How do you respond to the question, “What is your single greatest asset in your life?”
Did you say your stock portfolio, your business, your children?
Or did you say you?
Hands down….YOU are YOUR GREATEST ASSET!
An asset is a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality; it is often regarded as having value and available to meet debts, commitments, and legacies. (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Assets can appreciate or depreciate over time. As time passes, a good asset appreciates while a bad asset depreciates. So it’s important for us to ask ourselves this question, as an asset are we appreciating or depreciating?
When an asset appreciates it has more value, more potential to contribute in meaningful ways. Conversely, when an asset depreciates it has lost value, it has less potential to contribute in meaningful ways. When it comes to our lives, the difference between whether we are appreciating or depreciating is truly a state of mind.
Let me explain, if you are grateful and truly appreciating your loved ones, your work, your colleagues, your home, your body, yourself and your life then that choice is a conscious and powerful way to add value to what is already there. By simply appreciating ourselves, our lives, and life in general we are consciously choosing to add value to what is already here. Through a slight shift in perspective we can focus on the good in our lives. It is so easy to focus on what isn’t going well or what isn’t exactly the way we want it. Truth of it is that no matter what is wrong there is more going well in our lives. Why is it that we so readily focus on what is wrong rather than on what is right? There are a lot of theories here, like an inborn negativity bias and such. Regardless of why we tend to bypass the positive and focus on the negative is somewhat irrelevant. What is relevant is recognizing when we are doing it and becoming aware of how it depreciates the asset of our lives.
Serious question, when was the last time you simply sat and took a few deep breaths and expressed some form of appreciation for your physical apparatus? When was the last time you recognized how magnificent your body is, thanking it for all it does for you? When was the last time you honored your own expression of life, your own being, your own existence? When was the last time you reveled in your abilities, innate gifts, skills, or talents? When was the last time you sincerely encouraged yourself? Or how about this, when was the last time you simply allowed yourself to simply be—-void of judgment, criticism, or shame?
These questions are meant to help you recognize the gap between how your default behavior is actually causing a depreciation of your own life. To experience an appreciation of your greatest asset, which is you and life itself, then we need to spend a little bit of focused attention on appreciating the good that is us, the good that is already here.
Just as we can choose to see the good in ourselves, and thus appreciate our greatest asset, we can do those for the people that are closest to us. How about the other assets of your life, your home life or work life, are you interested in a powerful value-add there too? What could happen if you could consciously bring out the best in your life partner, your housemates, your employees or your co-workers? The same principle of appreciation to increase value and potential applies to everyone and everything around us. If we spend time appreciating the things that are done well, the aspects of people that are good, kind, and compassionate or the parts that are highly skilled, confident, and competent then we are truly bringing out their greatest assets too!
This choice to consciously appreciate value is both an inner and outer transformation. We look within to note our assets and appreciate them. And then we look outside ourselves and note the assets of others and appreciate them. In this way we make a huge value-add in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
If we are only looking within for value then we can become a little self-consumed. This feels hollow over time, we don’t live on a deserted island and so we shouldn’t fall into the trap of being solely focused on ourselves or our inner landscape.
If we are only looking without, at others, for their value then we can soon feel a little unworthy, or feel a bit of jealousy or even resentment. We don't want to become so focused on the good in others that we fail to see the good in ourselves, and we don’t want to fall into the comparison game either. A nice tip to remember is that if you can spot in another it means you’ve got it. So when I note that someone is so kind and wise, then I can also recognize that those gifts are also within me. Then it’s up to me to make a conscious choice to bring that more fully into my daily life if I so desire.
So we balance our perspective by looking within at our gifts and assets and looking without at others to help them know their own inner gifts and assets. In this way we cultivate the character and personalities that are beneficial to our lives. Perhaps you are able to see your kindness, your honesty, your courage, your compassion, your commitment to excellence or your commitment to family and friends…perhaps you are able to see this in others.
Each of us has gifts and as we appreciate them we make a powerful, conscious choice that becomes a huge value-add for our lives and those around us.
Assets are inherently valuable. What we do with that value determines whether it appreciates or depreciates. I do hope you will take the time, it can be done in mere seconds, to note your own inherent value and that of those around you. When we do this, when we note the goodness that is within and around us we add so much value to our lives. It’s a conscious choice to take a perspective of appreciation. Decide that today you are going to look for things to appreciate in yourself and others, the results will delight you!
Note: This article was originally published at DrTamiBerry.com or you can access it here.
