Trust. It’s a topic increasingly linked to happiness, but those five little letters can arouse huge suspicion – sometimes with good reason, as I recently found out to my cost. However, I’d argue that’s all the more reason to be trustworthy.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for me when it comes to how I think about trust and its impact on happiness. Suffice to say, when life laughs at your best laid plans, it tends to be a belly-roar not a quiet chuckle.

Let me take you back to a blissful half-term holiday in Denmark (Thurø, a little island off Svendborg – try to visit, it’s lovely!). With the kids well-occupied and a view of the sun sparkling off the sea, I finally had the thinking space to fix a starting point for this happiness blog.

I was pretty pleased with what I came up with – namely, why the Danes keep topping international surveys on happiness. After all, how much more topical could I get? I was right there and had a perfect chance to observe Danish life with my own eyes.

Danish happiness

So, interspersed with family outings, I chatted to any local who would pass the time of day with me, and I read every study on Danish happiness I could find.

Much of what I learnt tallied with topics that surface time and time again when it comes to well-being in a society – a well-functioning democracy, a feeling of being looked after by the welfare state and a high level of personal freedom.

However, in a report by The Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, one area really stood out to me. Trust.

Trust makes life easier

The report stated that Danish people enjoy a high level of trust, and that makes life just a bit easier. 75% of Danes believe they can trust most people. To put it into context, in global terms, only 25% believe they can.

When I thought about it, I could see evidence of trust everywhere in Danish life. Small carts selling fruit and jam with honesty boxes are a common sight. Also, instead of paying at parking meters as you might in England, Danish cars have a little clock on the windscreen. Car parking signs let you know how long you can stay for, and you simply set the time you arrive on your little clock. Past that, you’re trusted to come back on time.

‘Brilliant!’ I thought, and mapped out a blog in my mind, ready to write when I got back to England.

Fast forward 48 hours, and I unfortunately found myself looking at trust from the entirely opposite angle.

Losing confidence

Almost as soon as I got home, I managed to put my credit card details into an untrustworthy website. Trying to buy tickets to a Barcelona game for my football-mad son has resulted in me being more-money-than-I-want-to-admit out of pocket with the potential for no tickets turning up. The website turned out to be a ticket re-sale site (I didn’t realise) with a terrible reputation (I didn’t realise this, either) that whacks on a huge ‘booking fee’ at the end of your transaction (again, I didn’t – well, you get the picture).

As someone who would have previously considered herself reasonably tech-savvy, to say I felt foolish would be something of an understatement. Actually, I felt – and, to some extent, continue to feel – gutted (although, of course, the optimist in me dares to believe that we might still get the tickets).

Keep the faith

Now, even before this, I obviously wasn’t going to write a blog suggesting that blind trust in everyone you meet is a recipe for happiness. In fact, given the repercussions of trusting the wrong person (or website), it’s more like a recipe for disaster.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t take an individual stand on being trustworthy. In fact, the whole experience has hammered home to me how much more focus I should put on my own trustworthiness and how much more I should value it in the people around me. Because when it comes to our own personal well-being, trustworthiness matters.

I suppose it’s the old truism; you can’t control other people’s actions, only your own. Some people (and websites) will try and take advantage of you, but if we individually concentrate on being trustworthy people, not only will our own happiness increase but we’ll also be playing our part in creating that collective feeling of wishing each other well that the Danes enjoy. And to my mind, that’s worth striving for.

I also think that by being dependable, acting with integrity, and seeking opportunities to be kind, we give ourselves the best chance to bounce back when we’re let down.

At least, until those tickets turn up, that’s what I’m putting my trust in.

Update: They did turn up and we watched an incredible (if expensive) game.