“I’m yours, Lurch. My heart. My soul. My bank account.” – The Addams Family
If it’s 2% milk, what’s the other 98%?
I generally try to be an upbeat person. I’ve got good reason to be. So far, at least, most of the worst things in my life have led to most of the best things in my life. And it seems the worse the initial event is, the better the final outcome.
The track record is pretty good. I’m optimistic. Heck, with a small thermonuclear war, who knows how good things will get for me!
Optimism is one of my personal keys to life. And it’s key to my relationships.
One thing I’ve learned (besides the fact that cats float but don’t like it) along the way is this: what I get out of my relationships is just like my job or any other aspect of my life. The more that I put into the relationship, the more that I get out of the relationship.
“I have become Fluffy, Destroyer of Worlds.”
Stephen Covey called this the Emotional Bank Account®. I put the little ® there in this case because Stephen Covey ® almost everything under the Sun.
The idea of the Emotional Bank Account™ is simple: every relationship that you have is one where you’re either doing the things that build the relationship or doing things that cause the relationship to fade faster than Johnny Depp’s career.
A ramen noodle warehouse burned down. Dozens of dollars in inventory were destroyed.
This is a simple and important concept. In my career I’ve worked in lots of different office environments and seen lots of different characters that quickly developed an overdraft situation with me:
- The Complainer: There’s a problem with everything, in the view of a Complainer. It’s like working with Goldilocks, but the porridge is never, ever the right temperature. There is no topic that isn’t complained about. Heck, if they were the manager of the Tesla® plant, they’d complain that the place smelled musky.
- The Helpless: Helpless people simply cannot do any particular task, and need help each and every time they do it. If you allow it, they’ll pawn off as much of the task to you as they can, each and every day. What’s the name for a collective parasitical group of people like this?
- The Woe-Is-Me: This is a perennial victim. Everything in their life that’s bad? They’re not responsible for it. How bad is their life? They have to shop at Wal-Martyr®.
- The Untrustworthy: Think you’ve told them a secret? Soon enough the entire office knows. And untrustworthy people who use marijuana are worse. They’re guilty of high treason.
- The Emergency Room Doctor: Everything has to be done now – it’s all urgent. And there’s a sense of criticality about even the most mundane tasks. I mean, if your parachute doesn’t open, why panic? You’ve got the rest of your life to fix it.
Those people are draining. Don’t be one of them. How do I know this? Once I was going through a rough patch, and was slipping into Woe-Is-Me. I could sense from my friends that I had ridden that pony a little too long, or maybe I needed to up my deodorant game. I decided to stop complaining.
Then The Mrs. complained that I don’t buy her flowers. I have no idea when she started selling them.
I decided that if I had a problem worth complaining about, I’d deal with or shut up. Even my best friends have a max tolerance level for dealing my emotional complaints. The Mrs. is even more direct. When I whine, her only comment is: “And what, exactly, are you going to do about it?”
Oddly enough, though, I found that (in most circumstances) when I’m a positive person, people like to see me around more. They ask me for help. They offer help. My account balance is full.
It’s not just at work. It’s not just my friends. It’s my family, too. If every interaction that I have with them is negative, people aren’t exactly happy when Pa comes home.
Hopefully, this knife joke wasn’t too edgy.
Being a positive, productive, trustworthy person? When times are good, it’s important. When times aren’t good?
Maybe even more important. And when we talk about wealth, being surrounded by good, trustworthy people is wealthy, indeed.
John – – I found the knife joke rather sharp, but pointless…..
Always the cut up.
Now you’ve whetted my appetite for more well-honed humor.
Well, when you have bad material, you have to play it up to the hilt.
I try to be up-beat and funny… but my only reward is getting drenched in nose-milk!
No, but seriously…
Seriously? I try to avoid that. I’m (mostly) successful.
When you are the administrator of a dept in a large facility it is easy to slip into the whiner mode.
My staff are all the complainers and helpless and the other departments all demand things be done as if everything is going to crash and burn without my inputs.
It’s tough to keep up the PMA surrounded by the mentally weak.
It is, especially if the culture promotes it. A response I use, “and what are you going to do about it?”
Who would you rather be, Pooh or Eeyore? Personally, I’d rather be the ADHD-afflicted, hunny-obsessed be’ar-do-well with the stuttering little friend than the gloomy blue ass with the detachable tail. A voice like Sterling Holloway would be a bonus as well. Chicks love that Sterling Holloway voice.
Once in a while you get a honey jar stuck on your nose, but when you’ve got Christopher Robin on your team, it’s all good. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got to get back to the house at Pooh corner by one. You’d be surprised, there’s so much to be done.
So very much. And a lovely analogy. Especially if I can get unstuck from my front door.
I occasionally slip into complainer mode, but I wake every morning with a great attitude. I can’t take credit – my mother was an amazing optimist (she had to be – my dad was a Pessimist’s Pessimist).
I mean, the day starts off GREAT – I wake up!
From that point on, I can either choose to maintain that attitude, or fall into B**** Mode. I choose staying Up!
I’m blessed – I have a roof over my head, money in the bank, and kids who are self-supporting and truly amazingly wonderful people. They’ve provided me with 4 grandchildren, 2 great-grands, and passel of sisters (my eldest is a Franciscan sister). They even treat ME to lunch!
I have a husband who is mobile, mentally sound, and even takes care of household chores. His only fault is that he keeps going back to work again.
I am a night person. Mornings without coffee? Ugh. Coffee is my personality before 11AM.
You post led me to thinking about many things: how how our perception of the world determines our attitude, how we are perceived by others, and some important information shared by a wise friend: “A relationship is only as important as the one least interested.”
That’s a great comment. The thing I’d add, is that I always try to cultivate people who share the same character as I do. So far, I have a few folks. But those are the folks that I could call and would drive through the night in an emergency.
The Emergency Room Doctor is ideal as a boss in a non-life-threatening position. Like most software gigs. Everything is always an emergency and your plate is constantly full, so the “I’ll drop everything to handle this one” line works shockingly well. Of course, you don’t have to actually *do anything* about it because another, newer, emergency will soon replace it. Meanwhile, you can get some serious work done, because you can get rid of people with the, “Sorry. Emergency, top #1 priority, ask someone else.”
Not that I’ve had any personal experience with this…
I can do emergency. Actually, that fits my General personality (The Mrs. named it). The General has fun. The General is also emotionless until it’s done. It’s also great to have purpose and focus.
“So far, at least, most of the worst things in my life have led to most of the best things in my life”
That’s why things happen for a reason as I have said before.
I look for humor and try to belly laugh hard it helps in todays’ environment. You did good here, “A ramen noodle warehouse burned down. Dozens of dollars in inventory were destroyed”.
Been hearing the word transformation at church quite often lately. I told the preacher to pray for a boat load for me as I need it lately.
You’ll get there. We all will. We’ll have the right challenges to get us there. And we’ll have some Help.
SHTF Survival – Step One: kill all the optimists, because no matter how hard you try, you really CAN’T make lemonade out of barbecued rat.
Why would you want to make lemonade out of BBQ rat? What a waste of perfectly good BBQ!
You have to make lemonade out of fresh-squeezed rat, obviously. Then you marinade them for the grill.
I concede the point. Using “BBQ” was a tactical error. I should have used “drowned”, “bludgeoned”, or something suitably flavorless.
But the optimists will get up every morning and tell you, “Oh, look how wonderful the fallout has made the sunrise look!”
As my dad used to say, Instead of saying Good God, what a morning…say Good Morning God, what a morning.
I love it. Most mornings I go . . . “already?”
Maybe I should say, “All ready!”
Nah, I’m a night person.
Generally useful advice for the kid raising as well: What are you putting into the relationship bank and how often, vs. the withdrawals.
Yup. And managing that is everything. My goal has always been values. If I do my job, at some point love follows.