| Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own effort. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.
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Interdependence is a far more mature, more advanced concept. If I am physically interdependent, I am self-reliant and capable, but I also realize that you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I derive a great sense of worth within myself, but I also recognize the need for love, for giving, and for receiving love from others. If I am intellectually interdependent, I realize that I need the best thinking of other people to join with my own.
When something negative happens or a negative situation occurs:
Now what would a reactive mind say to that? "Oh, come on. Face facts. You can only carry this positive thinking and self-psych approach so far. Sooner or later you have to face reality."
But that's the difference between positive thinking and pro-activity. We did face reality. We faced the reality of the current circumstance and of future projections. But we also faced the reality that we had the power to choose a positive response to those circumstances and projections.
When relating a talk with a friend who was having problems in a marriage.
My friend, love is a verb. Love-the feeling-is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her.
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Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others. even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured.
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Alcoholics Anonymous prayer' "Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference."
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It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of out lives immediately. We can make a promise-and keep it. Or we can set a goal-and work to achieve it.
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Samuel Johnson observed: "The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek hapiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove."
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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Frankl says we detect rather that invent our missions in life.
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In Frankl's words, "Everyone has his own specific vocation or misson in life . . . . Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it."
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Without involvement, there is no commitment.
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Integrity is, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves. It's our ability to make and keep commitments to ourselves, to "walk our talk."
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Organize and execute around priorities.
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Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brinds out the very best in people.
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"There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity." - Samuel Johnson
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An Emotional bank Account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that's been built up in a relationship. It's the feeling of safeness you have with another human being.
If I make deposits into an Emotinal Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to.
When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.
... if I have a habit of showing discourtesy, disrespect, cutting you off, overreacting, ignoring you, becoming arbitrary, betraying your trust, threatening you, or playing little tin god in your life, eventually my Emotional Bank Account is overdrawn. The trust gets very low.
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Six Major Deposits
Understanding the Individual
Really seeking to understand another person is probably oneof the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit. ... To make a deposit, what is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you.
Attending to the Little Things
The little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Small discouresies, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawels. 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. In fact, ther's probably not a more assive withdrawal than to make a promise that's important to someone and then not to come through.
Clarifying Expectations
The cause of almost all relationship difulculties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals.
... it's so important whenever you come into a new situation to get all the expectations out on the table. People will begin to judge each other through those expectations. And if they feel like their basic expectations have been violated, the reserve of trust is diminshed. We create many negative situations by simply assuming that our expectations are self-evident and that they are clearly understood and shared by other people.
Showing Personal Integrity
Personal Integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kiinds of deposits.
Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth-in other works, conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming reality to our words-inother words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.
One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build trust of those who are present.
Apologizing Sincerely When You Make a Withdrawal
When we make withdrawals from the Emotional Bank Account, we need to apologize and we need to do it sincerely.
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Leo Roskin taught, "It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong."
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The Laws of Love and the Laws of Life
When we make deposits of unconditional love, when we live the primary laws of love, we encourage others to live the primary laws of life. In other words, when we truly love others without condition, without strings, we help them feel secure and safe and validated and affirmed intheir essential worth, identity, and integrity. Their neatural 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 imperative rather than react to our conditions and limitations. This does not mean we become permissive or soft. That itself is a massive withdrawal. We counsel, we plead, we set limits and consequences. But we love, regardless.
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Dag Hammarskjold: "It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses."
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Win/Win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win/Win means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying. With a Win/Win solution, all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan.
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Character is the foundation of Win/Win, and everything else builds on that foundation. There are three character traits essential to the Win/Win paradigm.
Integrity is the cornerstone in the foundation.
Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration. ... Hrand Saxenian: "the ability to express one's own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thought and feelings of others."
HIgh courage and consideration are both essential to Win/Win. IT is the balance that is the mark of real maturity. If I have it, I can listen, I can empathically understand, but I can also courageously confront.
Abundance Mentality. The third character trait essential to Win/Win is the Abundance Mentality, the paradigm [viewpoint] that there is plenty out there for everybody.
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The hear had its reasons which reason knows not of. - Pascal
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Seek first to understand, then to be understood
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The real key to your influence with me is your example, your actual conduct. Your example flows naturally out of your character, or the kind of person you truly are - not what others say you are or what you may want me to think you are. It is evident in how I actually experience you.
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Empathic (from empathy) listening gets inside another person's frame of reference. You look out though it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their pardigm, you understand how they feel.
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Satisfied needs do not motivate. It's only the unsatisfied need taht motivates.
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Seeking to understand requires consideration; seeking to be understood takes courage.
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Ethos is oyur personal credibility, the faith people have in your integrity and competency. It's the trust that you inspire, ... Pathos is the empathic side - it's the feeling. It means that you are in alignment with the emotional thrust of another person's communication. Logos is the logic, the reasoning part of the presentation.
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To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
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Synergy is the essence of principle-centered leadership. It is the essence of principle-centered parenting. It catalyzes, unifies, and unleashes the greatest powers within people.
What is synergy? Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
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Valuing the difference is the essence of synergy -- the mental, the emothional, the psychological differences between people. And the key to valuing those differences is to realize that all people see the world, not as it is, but as they are.
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The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreaciate the rich resources available through interaction with the hearts and minds of other human beings. That person values thedifferences because those differences add to his knowledge, to his understanding of reality.
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Is it logical that two poeple can disagree and that both can be right? It's not logical: it's psychological.
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The late Dr. Hans Selye, in his monumental research on stress, basically says that a long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others.
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We feel the key to staying in love is to talk, particularly about feelings.
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Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again -- if your home is a treasured relationship, a precious companionship.
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The highest and most powerful motivation in doing that is not for ourselves only, but for our posterity, for the posterity of all mankind. As someone once observed, "There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children -- one is roots, the other wings."
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Change -- real change -- comes from the inside out.
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