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Understanding the Individual Really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit.
Attending to the Little Things The little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Small discourtesies, little unkindnesses, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships, the little things are the big things.
Keeping Commitments Keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal.
Clarifying Expectations
Showing Personal Integrity Personal Integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits.
The Laws of Love and the Laws of Life
other words, when we truly love others without condition, without strings, we help them feel secure and safe and validated and affirmed in their essential worth, identity, and integrity. Their natural growth process is encouraged. We make it easier for them to live the laws of life—cooperation, contribution, self-discipline, integrity—and to discover and live true to the highest and best within them. We give them the freedom to act on their own inner imperatives rather than react to our conditions and limitations. This does not mean we become permissive
But the problem is that Lose/Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings never die: they’re buried alive and come forth later in uglier ways.
People who are constantly repressing, not transcending feelings toward a higher meaning find that it affects the quality of their self-esteem and eventually the quality of their relationships with others.
Lose/Lose is the philosophy of adversarial conflict, the philosophy of war.
Lose/Lose is also the philosophy of the highly dependent person without inner direction who is miserable and thinks everyone else should be, too. “If nobody ever wins, perhaps being a loser isn’t so bad.”
If you can’t reach a true Win/Win, you’re very often better off to go for No Deal.
In an effort to preserve the relationship, people sometimes go on for years making one compromise after another, thinking Win/Lose or Lose/Win even while talking Win/Win. This creates serious problems for the people and for the business, particularly if the competition operates on Win/Win and synergy.
As we clearly identify our values and proactively organize and execute around those values on a daily basis, we develop self-awareness and independent will by making and keeping meaningful promises and commitments.
There’s no way to go for a Win in our own lives if we don’t even know, in a deep sense, what constitutes a Win—what is, in fact, harmonious with our innermost values.
definition of emotional maturity I’ve ever come across—“the ability to express one’s own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others.”
If I’m high on consideration and low on courage, I’ll think Lose/Win. I’ll be so considerate of your convictions and desires that I won’t have the courage to express and actualize my own.
It’s difficult for people with a Scarcity Mentality to be members of a complementary team. They look on differences as signs of insubordination and disloyalty.
The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives, and creativity.
There are basically four kinds of consequences (rewards and penalties) that management or parents can control—financial, psychic, opportunity, and responsibility.
In families, parents can shift the focus from competition with each other to cooperation. In activities such as bowling, for example, they can keep a family score and try to beat a previous one.
Win/Win is not a personality technique. It’s a total paradigm of human interaction. It comes from a character of integrity, maturity, and the Abundance Mentality.
When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand, to really understand. It’s an entirely different paradigm.
When you can present your own ideas clearly, specifically, visually, and most important, contextually—in the context of a deep understanding of other people’s paradigms and concerns—you significantly increase the credibility of your ideas.
“Almost all the benefit of the exercise comes at the very end, Stephen,” he replied. “I’m trying to build strength. And that doesn’t happen until the muscle fiber ruptures and the nerve fiber registers the pain. Then nature overcompensates and within 48 hours, the fiber is made stronger.”
The spiritual dimension is your core, your center, your commitment to your value system. It’s a very private area of life and a supremely important one. It draws upon the sources that inspire and uplift you and tie you to the timeless truths of all humanity. And people do it very, very differently.
social and the emotional dimensions of our lives are tied together because our emotional life is primarily, but not exclusively, developed out of and manifested in our relationships with others.
