The smile. It’s such a small action with such a big impact. Gently contract these muscles, subtly relax those. Within a mere fraction of movement, a universe of possibility opens. We often think of it as a reaction – ‘that made me smile’.

It can also be interesting to notice what happens when we start with a smile. We don’t have to tackle the biggest challenges like smiling at our deepest heartache, although that can be transformative if we get there. We don’t even need to start with people.

Dogs are great to smile at. Trees, flowers, things that spark joy, solve problems or are easy to overlook. Smile at the onion before you chop it. Smile at the database before you start to fill it in. I started this blog with a wry little smile at the blank page, and with it at my own self-doubt. It helped.

Then maybe we can stay with the smile a little longer. See how it evolves. See how we evolve in response. What opens? What shifts? What softens? What warms within us? See how the world around us responds.

It’s not about faking niceness or happiness or OKness. It’s more about curiosity of seeing what emerges when we flex some tiny muscles to find a little gentleness toward what’s in front of us.

It’s normal to have parts of the work to feel less comfortable to do than others. Some may even be stressful or outright anxiety provoking. We may find ourselves putting certain tasks off or coming up with reasons not to do the thing – it’s not my job, the system sucks, it was better the way we used to do it. We might grit our teeth and get it done first, or over prepare, overdo it, leave it til last or see if someone else can do it.

There’s the common ones. Dealing with aggression, crisis or risk. Having difficult conversations or taking action someone else doesn’t want us to take. Speaking in meetings or in public. Then there’s the seemingly less threatening ones. Making phone calls, sending emails or filling in databases or government forms, going to team building days. It really doesn’t matter what it is, it’s just that we know we’d rather not do it.

It takes time and breathing space to explore the deeper source of discomfort so we can manage the impact on ourselves and others. And they can be trickier to catch than they first seem. There might be undercurrents of deeper, more ancient hurts that are harder to pin down with our conscious adult mind.

It’s work best done with others – in supervision, therapy, conversation with mentors, friendly peer discussions, spiritual retreats. We can also discover insights in the challenges we set ourselves and crafts we seek to hone. Wherever we push our edges, our fears will show.

And it’s a work in progress, likely to never be completely resolved. But if we can meet these moments with honesty and acceptance we can work with them, rather than despite them. We may not always see them at the time but we can still learn from reflection. And if we can sit with them with open minds and hearts, they can become our greatest teachers.

Many of our support systems seem to be set up as if trust issues are the exception rather than the rule. And if they’re there, it’s part of a pathology, something damaged by unfortunate life events – maybe they’ve been abused or are paranoid or mandated – but it’s seen as an extra complication.

And we generally don’t build our services with the expectation people have had bad experiences with other services. Or with our service. Or with us personally. At the same time we may have signs and barriers and policies in place that signal we don’t trust them.

Yet it’s normal to be unsure of strangers and the advice they offer. Challenges with interpersonal interactions and navigating relationships are common, almost compulsory. Everyone has been hurt by someone, whether from calculated cruelty or oblivious insensitivity. We often doubt, judge and criticise ourselves and others, and fill in the blanks with questions and assumptions. It’s what people do.

What’s more, if our interventions are to be successful we want people to think for themselves and make their own considered decisions because we won’t always be there. And in the scheme of a whole life we rarely are. We also want people to have healthy boundaries out in the real world and that real world includes us.

What if we set up systems with the expectation trust is not a given, and people have every right to be wary of us from the beginning? How would we adapt or adjust our intake and reception, our assessment and triage, our treatment and referrals? When we start from the position that trust is earned, we’re more likely to build in the processes that allow that to happen. For both of us. Trust is, after all, a two way street.

Efficiency is usually associated with being cost effective. Maybe quality is compromised or we lose the luxury of the nice like-to-have rather than need-to-have things. But the aim is to minimise wasted effort or resources.

Yet when it comes to providing support for people in need, it’s rarely a simple linear process that fits the efficiency equations. Sometimes the silos and streamlining create far more inefficient systems in the long haul.

Short symptom-focused medical appointments risk missing the broader context and potential underlying conditions. Assessment processes sliced off from treatment delivery make people tell their story over and over again because no form could represent their experience as well as they could. Treating pieces of people as if they weren’t attached to a whole life can leave us trapped in a cycle of endlessly repeating interventions that have no long term impact.

More holistic beginnings may take longer at first, but save time and lives down the track. Stories that may seem peripheral turn out to hold vital clues later on. Links and connections across services bring more puzzle pieces together.

True efficiencies in systems come from engaging the whole person rather than trying to tidy isolated details into an elegant but unrealistic flow chart. And that means building in flexibility to accommodate what’s needed rather than what was prescribed before the person turned up.