Have you ever had a falling out with a family member, friend, or partner? I would dare say we all have at least once or twice experienced a not so comforting time with one or more of those mentioned above.
I have learned and am still learning the power behind relationships, what keeps them going, what ruins them, and in the face of ruin, what brings them back together.
I am by no means a relationship expert. I have just learned and continue to learn a lot for the main reason that I love the people who I do life with from my child to my partner.
Relationships are vast and come in all types of different make ups and for that I am thankful. I've got my low maintenance friends, my "hey what are you doing right now? I'm down the street and gonna drop by" friends, and my two times a year friends that I literally know I will only see two times out of the year (their birthday and my birthday) but have a solid friendship that has lasted a long time.
So how do we go about keeping these relationships? How do we know when they are spent or when they just need some WD40? The truth that I am coming to find is sometimes we don't know and there are so many variables that can be impacting the state of the relationship and the capacity for it to grow or lack of capacity which causes it to die.
In all of this I got to thinking about relational bank accounts. This is something I learned from Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The relationship bank account operates as a regular degular bank account that one would have with cash money at the bank.
Our relationships require deposits. Those deposits range from person to person, but some obvious ones would be supporting each other, maybe giving a gift on a birthday, etc. Withdrawals operate in the same way, for example, talking behind each others back, lacking in support when they are successful, etc.
When the relationship bank account is thriving and healthy there are multiple deposits and minimal withdrawals. However, even in the case of a withdrawal, if the funds are present the withdrawals dont have as much impact. For example if my relationship account balance is 200.00 and I withdrawal 2.00 it wont phase me as much, but if I withdrawal 75.00 that would be more of an impact, but even in that Im still in the positive. So imagine that money as relational exchanges and instead of cash think about encounters/experiences with those you are in relationship with in your life.
The trouble arises when we begin to make withdrawals that we do not have the funds to cover. Once this happens (when deposits are low and withdrawals are high) we find ourselves in the negative. This is when relationships break down. I have experienced this on both ends and yet I have discovered that even when you may be making deposits relationships can still wither away.
So yes, relationships can be looked at as transactional, but it is more than that in my opinion. I believe that relationships must also be transformational. We will talk transformation in my next post!
In the meantime look at your relationship deposits and withdrawals. Evaluate the places where you need to deposit, where you have made withdrawals, and how to bring things back to a balance. Good luck!
Rooting for you always,
-C.
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