An Interview With Boris Thomas: An appeal for trust

On one of his trips, Boris Thomas climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. However, from a personal perspective, he still has the highest peak ahead of him. With his third book Trust – The Trust Revolution, the author would like to start a powerful wake-up call and invite you to take the path of trust in order to lay a foundation for a fulfilled life. It is primarily about direct, pragmatic ideas for action, not about confusing esoteric paths. Here, we ask what his new book is about.

Discover Germany: Your third book, Trust, was published on March 28th. It is again a guide. Why?

Boris Thomas: “I believe it is time to tell people clearly what the problem is. Where is the root of the problems we see around the world? For me, it is clear that it is the issue of trust. Many people in my company, in my private environment and in coaching sessions have said to me, ‘Man, somehow I don’t trust anyone anymore. I don’t want to trust any information anymore, or a person, or a government’. What can you do there? How can I trust my partner in a relationship if my previous relationships weren’t that great? That’s why I think it was time to write something like a guide on the topic of trust. About how people can regain trust at all possible levels of their lives.”

Discover Germany: How does Trust differ from your first two books?

Boris Thomas: “My first book Fang nie an aufzuhören clearly deals with the topic of crisis, Teile die Wolken und finde den Weg deals with clarity, especially in crisis situations. The third book is, so to speak, what always resonates underneath when we have a crisis. That is what trust is. A crisis always means that things are not developing the way we expected or assumed. Therefore, the terms crisis, clarity and trust complement each other perfectly. I believe that the topic of trust goes a little deeper and delves deeper into the topics.”

Discover Germany: Do you think trust can be regained even if it is gone?

Boris Thomas: “I think the key sentence, the key idea of ​​this book is that trust is always a choice in the end. Trusting someone and inviting them to trust is always a personal decision that we can make, but we don’t have to. It is a fiery appeal from this book that we choose trust!”

Discover Germany: Given the current overall political situation in the country, do you think it is important to take countermeasures because there is mistrust everywhere?

Boris Thomas: “Completely. If you look at statistics, you have to realize that there has never been so much mistrust towards the state, the government, organizations and companies. I believe that at the level of political actors, companies and management, it is simply important to register facts again, to recognize that people have mistrust here, not to always deny it, to say, ‘Oh, that it’ll be fine again’. And to think about what it was all about. That’s why I have the chapter ‘How did we get here in the first place’ in my book. What went wrong? What I think is very important is that we analyze and, when we know what caused it, correct it. The crucial thing is that at the social level, the government, the corporate management, the managers in the companies, look again at what has gone so wrong in recent years that we have gotten into the current situation, where there is so much mistrust, and what we can now change to move forward again, to restore trust.”

Boris Thomas.

Discover Germany: What went wrong the most? Where did the misery begin?

Boris Thomas: “I think there are three levels in total, which I explain in more detail in my book. On the one hand, there is the level of proximity. To feel a person, to perceive that they are there. It’s not for nothing that people talk about something like the ‘UFO Berlin’. Very isolated, very far away from everything. People no longer have the feeling – let’s take politics as an example – that the government, the Bundestag, still represents what defines them and their needs in their lives. The second point is communication. I think that we got used to speaking a very strange language, which is very far away from everything and which no longer reaches people. A language with a lot of strange words that people can no longer understand – new, made-up words. And the third thing – this is the most important point, and it really went wrong – is the issue of vision. The idea of ​​bringing something big into the world. This ‘I have a dream’ by Martin Luther King. Or “We will land on the moon in ten years” by John F. Kennedy. Visions that really take people away, touch them in their hearts, and say that it is worth going through a difficult phase. If we take the current climate measures for example, it must be clearly stated that most people do not understand what we are clearly heading towards or where the perspectives should be in the whole thing. How can they be prepared at a point in time X to perhaps go through a difficult phase if they don’t know why? In my opinion, the three levels of proximity, communication and vision contain the crucial mistakes that have been made in recent years.”

Discover Germany: ‘I have a dream’ – In your book you described many dreams that you would like to have realized…

Boris Thomas: “Yes. Exactly. There is the chapter ‘I have a dream’ because I just find the sentence very beautiful. Martin Luther King put it so beautifully that he had the dream that his children and other children would play together and go to school together. It’s the same with me. I am an absolute optimist. I always carry the dream within me that we can somehow get the curve right again and be able to trust each other again as humanity in our country. That we say, ‘Oh come on, I trust the other person’. We are now trying to do the best together, even if we sometimes disagree. The exciting thing is that trust does not require that we always agree. When I’m in a relationship, trust doesn’t mean always looking in one direction. Rather, it means that if the other person takes a little detour, or goes their own way, or has their own crazy ideas in mind, to still trust them.”

About: Boris Thomas was born and grew up in Bremervörde in 1964, where he works as an author and as managing director of Lattoflex.
The book Trust – Die Vertrauensrevolution is now available via Highline: www.highline-verlag.de