The Value in Providing Value

It often appears that the term “providing value” is labeled, put in a box and placed on a shelf, when value should truly be something that encompasses the entire room. I’ll elaborate. When we provide value, it should not be limited to the goods and/or services that we provide, but rather, it should be the way in which we approach our relationships, our career, our self-care, and life in general.

It is not uncommon for some of us to provide value in one area of our life and not another. For instance, perhaps we place a lot of value on our career and therefore we spend a lot of time and energy focused on being the best that we can be at work. However, the opposite is true of the value we place on our relationships with others, so we don’t bring very much to the table in that area. We expect and accept from others yet we offer very little of ourselves in return. Our career is thriving, yet our relationships are strained and dissolving. Soon, we begin to feel isolation with respect to our relationships and eventually turn it inward. It then begins to affect our confidence and self-esteem and guess where that’s going to rear its ugly head? You guessed it – at work. Rather than giving value to specific people, events or things, we should focus on becoming a person of value.

To become a person of value is a more balanced effort and considerably more rewarding than simply providing value in only a few areas of our lives. Becoming a person of value means that we apply value to every area of our lives. That is the mindset that we should be striving for as it will greatly assist in creating a happier, healthier and more balanced life.

We’ve all heard the term “you get what you give”. It won’t take very long to see significant positive changes once the decision has been made to become a person of value. Once we begin to give our all to everything that we do, even in something as simple as doing the dishes, the universe responds in like. It is amazing how quickly this transformation takes place once we've adopted this mindset. With little hesitation we begin to notice people, circumstances and things of value coming into our lives.

Here is my take on the concept that there are no shortcuts in life. I believe that we can find many shortcuts if we look for them, however there are no valuable results when we take them. In other words, we must give life our absolute best and add value to the lives of others. This, in turn, will bring value into our own lives and add to the overall quality of life as a whole. Attempting to short change this process and take a shortcut without providing any real value, will ultimately cost us. Therefore I concur, there are no shortcuts in life.

Give life exactly what you expect from it – value. If you develop this mindset, you will thrive in every area of your life.