If you’ve ever read How to Win Friends and Influence people, this video will probably really resonate with you.
You have many, many bank accounts.
One of them is for your money.
The ‘others’ are for each of the relationships you have with the people in your life.
Whenever you do something nice, thoughtful, or helpful for someone else – you make a deposit into the account that you have with them.
Whenever you ask them to do something for you, you make a withdraw from that account.
What do you think happens when you bounce a check on your ‘social bank account’ with someone else?
They’ll get mad, push back, ignore you and a myriad of other things. But at the end of the day they won’t do it. Or if they do it, they’ll resent the heck out of you for making the ask.
When I first had this realization, every relationship in my life started to change because I became instantly conscious of how much social capital I had with individuals in my life.
The cool thing is, unlike with regular banking, it usually doesn’t cost you anything to make deposits into other people’s social bank accounts.
Do this all the time (and just generally be a good person) and when you need to make a big ask of your friends, family, or community – you’ll have plenty of capital saved up which means people showing up eager to help.
If you liked this video you’ll love Episode 23: Compound Interest for the Brain
