Ejovi Nuwere

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Recently a friend introduced me to the concept of the emotional piggy bank. The idea is that everyone we interact with has a piggy bank. For good deeds we place a coin in their personal bank. For bad deeds we withdraw an equal amount from the bank. This continues until bad people overdraw from the emotional piggy bank and ultimately ruin the relationship.

Another concept I’ve thought of related to this is the relationship company. Every relationship is a company for which we invest in. When we have faith in the relationship and in the company we invest more because we believe that our investment is increasing in value. When our trust in the relationship company and our faith in its future are damaged we slowly begin to cash out of our investment. Ultimately a relationship company with no investors goes bankrupt, or at the very least dormant.

This isn’t scientific of course. And I don’t keep tabs of favors or good deeds. But on a unconscious level we remember those who invested in us.

Yesterday I gave a speech at a MOUSE event for teachers and educators. The topic of my speech was “the importance of teachers in my life.” Teachers invest for long term value. Sure there are some short term goals and returns such as test scores and graduations. But the true return on investment for teachers often doesn’t happen for 10 or even 20 years. That takes dedication.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for teachers because most people can only think of emotional investments in time line of a year or two. Myself included. But the reality is that our investments benefit the emotional piggy bank and relationship company over a lifetime. So I try to make investments and deposits with the mind of a value investor and not a day trader.