Franklin Covey refers to this concept as building your emotional bank account. In order to maintain successful relationships in your business and home lives, you must have a relationship with your employer and with your family that is built on trust.
Establishing trust will pay you enormous dividends in the future. You will have established a level of credibility that guarantees people will be in your corner in times of need. You will experience greater happiness and fulfillment because your relationships will be richer and deeper.
Making Deposits
Each time you follow through on a promise, come through in a crisis, or establish your honesty with another person, you are building your bank of emotional trust. Your employer knows you can be counted upon for getting things done and you become known as someone who is reliable and respected. When you establish this position, you carry a great deal of power.
You can also establish such a level of trust with your family. Following through on promises, designating family time that is uninterrupted, keeping important engagements, and having the strength to leave work behind all help you maintain an important work life balance.
When you develop a high degree of trust, you will find you are given greater and greater freedoms. You will have latitude to make important decisions and take on additional responsibilities. You will be an inspiration to those around you.
The Unfortunate Withdraw
Maintaining such a high level of trust can be difficult, but not impossible. In order to continue to earn the respect of others, you must be able to artfully separate your work and home schedules, and maintain a high level of focus with each while keeping them separate.
Carrying your personal problems into work causes your mind to stray. Mistakes are made and you do not work as efficiently. Time management can become an issue if absent-mindedness or tardiness is allowed to continue. Each time you miss an appointment, make an error on a report, or forget to return a phone call, you are diminishing the amount of trust you have established.
Missing dates with your spouse, skipping your son’s soccer game for a late meeting, and not being emotionally available when you are home because thoughts of work keep invading your mind are all methods by which you erode trust at home. This can have far-reaching and long-lasting effects on your relationship.
Maintaining a Healthy Balance
As a responsible member of the work force, you know you have obligations that must be met to ensure the success of your career and to secure long-term employment. You also realize you must nurture your relationships with family members in order to keep them from feeling neglected.
You must be able to strike a delicate balance between your personal and professional lives to ensure the optimum work life balance. In order to do this, you will need to prioritize your obligations, giving each its due level of importance and sufficient amount of attention.
You may need to physically write down your responsibilities for a given day, week, or month. Determine which ones are crucial and must be completed. If you are tight on time, find any obligations that can be either delayed or delegated to someone else and remove them from your calendar. Allow time for work, spouse, and children alike.
When you are spending time at home, leave work at the office. Do not allow distractions to mentally remove you from your family. Reiterate to them how important they are to you, and demonstrate your love for them by giving them the gift of attention.
Demonstrate the importance of your job to your boss by working hard while you are there and by maintaining a positive attitude.
When you can learn to maintain a healthy balance between work and home, and prove to others their importance to you, your reserves of trust and reliability will be filled to overflowing.
Establishing such a strong level of dependability will ensure your fulfillment with all of the relationships in your life. You will also have unending support from which to draw if you should ever encounter times of hardship. It is easy for people to stand behind an honorable person and give them the benefit of the doubt on dark days than it is to trust someone who is known for taking advantage or for being uncaring. Building such trusting relationships will instill a strong sense of pride and accomplishment in you and will help you continue to strive for perpetual self improvement.
What are your thoughts?
Written by David B. Bohl of Slow Down Fast.
Self-Improvement Through Emotional Trust
