Asset Based Thinking

I was given a book at work called Change the Way You See Everything Through Asset-Based Thinking. The premise of the book is to focus on the positive rather than the negative. It defines it as a concrete, cognitive process aimed at identifying the assets (e.g. strengths, talents, synergies and possibilities) that are immediately available in yourself, other people and any situation.

It kind of reminds me of an episode of Sesame Street where the number 0 was feeling depressed because he basically amounted to nothing. One of the characters was able to cheer him up by pointing out that he had 0 boo boos, 0 problems, etc. This made him feel much better because he was able to focus on the positive side of things.

While I didn’t yet finish the book, I took the opportunity to apply ABT to my ride this morning. I had met Todd in the park and my legs were feeling quite sluggish. My feeling were along the lines of I can’t believe how awful I feel, I am so slow, I can’t believe how week I am compared to last year. All types of thoughts such as these were going through my mind when I decided to give ABT a try. I started to look at it from the point of view of - look how good I am riding considering how little training I am done; the good thing about riding today is that I am getting to do it with a friend; fortunately my accident yesterday wasn’t worse and I am able to enjoy another day on my bike. I decided to forget about the two flats I had this morning even before I walked out the door (I really did, my rear tire was flat and the spare I put on was defective.)

By using these thoughts I started to feel better. Of course, it could have been that I was warmed up now, but that is deficit based thinking. I am going to attribute it to my positive thoughts. I started to feel so good, that I managed to zip off a 30 mile ride with relative ease in what seemed to be a very short time. I arrived back home feeling energized and refreshed.

On my subway ride to work, I was able to use ABT to look on the brighter side of a message I received from a friend/vendor telling me he wanted to cancel our lunch date today. Deficit-Based Thinking would have me lamenting the fact that I didn’t pack lunch today and I’d have to go out and buy something. However, ABT, got me thinking that I now have an opportunity to do a lunch time run, instead of having to wait until this evening to get it in. I am so glad I took my running gear with me.