Emotional Bank Account
You need an emotional bank account. 1
“I was wrong about everything I understood about influencing behavior.”
The term “Emotional Bank Account” is a metaphorical representation of the amount of positive emotional connection in relationships.
In this concept, an emotional deposit is every time we do something that builds trust, understanding, and positive emotions. These include making an effort to understand someone, keeping commitments, responding to their bids for attention, and expressing appreciation. It also includes actions like sincerely apologizing for your mistakes or forgiving the other person for their mistakes.
An emotional withdrawal is every time we do something to degrade the bond. Obvious emotional withdrawals are things such as lying, criticizing someone, betrayal, and disrespectful behavior. But there are also more subtle withdrawals such as breaking promises, dismissing emotions, ignoring needs, and asking them to do something for us.
Here is something important that many people miss. Asking someone to change their behavior is an emotional Asking someone to change their behavior is an emotional withdrawal. And not just a withdrawal, a rather large one.
When you ask someone to alter their behavior for you, you are essentially asking them to take a chunk of their emotional energy and give it to you.
Just like a real bank, if you don’t happen to have a healthy balance at the time, they may be unwilling to let you make this withdrawal.
If you’ve been trying really hard to get someone to change their behavior and nothing has worked so far, it may be worth trying to increase your balance in their emotional bank account before trying again. Here’s how you can do that:
- Deposit currency that is valuable to them
- The five love languages.
- Make timely and consistent deposits
- In both financial and emotional bank accounts, trust is built by showing timely and consistent behavior over a long time.
- Balancing Deposits and Withdrawals by a 5O1 Ratio
- Every relationship naturally involves give and take and positive and negative interactions. The key is not to withdraw more than you deposit.
- Researchers recommend maintaining what they refer to as the “Magic Ratio” to build a successful emotional relationship. The idea is simple, you should try to make sure that you have five positive interactions for every negative interaction.
So, the next time you find yourself thinking, “How do I get my annoying colleague to change?” or “How do I make my spouse behave differently?”, you should reframe the question to, “Do I have enough balance in my emotional bank account to make this withdrawal?”