But what you have is only valuable if it is used to benefit the lives of others.
“What you ‘have’ is only of value if it can be used to the benefit of others.
You want to make you strengths extraordinarily valuable?
Don’t keep them to yourself.
Share them with others.”
-Ray Zingler on X
In most parts of the world, we measure wealth by how much we have.
How many assets, how much money, how little debt, how much material, & etc. This is how we define our “net worth”.
And as much as I get it from an “ability to quantify” perspective, it’s always seemed a bit backwards to me.
Personally speaking, while I do not disagree with the idea of being great stewards of our resources, I disagree that wealth is defined by how much we have. “Richness” maybe, but that isn’t how I interpret wealth.
I tend to view wealth from the polar opposite angle.
By how much value we have and to take it a step further, by how much value we have AND give.
Now I’m not implying we should gloat in our skills and boast in our philanthropy, but can you imagine if we placed as much “status” emphasis on our Net Give as we did our Net Worth?
The “image” we have of folks would look totally different.
But we don’t think this way.
We’re attracted to the google searches of “So and So’s” net worth so we can compare ourselves and feed our inferiority complex. So we can talk about how “it must be nice” with our small minded friends.
What a dumb way to live.
We use a snapshot of people’s lives we don’t know, to feed our own insecurities.
How does worrying about what they have positively impact your life in any way?
Some of the richest people on earth are the most miserable.
Their misery climbs nearly at the same rate as their net worth.
That next house doesn’t do it.
Neither does the jet ski or sports car.
And nope, Instagram followers won’t do it either.
What does it, is our giving.
What does it, is leveraging our resources, skills, and gifts so that they can be utilized to benefit the lives of others.
In my opinion it is the only way “what we have” has any value.
My favorite quote of all time is from Picasso:
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
Find where you can add value.
Package it.
Give it.
Fulfillment is on the other side.
