The Bank of You

January 10th, 2012 · 1 Comment · Curiosity, Personal Growth Tools, Self-development

Picture credit: Londonrelocationservices

Two men came to change the propane bottle. We didn’t know this until the tank on the roof blew a pipe and started hissing out significant amounts of foul-smelling, and highly flammable, gas.

Someone went to retrieve the men, who, unaware of the roof-top situation, had moved onto the next building. Fifteen minutes later the problem was fixed. Well, sort of:

“There’s still a small leak but it won’t make any difference,” one of the men said, “You couldn’t even light the gas from that leak if you wanted to.”

I didn’t ask if he had tried.

I am a worrier, and, after an incident like this, would usually be haunted by visions of the careless strike of a match, of another pipe bursting, or of the whole tank/building/town exploding due to lax health and safety standards.

But this time, I didn’t pay much mind. For me, this place earned its stripes. I love enough else about it to not mind that you have to throw toilet paper in the bin, the odd gas leak and some of the other little quirks here. That’s because this place has enough credit in my bank to have, what are for me, deficits like this but not be in the red.

We have a ‘bank account’ for everything: places, brands, situations and people. When the bank account is in the black, we’re happy to stick around. When the account goes into the red, however, it means we are more likely to leave, to let go, to find alternatives.

The next couple of posts will focus on our personal bank accounts: what they mean to us, what they mean to our relationships and how we increase and decrease our credit.

How is your personal bank account doing today?

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