Many people who have never received unconditional love and have never developed a sense of intrinsic worth struggle all their lives for approval and recognition. To compensate for the impoverished, empty, hollow feeling they have inside, they borrow strength from a position of power, status, money, possessions, credentials, or reputation. They often become very narcissistic, interpreting everything personally. And their very behavior is so distasteful that others reject them, throwing fuel on the fire.
That’s why these Primary Laws of Love are so important. They affirm the basic worth of the individual. And people who have been loved unconditionally are then free to develop their own strength through integrity to their own inner compass.
Every Problem Is an Opportunity to Make a Deposit
As we move now into the rest of the habits, notice how each grows out of the Primary Laws of Love and how each builds the Emotional Bank Account. Proactively making deposits is something we can always do. In fact, one of the most empowering and exciting aspects of the Emotional Bank Account idea is that we can proactively choose to turn every family problem into an opportunity for a deposit.
Someone’s “bad day” becomes an opportunity to be kind.
An offense becomes an opportunity to apologize, to forgive.
Someone’s gossip becomes an opportunity to be loyal, to quietly defend those not present.
With the image of the Emotional Bank Account in your mind and heart, problems and circumstances are no longer obstacles that get in the way of the path; they are the path. Everyday interactions become opportunities to build relationships of love and trust. And challenges become like inoculations that activate and boost the “immune system” of the entire family. Deep inside, everyone knows that making these deposits will make a big difference in the quality of family relationships. It comes out of our conscience, out of our connection to the principles that ultimately govern in life.
Can you see how the proactive, inside-out choice to make deposits—and not withdrawals—can help you create a beautiful family culture?
Remember the Chinese Bamboo Tree
As you begin to make deposits, you may see positive results almost immediately. More often it will take time. You’ll find it easier to make and continue to make deposits if you keep in mind the miracle of the Chinese bamboo tree.
I know of one woman and her husband who made deposits into their Emotional Bank Account with her father for many years, apparently without results. After fifteen years of working in a business with her father, this woman’s husband changed jobs so that he could be with his family on Sundays. This caused a schism so deep, so painful for her father that he became embittered and would not even speak to her husband or recognize him in any way. But neither this woman nor her husband would take offense. They made continual deposits of unconditional love. They frequently drove out to the farm where her father lived, some sixty miles away. Her husband would wait in the car—sometimes for more than an hour—while she visited. She often took things to her father that she had baked or she thought he might enjoy. She spent time with him at Christmas, on his birthday, and on many other occasions. Never once did she press him or even ask him to invite her husband into his home.
Whenever her father came into town, this woman would leave the office where she worked with her husband and meet him for shopping or for lunch. She did everything she could possibly think of to communicate her love and her appreciation to her father. And her husband supported her in all of this.
Then one day when she was visiting her father on the farm, he suddenly looked at her and said, “Would it be easier for you if your husband were to come inside?”
She caught her breath. “Oh, yes, it would!” she exclaimed with tears in her eyes.
“Well,” he said slowly, “go and get him then.”
From that point on they were able to make even greater deposits of love. This woman’s husband helped her father work on projects around the farm. This became an even greater deposit as advancing years caused her father to lose some of his mental capacity. Toward the end of his life, he acknowledged that he felt as close to this son-in-law as he felt to his own son.
In all your efforts, remember that, as with the Chinese bamboo tree, you may not see results for years. But do not be discouraged. Do not be seduced by those who say, “It’s useless. It’s hopeless. There’s nothing you can do. It’s too late.”
It can be done. It’s never too late. Just keep working in your Circle of Influence. Be a light, not a judge; a model, not a critic. And have faith in the eventual outcome.
I’ve talked with many husbands and wives over the years—most of them friends—who have come to me frustrated with their spouses, feeling that they were at the end of their tether. Often, these people have been filled with a sense of their own rightness and their partner’s lack of understanding and responsibility. They’ve been drawn into a cycle where one spouse is constantly judging, preaching, nagging, condemning, criticizing, and handing out emotional punishment, and the other is, in a sense, rebelling by ignoring, defensively resisting, and justifying every behavior by the treatment he or she is receiving.
My counsel to those who judge (who are usually the ones coming to me, hoping that I can somehow “shape up” their spouse or affirm their reasons for wanting a divorce) is to become a light, not a judge—in other words, to stop trying to change their spouse and just go to work on themselves, to get out of a judging mind-set, to stop trying to manipulate or give love conditionally.
If people take this counsel to heart and are humbled by it, and if they are patient, persistent, and non-manipulating—even when provoked—a sweet softness begins to return. The unconditional love and inside-out change become irresistible.
There are situations, of course, such as those involving real abuse, when this counsel would not be the right course. But in most cases I have found that this approach leads people to the inner wisdom that cultivates happiness in married life. Proactively setting the example and patiently making deposits of unconditional love often brings amazing results over time.
Habit 1: The Key to All the Other Habits
Habit 1—Be proactive—is the key that unlocks the door to all the other habits. In fact, you’ll find that people who continually avoid taking responsibility and initiative will not be able to fully cultivate any of the other habits. Instead, they’ll be out in their Circle of Concern—usually blaming and accusing other people for their situation, because when people are not true to their conscience, they typically take out their guilt on others. Most anger is merely guilt overflowing.
Habit 1 embodies the greatest gift that we as humans uniquely have: the power to choose. Next to life itself, is there a greater gift? The truth is that the basic solutions to our problems lie within us. We can’t escape the nature of things. Like it or not—realize it or not—principles and conscience are within us. As educator and religious leader David O. McKay has said, “The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul.” It’s futile to fight our battles on the wrong battlefields.
The decision to be the creative force of our own lives is the most fundamental choice of all. It is the heart and soul of being a transition person. It is the essence of becoming an agent of change. As Joseph Zinker has said, “[A person can discover that] no matter where he is right now, he is still the creator of his own destiny.”6
Not only can an individual be proactive but an entire family can be proactive. A family can become a transition family inside their intergenerational family or extended family, or to other families with whom they come in contact. And all four gifts can be collectivized so that instead of self-awareness you have family awareness; instead of individual conscience you have a social conscience; instead of one person’s imagination or vision you have a shared vision; and instead of independent will you have social will. Then all the members of the family are able to say in their own words, “This is what we are like. We are people of conscience and vision, people who act on our awareness of what’s happening and what needs to happen.”
How this transformation takes place and how the proactive muscle is developed and used in a marvelous way is found in Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind.
SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH ADULTS AND TEENS
Increasing our Proactive Muscles
Discuss with family members: When do you feel you are most proactive? When are you most reactive? What are the consequences?