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Erik Orton
Hey there. Today we going to talk about credibility scores, not credit scores. Credibility as we come into tax season. And we're thinking all about whether we're getting money back or not and maybe where we stand financially. We're going to talk about credibility. And it's very different than a credit score. So welcome to the work of Great podcast. My name is Erik Orton.
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Emily Orton
I'm Emily Orton.
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Erik Orton
And here we talk about personal growth, family connection, raising our kids because our goal is to help you make your midlife as meaningful as possible.
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Emily Orton
So I want to go back to, I don't know, when it was 2013, I think in 2013, our oldest child was 14 years old and she had been hearing us talk about our big dream to live on a sailboat for as a family for a year. I think she'd been hearing about it for three years at that point.
00:00:58:06 - 00:01:34:11
Emily Orton
Yep. And at the breakfast table, she said, Do you really have the guts to do this? And it was a good question. She kind of held our feet to the coals. I've been hearing a lot of talk about this, and yet here we still are, three years later in our apartment around our dinner table having this conversation. And it was pretty obvious that if we wanted to remain trustworthy or credible with her, that we were going to need to take more action than what we had taken and we had been taking steps.
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Emily Orton
I don't want to give like the entire story, but we had taken sailing classes in our neighborhood and even in the Caribbean and we had gotten certified to charter boats, which means we can take it out on our own. But anyway, we kind of felt like, Hey, we are doing stuff. She's like, While we still are not doing the thing, we were not living on a boat, which is what you're talking about.
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Emily Orton
Are we actually going to do it? Do you really have the guts? And it was a credibility check for us for sure.
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Erik Orton
And so just to be clear about what a credibility score is, is it is the ratio between the things that you say you'll do and the things that you actually do.
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Emily Orton
Don't Google it because we made this up.
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Erik Orton
Yeah, it's not in the dictionary, but a credibility score is the ratio between the things that you say you'll do and the things that you actually do. So if you always do the things that you say you'll do, you have a 1 to 1 credibility score.
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Emily Orton
That would be 100%.
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Erik Orton
100%. Very good. Good at math. And if you only did one in ten of the things that you said you would do, you'd have a 1 to 10 credibility score or a 10 to 1. I don't we never really decided which number, given which side of the colon. But that's. That's the idea, right?
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Erik Orton
and there's a couple of ways that you can boost your credibility score.
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Erik Orton
And here they are.
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Emily Orton
Sorry. Well, first, I want to just like, why would you care what your credibility score is like? I Good point. You with a credit score, it doesn't matter in most situations in your life, but it does matter for certain things. So what credibility score can matter in a lot more areas. So what? What's the good of having a good credibility score?
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Erik Orton
First of all.
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Emily Orton
We can talk more about it later as well. But okay, initially.
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Erik Orton
I just think initially it's about it's about trust. And a a high credibility score means that people believe you when you say you're going to do something. And I think the benefits to that are that you get the good energy of their their confidence and also people trust you with resources. They also will bring to you opportunities that might be in the service of what you say you're trying to do.
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Erik Orton
And and so I think that's one of the benefits of a high credibility score with other people. I think the real benefit of a high credibility score is the trust that you have in yourself. Because, as I'm fond of saying, the size of your dreams is proportionate to how much you trust yourself.
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Erik Orton
And so if you trust yourself based on credibility, meaning that you have repeatedly done things that you say you wanted to do, then your ability to think, imagine and plan for a much more interesting and exciting future for yourself. The ability to do that is strengthened and heightened, and so you then get to live a much more
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Erik Orton
interesting life based on the things that you want to pursue.
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Emily Orton
And when you talked about credibility with other people, and in this case it was credibility with our kids. Yeah. So as a parent having a high say to do ratio or a high credibility score goes a long way, especially as your kids become teenagers or adults, they say, my parents said they were going to be here. They said they were going to do these things.
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Emily Orton
They they did those things. My my parents say this is what I value and then they actually live in accordance with that value system. That gets a lot of trust from the kids who are old enough to see what's going on and to end to recognize our hypocrisies, which seems to be their special gift, to help bring us into.
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Erik Orton
Thank you, children.
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Emily Orton
Higher credibility because they because they recognize then they'll call us out. And when they see too big of a gap, then they don't they don't trust us. And that's when we kind of lose standing in the relationship.
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Erik Orton
I think the stereotypical example in my mind of the parent with a low credibility score is I had a couple of friends when I was younger, you know, like junior high age, and they were their parents were divorced. And one of the one of my friends, he had a he had a a dad who did not have custody of him.
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Erik Orton
And so he wouldn't see him very often and was always making big promises of like, I'm going to bring you this thing or we're going to go on this trip, or we're going to, you know, we're going to go do this cool activity and or, you know, or I'm just going to show up for your special whatever it is sporting event presentation and and then just consistently didn't do those things.
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Erik Orton
And and I just saw in my friend kind of the the light dimming in his regard it was his dad and I just saw kind of the light dimming in his his trust and and I don't want to say love, but just his ability to open himself up to his father. It really diminished that relationship in his life because his father was not trustworthy in the sense of he didn't do what he would say he would do.
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Erik Orton
His credibility score was low. And so I think it affects how how our kids come to us or don't come to us based on how much we do or don't do what we say we will. That's one example.
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Emily Orton
Yeah, I think that's a great example of it. My mom used to always say, in a relationship, trust is more important than love.
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Emily Orton
The love can be there, but, like, different behaviors are going to be contingent upon whether I believe what you say, that I believe you're going to do what you said you were going to do, or that I see consistency within your own being. Right. So, yeah, that's a it's not a happy example, but it is a true example.
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Emily Orton
And in fact, it reminds me that there are a few ways that you can improve your credibility score if it's a if it's a ratio between what you say and what you do, you can either commit to fewer things so that you can actually do the ones that you say, you know, you can stop saying you're going to do things and then not do that.
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Emily Orton
You can say like, I wish I could be there, but I won't.
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Erik Orton
I think there's let's talk about that because there's three ways to raise your credibility score.
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Emily Orton
okay.
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Erik Orton
One way is to do the thing that you say you're going to do.
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Emily Orton
Just Yeah, if you said you're going to do it, just do it. And then your score goes right up.
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Erik Orton
Boom. Just do the thing that you say you're going to do. The other thing, the other ways you just point out is to stop saying that you're going to do things and just stop over committing yourself or committing yourself to things that you're actually not interested in or not planning to do. And so just saying fewer things mazany makes it easier.
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Erik Orton
So you can increase your do number, you can decrease your say number. And then there's this middle ground that I think is important and that is the the attempting, because sometimes we try and do things and we just don't pull it off and that's okay. And I think when we're talking about kids, especially so often as parents, we want to deliver.
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Erik Orton
We want to do the thing that we say we're going to do. We want to show up, we want to make it happen. Whatever it is. But I the the saving grace is that we get points for trying when our kids see us trying to do something, they're like, okay, I see mom or I see Dad making the effort and I applaud that.
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Erik Orton
I honor that. I respect that.
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Emily Orton
I appreciate it. Right. I see you're making an effort and I appreciate that you're making an effort.
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Erik Orton
And so I think I'll go I'll go to my dad, for instance. Maybe if you're listening. Dad, how's it going?
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Emily Orton
We love you.
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Erik Orton
We love you. And I know that my dad has a lot of things that he want. You know, as he gets older, he wants to improve on his life. He wants to be stronger and more fit. And and he gets out there. You know, he was an avid backpacker for decades and was just always just kind of like a a horse in terms of like power and reliability and stamina.
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Erik Orton
And and, you know, you know, now that he's in his aides, it's it's, it's, it takes a different kind of effort. And so when my dad gets out there and he's walking around with his trekking poles.
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Emily Orton
You know, working out a CrossFit.
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Erik Orton
Doing what he can, I applaud him. I know that he's not where he wants to be, but I am proud of him for making the effort. And so if you're a parent who's not where you want to be yet with your own personal goals or things that you've said you want to do, if you're making an effort, I think your kids are going to applaud you.
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Emily Orton
Yeah, I think you get a lot of points for that. And I also want to just looking at the dynamic relationship between parents and kids, and we know there's such a high percentage, almost a quarter of adult kids are estranged in some way from their family to maybe give you some language like the effort does matter and the intention does matter, but it doesn't always yield the result that we hoped for.
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Emily Orton
And it and sometimes our best isn't good enough. And it's okay that it's not good enough.
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Erik Orton
Or it may not be good enough for them for.
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Emily Orton
That, for the kid. It may not. It may be like I did my best and it didn't meet your need. You know, I did my best as a parent and it didn't meet your need as my child and or whatever relationship you're in, You could apply this to. And it's really important to acknowledge that for the other for the other person to hear that you recognize that it was your best, but that it wasn't good enough for them, that it didn't meet the need that they had.
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Emily Orton
And it's okay that they still have that need. And you're not trying to say, Well, you have to accept my offering as sufficient because it was my best. It's it's okay to say like you need more than what I'm able to give you. And and instead of just insisting like, well, you must accept my offering. And that was very helpful for me.
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Emily Orton
When I came across that idea, I thought, Hey, I have always recognized that my parents have done their best and I have always honored that. But then it meant there was a part of me that didn't get what I felt I needed, that I had to just kind of pretend didn't exist and like, no, it's okay. We can I can honor that they're doing their best and have no judgment against them.
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Emily Orton
I think that's awesome. And I really appreciate it. But I also can still then go and look to other sources to get my needs met.
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Erik Orton
I think.
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Emily Orton
You know, I don't want to go too deep, but just it's it's a good thing that you can say like, hey, I did my best and I know that wasn't everything that you needed and I hope you can get what you need.
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Erik Orton
Well, I know that you really encouraged me in this area one time when I was a younger father and I was struggling to feel successful. You know, I was working in providing for the family. And I also had some some creative goals. You know, we were living in New York and I was working in theater and had done had been successful, but not in all the ways that I wanted and was still, you know, many, many years in, still trying to make things happen.
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Erik Orton
And and maybe you can remember the conversation better. But I just remember saying to you, you know, what am I what am I showing my kids? Because I feel like I'm showing them what failure looks like.
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Emily Orton
I remember I remember you sitting at that that white desk.
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Erik Orton
Can you can you fill in from there?
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Emily Orton
And and I said, you're showing them what it looks like to pursue your dreams. And that to pursue your dreams takes persistent effort over long periods of time.
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Erik Orton
Yeah, I really appreciate that, because if you're a listener, if you're like me, you may not be succeeding in all the ways that you want, but by making the effort, by being persistent, by being tenacious, by being steady, that that counts, that matters. And and, you know, maybe one way we increase our are what's the word credibility score.
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Erik Orton
I want to say probability. Yeah. Our credibility score is maybe we say instead of saying, I'm going to do this thing, you can say I'm going to start doing this thing or I'm going to attempt doing this thing. And just by making the effort, you're you're actually doing the thing you say you'll do.
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Emily Orton
And and so it's a productivity hack. I learned from Eric, he or sometimes put on his to do list start this thing because if you put something huge like for example for this season if you say like do the taxes like that ends up being a whole bunch of little tasks all compiled into one and it's going to take some time and some effort to find all the different pieces.
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Emily Orton
But if you say start the taxes, well, you can do that in 5 minutes.
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Erik Orton
Once you've started, you get to cross that off on your list and you've done what you said you would do. You started.
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Emily Orton
And the other hack is that just for whatever reason, the way our human brains are designed, once we start something, we're so much more likely to continue on, you know, to keep going going.
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Erik Orton
So, yeah, no, that's true. Yeah, right. Put the word start at the beginning of whatever it is you want to on your to do list and once you've begun, mission accomplished. So what, what we really hope for you is that you get the joy and the blessing and the benefit of having a high credibility score by either doing more of the things that you say you're going to do, being more judicious about what you commit yourself to do through your words, or just being tenacious and making the effort and recognizing for yourself and hopefully with the benefit of other people's recognition that the effort matters and that we're all in process and we're all striving
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Erik Orton
towards the things that we we want for ourselves and each other. And as we do that and again, I think this is the the best part of having a high credibility score is that you will trust yourself more, other people will trust you more. And when you trust yourself more, the size of your dreams expands proportionately. And as you increase your own trust, you get to tackle and take on more and more cool, interesting dreams that will make your life richer and more satisfying and more fun.
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Emily Orton
I think I agree with you. And the secret is even if it's something very small that you commit to you only yourself, you're going to do when you keep those small promises to yourself, whether it's a daily habit or some other thing that can expand your dreams exponentially.
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Erik Orton
Yeah, if you need a place to start, you're like, Hey, how can I increase my credibility score? Start by brushing your teeth every day. If you are not doing that, start right there. And once you've started to brush your teeth every day you'll say this is I have a high credibility rate in this area.
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Emily Orton
I said I was going to do this. I did it.
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Erik Orton
What if I can do that? What else can I do and then move on to another thing and another thing and another thing. And it can build from there. It can be as simple as tying your shoes or brushing your teeth every day. Or I guess what if you wear slip on sky, I just don't the metaphor breaks down.
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Emily Orton
Whatever that small thing is for you. But it's it's incredible how quickly that can grow when you keep your promises to yourself and then you start to you can tell yourself, I'm the kind of person who does what I say I'm going to do. And then you keep giving yourself proof of that by either, like you said, being careful, judicious about what you commit to or making sure you get it done, or that you're attempting a process.
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Erik Orton
That's everything I got.
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Emily Orton
Out of it. I think when you do that, then your answer to this question is going to get so much bigger and the question is.
00:17:52:18 - 00:17:58:11
Erik Orton
What could go right in unison? Boom. Have a great week. Thanks for listening.
