Trying to Work Things Out

Every thing you do results in both negative and positive results in yourself and the people around you. You are responsible for your own actions, and you are responsible for their results. You are not responsible for other people's actions, and you are only responsible for how you allow the results of their actions affect you. You are also not responsible for how other people allow the results of your actions to affect them. However your awareness of the effect that those results may have should impact your decisions. I wanted to clarify my opinion about this up front because I think it's an important distinction to make before tackling  the theory I'm about to tackle.

My mom always says that people work off of a banking system. Most of your interactions with a person either invests in them, or withdraws from them. In order for a person to be able to be withdrawn from, they must have something invested in them first. This is so obviously true that it's amazing how often people try to function outside of it. It is true about nearly everything in life. You can't drink anything out of a cup, unless you pour something into it first.

Usually if a person's actions require more of you than they've initially invested, the deficit manifests itself in the form of resentment, disappointment, hurt, distrust, and any other number of negative feelings. Some people have enough invested in them from other sources that they can continue to invest in others without it's return.

So the question begs to be asked; If you were to look at your friendships/relationships, how much do you withdraw from them versus how much you invest in them? And how much do they require of you versus how much they invest in you?

An honest person would be able to see the imbalance's, and also see the negative and positive effects of these interactions. This is important because it's necessary to make sure that you not only have enough emotional and physical equity to support the withdrawals of others, but also to make sure that you are investing in others more than you require of them. I believe that people have four area's that require a positive balance in their "account" in order for them to be "content".

Those area's are:

1. Sustenance: food, sleep, exercise, etc.
2. Security: A place to sleep, a roof over your head.
3. Affection: Love given and received, physical and emotional
4. Purpose: Hope, direction, ideals, meaning.

I'm going to take my list of ten things that make life easier and break them down one at a time within the context of this idea to show how it's possible to live a life that is constantly pouring into others, while requiring of you the least amount of withdrawal. This is coming from a person who has seen it demonstrated his whole life, and has personally done a fairly good job of doing it himself. It's not always easy, and sometimes it seems downright impossible. But if you can master it you'll become part of the solution, instead of a part of the problem. Sounds great right?

This is good stuff, I promise.

The best thing about this perspective is that it can change the world around you without the cooperation of the people around you. I'm hoping that through verbalizing my theories on this I'll be able to straighten out my understanding of it, and strengthen my resolve to following it. I also hope that maybe some of these ideas are either new to some of you, or are being re-presented in a way that helps the ideas make more sense, in a way that you'll be able to benefit from them as much as I have and hopefully will.

Most of these things are unpolished and far from perfect, so please tell me your thoughts, and ask any questions that you have. The more minds we wrap around this the more accurate and helpful the end results will be. This is the kind of simple thing that could change your life, my life, shoot... it could change the world.

I'm just trying to work things out. I'm going to do it out loud.

Comments

[mcco12]

i love that whole metaphor of relationships being like a banking system. as much as i resent the need (of our society) to break everything down into some kind of economic model for people to understand, there is certainly some truth in what your mother says.