Stephen Covey introduced the concept of Emotional Bank Account a few years back. He said as you maintain accounts in bank, monitoring the debit/credit/interest out of the money invested by you, similarly you need to keep control of the emotional transactions that you do with people around you.
Giving a surprise, doing something more than expected, quality time spent together adds to the healthy balance of the account. However, a promise not kept, anger, lying would all lead to the withdrawals from the account. For an effective flow of communication between two people, there should always be a positive emotional balance.
This means that one should always aim to do more of the things that lead to the inflow of positive emotions and less of negative emotions.
It, of course is a beautiful concept. And if applied consciously can drastically improve the quality of relationships.
In fact, you may be using it in your everyday life, without knowing that it is “Emotional Bank Account” that you are maintaining.
- A kid always hears a No from his father. He stops going to him asking for things, because his emotional bank balance is negative with his father
- A sister gets comfort by talking to her elder sister and for any kind of support, she calls only her. That’s the power of a positive emotional account
- A couple keeps fighting with each other but at the end of the day can only sleep in each other’s arms. That’s the power of a balanced emotional account.
It of course is difficult to maintain a log of transactions of what lead to a positive/negative balance, especially because there are multiple emotional transactions we do in a day.
If you have ever read or done accounting then you would recall the struggles of ensuring that the balance sheet should match with the assets and the liabilities. It is the same here. The advantage is that your assets can be more than liabilities here and hence you need not only match them.
To assist you in ensuring that you maintain a healthy emotional bank account with your loved ones, remember that the 3 accounting principles can be applied here as well. For simplicity sake, consider whatever is getting debited is getting added to your assets and all credits are leading to your liabilities.
- Debit what comes in, credit what goes out
For all the positive experiences with the other person, your assets are healthier than your liabilities. However, for everything that goes out from you- anger, fights, jealousy are all increasing your liabilities.
- Debit the receiver, credit the giver
Your husband took you for a surprise dinner. You are ecstatic. What the husband did added to increase in the positive side of the emotional bank account; however it has now added the wife in the credit side. The husband may start expecting her to behave/react/reciprocate in a certain way basis this surprise dinner.
If the wife doesn’t, then the emotional account that the wife is maintaining remains positive, however husband’s account with his wife becomes negative.
Hence for anything good you receive, you become liable to return the goodness.
- Debit all expenses or losses, credit all gains
For all the time that you have spent in meeting the expectations of the other ones is an asset for you, because it will give you returns. And for everything nice that you receive from them is a liability, because of the expectations the niceties bring on.
For all the commerce students, this may be easier for you to remember. My suggestion to all the non-commerce ones, remember every transaction with your loved one is leading to either a positive or negative emotional bank account. Just ensure that you do not run into over draft by continuously doing things which lead to negative balances.
Pic courtesy: Internet & Forbes site
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