Making Deposits in the Emotional Bank

In our Free Store conversation on Saturday morning we continued our discussion about the importance of making emotional deposits into our relational bank accounts.  This is part of a strategy that Stephen Covey refers to as "think win/win" in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  We discussed how making a deposit in another person's emotional bank builds a reserve of positive emotion and is very important because there will be times we will screw up and make withdrawals as well.  We laughed when someone said how awful it was to go to the bank for a withdrawal and have no money in the account.

Our new friend Angel said that it made you feel good when you helped someone else.  He said that simple things like paying bills and helping with the kids and sharing love together were important ways to keep a relationship positive.  We talked about how doing little things for another person can go a long way to making that person feel valued and loved.

At this point in the conversation we talked about the importance of keeping our commitments and promises as a way of making emotional deposits in another person's life.  One of our new friends said that it "hurts real bad" when someone lets you down.  We talked about how keeping our promises communicates to the other person that they matter to us and that we value them in our lives.

Sheila said that another way to make a deposit in someone's life is by "being honest to each other."  She also said that honesty can make you feel bad at times because the truth is not always something that we want to hear.  At this one of our new friends said that her fiance had just walked off this morning because he got upset with her for being honest with someone about their situation.

We talked about how important it was to apologize when we made a mistake as a way to make a positive deposit in someone's emotional bank.  One of our new friends said, "It was hard to apologize to my mom for things I did when I was younger."  She said, "I was afraid to talk to her because I didn't know how she would react."  She went on to say that it got so bad that it was making her physically sick and that when she finally did apologize her mom handled it very well and she felt much better.  We talked about how it is as important to apologize for our own faults as it is to forgive the faults of others.  We also noted the negative effects of our own strong emotions when we don't manage them properly.

As the conversation moved to a conclusion one of our friends said, "I got a question."  She told us that her fiance had walked out on her earlier in the morning because she had told someone the truth about their situation and in particular about him being on probation.  She wanted to know if we thought she did the right thing by being honest in that situation.  We all sympathized with our friend and tried to encourage her.  We thought that it was always a good idea to act in our own best interest even if there were difficult consequences that had to be faced as a result.