An objective of this blog is for us all (myself included) to enhance and maximize our human relationships. To do this, we need to find a way for us and others to feel good about, and get the most out of, our personal interactions.

In the 7 habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about the emotional bank account where we make deposits and withdrawals that lead to either a low balance (bad relationship) or high balance (solid relationship).

If you are consistently taking from and not giving to others, they might perceive your actions as self absorbed, narcissistic, or self centered withdrawals that can negatively impact our relationships. They might not be getting what they need from the relationship.

So, in an interaction between two people… is it taking (withdrawal) or giving (deposit) to dominate and control the agenda of any particular conversation? It could be either!

In a conversation with anyone, you shouldn’t assume that the other person wants to talk about themselves or their topics. What if that day (or every day!) they don’t want the spotlight and they actually prefer for you to tell them your stories, issues, plans, etc. You could be giving them a needed break and the enjoyment of hearing someone else’s perspective.

On the other hand, they might have a lot to say and prefer to have the spotlight on their agenda.

Emotional maturity includes developing a super power to determine whether your conversation should be a balanced mix of agendas or a focus on what one particular person needs at that time.

There is no right answer. The hard work of empathy is to figure this out without too many assumptions.

Have you ever been telling a story and the listener interjects with…

Yeah, I know

Or some form such as “I saw that”?

Often the interjector is excited to connect with the story teller by letting them know they totally get it. Other times, the interjector can mean…

Please finish this story soon because you are wasting our time

Regardless of your intent, the story teller might assume the latter and register a complaint. They might keep telling their story but somewhere inside of your relationship you could be taking a micro-withdrawal from the emotional bank account.

Often the message is given by the tone of your voice while interjecting. An upbeat tone can really show solidarity with the story teller and egg them on to keep telling their awesome story while a flat or dropping tone can easily say the opposite.

If YOU are the interjector in this example, why even create that potential confusion? Why make their story about you? Why not keep the focus on whatever great thing they are explaining or showing to you*.

Let them bathe in the limelight for a while. Don’t be so quick to pre-emptively bust their bubble by implying they could be wasting your time. Let them express their unique view on the situation, even if you have heard it all before. You just might learn something new.

*btw I’m still working on this – it’s not easy. Cut yourself some slack.

We are taught that there is a right and a wrong way to do… anything. Our ability to choose the right answer is constantly tested by our parents, teachers, or spouses. The regular interrogation of “am I correct?” (and the underlying “am I smart enough?”) reinforces a view that for a given situation, there is only 1 right answer that needs to be found.

We grow into adults who think “I’m right, and if others disagree with me, they must be wrong”. Which leads to “If there can only be one right answer, and I want to make sure I’m right, then I must prove that person wrong”. We end up in a dangerous, pressure filled container with a growing tension to defend our positions.

We have been programmed by society to work very hard to prove our right-ness. This serves us well when it comes to building bridges and safeguarding our money. This does not always work well when it comes to interpersonal relationships.

Opinion: a thought or belief about something or someone

Fact: a thing that is known or proved to be true.

So what happens to opinions? The lines get blurred (erased!) and we spend our energy fighting the same supposedly good fight over whether our opinions are right or wrong… despite that they are not supposed to be! *

The internet is great at showcasing this phenomena. You don’t have to look too far in Facebook to find people insulting each other over their wrong-ness of opinion.

How can these IMDB reviewers see the world so differently? This is the beauty of opinions. No-one here is right or wrong*. They are all right for themselves.

The trap we fall into is that we believe a movie by itself can only be one thing: good or bad. We forget that movies by themselves are not good or bad… they are just canisters of film (ok very large files on a computer). It takes another human being paired with that movie to come up with a conclusion about it’s awesomeness. This means there are 7 billion possibilities for interpreting that movie.

Movies are safe for disagreement. Where this gets difficult is when we turn to the politics that ultimately impact lives, including our own. How we should move forward as a country is still very much an opinion rather than a fact, similar to this movie review. Two groups of people can see the same set of facts and disagree violently.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to persuade the other side to see things a certain way. On the contrary, we should speak and vote with the intention of changing the world. I just hope that you don’t cross the line of assuming their opinion is wrong. They aren’t wrong. They can’t be. By definition, opinions are never wrong.

Focus on the underlying facts and argue about whether the facts an opinion are based upon are right or wrong.

* this is my opinion 😎

Most of us have a tendency to be defensive. If a situation appears to make us look bad, we often are quick to find evidence that we are innocent and still worthy of their respect. We want others to know, and recognize, that we are competent.

An example of this is when you bring something up that you previously addressed and your response is “like I said….” or “as I put in my email yesterday….”. One justification for this response might be that you feel bad for repeating a message and wasting everyone’s time. My hunch is that the majority of this response is more “why are THEY wasting our time and making it seem like I haven’t already done my job. I did my job! This issue is resolved let’s please move on to all the other busy work we have in front of us!”

Ironically, in attempting to retain your respect and dignity, you end up losing it by appearing as if you are primarily concerned with your own standing rather than the others around you.

To the person who brought the issue back up, it suggests “why the hell are you saying this? This has already been addressed! What’s wrong with you?!”  

And to others listening it says “I might say this to you some day so don’t mess with me”.

All around the room, this is a relationship withdrawal from the emotional bank account.

This response presumptuously assumes that 1) you understood exactly what the person is now bringing back up 2) that person understood exactly what you were previously saying and 3) you had previously communicated in such a clear way that no-one should have misunderstood and has no right to bring the issue back up again. What if you misinterpreted what the person was now saying or missed a nuance in the question that presented a new perspective? Why not instead spend your energy searching for how this case is different than the prior, rather than assuming it’s exactly the same? 

This could actually turn into an emotional deposit if you show the same amount of respect (the same type of respect you were defending in yourself!) to that person by assuming they have a good point that you just don’t understand yet.