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Appreciation As A Fundamental Awareness

Written by: Les Brown

Article Overview: Appreciation allows whatever we're used to taking for granted to come forward into our awareness. This is true of our own value as well as that of others in our personal, social or business networks. Suddenly, we find we're living a richer, fuller life, and we have a much clearer perception of how we can make it that much more satisfying and rewarding.

Appreciation As A Fundamental Awareness

I’d like to consider for a moment one of what I call the seven critical life strategies. This one I call appreciation. The word comes from the Latin ad-pretium which means to put a price or value on something or to add value to something. "To appreciate" is, therefore, similar to the term ‘to evaluate’, only with one big difference: there is no negative in appreciation. When we evaluate something, we generally look at the "plusses and minuses". When we appreciate something, all we need to look at is its intrinsic value.

It is often true that we've been trained not to appreciate our lives or ourselves. It can be seen as a breach of expected ‘humility’ to acknowledge who we really are and what we've accomplished. Yet, whenever I brush off a complement or answer with a "yes, but . . . " I actually injure myself. Over and over again, I teach myself the lesson that I'm not good enough. My mind tells me, "If only I had done something differently, I could have done more, I could have done better." And, God forbid that I should actually make a mistake!

What could I find to appreciate about my life in the last twenty-four hours? Anything? Is there anything that I did that has value? I should hope so! Appreciation means seeing how far I have already come. Appreciation means giving myself appropriate credit for doing things in the last day that took courage -- regardless of how other people see it, or even how it turned out. Appreciation means valuing the people in my life who are there for me. Appreciation also means accepting other people as they are.

Think of how your life would change if you lived it with conscious appreciation. Imagine consciously valuing yourself, your work, your friends, co-workers and family, your community and nation, even the little life events that play themselves out during the course of a day. How would things change if you told yourself what a good job you were doing? How much better would you do things if you consciously valued what you did?

What could you do to bring appreciation into the rest of your day today? I suggest that, for a start, you could keep track of the things you did well. Make a list of the victories, large and small, public and private, that you had today. I'm not talking about things you did perfectly — perfectionism is the opposite of appreciation. I'm talking about celebrating those things that were significant to you. If you are moved to do so, why not share one or two of these things with others — especially some things that you might not have thought were that important until now.

The kind of awareness we use in appreciation stands above other kinds of awareness. It is not only an invitation to become increasingly appreciative of ourselves and our world, it is also a meta-awareness. Appreciation challenges us to become more aware the process of purposeful change itself. It’s an invitation to take stock, not only of our progress toward specific goals, but also of how our "change engine" is running. As we strive to create purposeful change, we gain a tremendous amount of knowledge, skill, and experience interfacing with our world. We’re also gaining an enormous amount of knowledge, skill, and experience in regard to creating change, if we would only take the time to reflect on it.

Without appreciation, our thoughts and reflections remain theoretical. It’s our ability to reflect appreciatively on them that encourages us to apply them to our daily circumstances. Appreciation makes awareness real.

In manufacturing, there is a principle called ‘continuous improvement’. It arises from an appreciation that perfection is a forever-elusive goal. Progress is always moving toward perfection; while how 'perfection' is defined in any given circumstance changes minute by minute. Time is, after all, the change dimension. In the world of purposeful change, appreciation is the source of our ‘continuous improvement’. It’s awareness above and beyond all other awarenesses. It complements and enhances all the others. It even makes us aware of awareness itself.

Related Articles
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  Nine Reasons to Use Promotional Products
  Leave Memories of Appreciation
  Find Some New Appreciation Today

Article Tags: breach, co workers, complement, courage, course of a day, critical life, god, good job, humility, intrinsic value, life strategies, mistake, pretium, twenty four hours, word comes from



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