice, believing that in building the field he will help heal the wounds of missed opportunity for many individuals, past and present. He realizes, however, that the wounds he heals most of all are his own - reconnecting with his estranged father.

Whenever I watch this movie, I can't stop thinking about the amazing amount of trust that Costner's character placed in the voice. To do something so illogical without any guarantee of a pay-off takes incredible trust. For his wife to support him through the construction, the travel and the sacrifice, took even more trust because she never even heard "the voice." It would have been easier to cut some corners in building the field... not putting in lights or bleachers, saving more of the farm by making the field smaller than regulation, but there was no half-hearted effort here. He didn't go half-way to make sure that there would be a pay-off before finishing off the field. He was "all in" from the beginning. That sounds like more than trust to me... it sounds like faith.

Having trust in each other is more difficult than in this fictional reality of Hollywood (or Iowa). It takes time, a willingness to take risks, and most of all, it takes resposibility. It is a lot easier to trust someone who has an "all in" approach and demonstrates that commitment regardless of what pay-offs they see and when they see them. Trust is a requirement for this team because it demonstrates that our success is the responsibility of every individual member. If we take that responsibility, then we leave regret and doubt out of our gym. We trust that we have done everything possible to position ourselves for success and many times, as in the movie, the rewards are more than we could have possibly expected.