Let me suggest six major deposits that build the Emotional Bank Account.
UNDERSTANDING THE INDIVIDUAL
Really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit. You simply don't know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual.
One person's mission is another person's minutia. To make deposits, what is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you.
I have a friend whose son developed an avid interest in baseball. My friend wasn't interest in baseball at all. But one summer, he took his son to see every major league team play one game. The trip took over six weeks and cost a great deal of money, but it became a powerful bonding experience in their relationship.
My friend was asked on his return, "Do you like baseball that much?"
"No," he replied, "but I like my son that much."
Our tendency is to project out of our own autobiographies what we think other people want or need. We project our intentions on the behavior of others.
ATTENDING TO THE LITTLE THINGS
The little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Small discourtesies, little unkindness, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships, the big things are the little things.
KEEPING COMMITMENTS
Keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal. In fact, there's probably not a more massive withdrawal than to make a promise that's important to someone and then not come through. The next time a promise is made, they won't believe it. people tend to build their hopes around promises, particularly promises about their basic livelihood.
I believe that if you cultivate the habit of always keeping the promises you make, you build bridges of trust that span the gaps of understanding between you and your child.
CLARIFYING EXPECTATIONS
The cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations and roles and goals.
Clarifying expectations sometimes takes a great deal of courage. It seems easier to act as thought difference don't exist and to hope things will work out than it is to face the difference and work together to arrive at a mutually agreeable set of expectation.
SHOWING PERSONAL INTEGRITY
Personal integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits.
Lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts. People can seek to understand, remember the little things, keep their promises, clarify and fulfill expectations, and still fail to build reserves of trust if they are inwardly duplicitous.
Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth -- in other words, conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming words to reality -- in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations. This requires an integrated character, a oneness, primarily with self but also with life.
One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present. When you defend those who are absent, you retain the trust of those present.
APOLOGIZING SINCERELY WHEN YOU MAKE A WITHDRAWAL
When we make withdrawals from the Emotional Bank Account, we need to apologize and we need to do it sincerely. Great deposits come in the sincere words:
"I was wrong."
"That was unkind of me."
"I showed you no respect."
"I gave you no dignity, and I'm deeply sorry."
"I embarrassed you in front of your friends (teammates) and I had no call to do that. Even though I wanted to make a point, I never should have done that. I apologize."
It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.
Sincere apologies make deposits; repeated apologies interpreted as insincere make withdrawals. And the quality of the relationship reflects it.
It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.
