Why Do Things Become More Valuable When They Are Suddenly Taken Away?

Some Of The Values We Lose Are The Important Ones We Need

Why do things become more valuable when they are suddenly taken away?

This is a subject worth deeper investigation.  The human condition seems to hold this pattern true to its heart more often than not.  We tend to place higher value on many things we own but only notice this value after they have suddenly disappeared.  When we still own them we do not seem to respect them near as much as when they have suddenly disappeared.  We tend to take many valuable things we own for granted.  It is a common occurrence as well as becoming a very natural thing that humans practice.  The value of many things becomes diminished with familiarity and routine.  They get quietly lost in the pile of existence.

Business leaders fall prey to this effect on a daily basis.  The practice of doing what needs to be done while these business leaders work to produce patterns of success becomes the dominant focus of each day.  Little things of value can become lost in the menagerie of this kind of daily work.  Routine, although critically important to success, can grow up to hide some tremendously valuable quiet components.  A sharp business operator will not miss the responsibility to search this effect out.  They will actually guard against losing values that mean quite a lot.  It is one of those hidden features that separate the good business leaders from the 'also rans'.

What types of values easily fall into this kind of lost category?  What becomes lessened with time?  Which values go unnoticed as daily stuff takes over the mind?  Where do good leaders look to protect the quality values they need to protect?  Which values, when protected properly, prove to become the ones that help the business model grow away from the competition and to become one of the great models in its region of play?  What are those values that when they disappear they become recognized for the magnitude of their loss?

If you are a business leader and you have trouble describing what those values may be, you are not consistently winning at what you do.  This much is true.  Regardless of what you may perceive to be the things you control, winning is one of those things that remains just far enough out of the reach of what you do.  You have a desire to produce more wins, more often.  You recognize the need to change things up a little bit so more wins will come home, more often.  Likely the most motivation you found to recognize this truth is the loss of something very valuable to you.  That is exactly how improvement patterns work.  We seem to need a loss to get us going.  We have to drop or lose a thing of value before we recognize how much we need to change up what we are regularly doing.  It is the loss that provides the source of the motivation to move up, to move better.  Welcome to leadership.

Why do things become more valuable when they are suddenly taken away?

Page two.

Some Of The Values We Lose Are The Important Ones We Need

A few decades ago my IRS collection agent assigned to my case walked into my furniture store operation sporting his assistant, a federal marshal.  They came to take away my home and business operations.  They had a warrant.  It was not a very good day.  They gave me until 5 PM that day to come up with $15,000 or they would chain up the front door of my business operations and begin the process to seize my home.  My wife and three kids were at home.  They had no idea about how close I had come to losing their roof.  It was not a good day.

Sudden loss becomes really strong when the items we value grow up very tall.  What was once taken for granted suddenly becomes dominate in the mind of keep.  We get real motivated to do what we ought to be doing in the first place.  I called every person who owed me money, that had debts they carried on my business books and I demanded payment on that sudden notice.  I was strict, serious, and desperate.  I collected nearly seven thousand of those debt dollars in about four hours of hard and very embarrassing work.  I called my banker back then and demanded how they could help me to avoid this tragedy that was about to happen.  They worked immediately to front the other eight thousand.  I found $15,000 in about six in a half hours.  Motivation works wonders.  My daily routine could never produce what that new energy was able to do.  The exactness behind the fear of loss was the reason why.  We fear loss greater than the expectation of gain.  Fear is always a greater motivator.  Always.

If you come to this blog to get help with working on something you find necessary to improve, you came with a tinge of loss that offered this thought.  The desire for improvement comes from the losses we see or feel.  It is behind this fact that most business leaders find their way to success.  The ones that fall short of that goal are the ones that have become comfortable at losing a lot.  If I had lost a home in some previous business efforts my motivation to save the one I almost lost would not have risen quite as high.  Familiarity breeds contempt.  I might have told those agents to kiss off and go away.  What is the worse they can do, take my home away?  Take it...who cares?  I will start over.  I work with lost business leaders who behave in this way.  It is true.

Lost values become the call of the day.  A business leader who does not lose sight of how much value those items bring to the equation of success is a business leader who does not find their world constantly set on fire.  Things grow well, produce healthy returns and have a promising future for the business leaders who protect the core of good values.  They are the ones who recognize the need to promote high maintenance for the hidden values that often times go unnoticed.  Successful business leaders do not forget what drives their will.  They do not get too wrapped up with the daily routine of the things they do which in turn can bury the precious things quiet values possess.  It seems so simple.  It seems so subject.  Unfortunately, it is more than not missed in the processing world of what a business leader does.  The really good ones do not miss this truth.  They do not forget what drives their values as they move each day.  Lost values are hard to mend.

Snag some time.  Make it become part of your daily routine.  Use that time to dig deeper for the things that matter most.  Find a way to work those tall matters into your working day.  This will help you to keep those things of value, the ones that go unnoticed until they become lost or taken away.  Work to protect how they can remain forever.  Many good business leaders are able to pull this kind of work off.  If you do not believe me, go introduce yourself to one of them.  They can usually be found where the best business models reside. The real hard part will not be identifying which businesses are the best ones.  The real hard part will be to find the true leader that protects those values hidden inside that business where nobody else can find them.  That leader will not easily broadcast where they hide.

There are some determining tips in this little post.  If you came to learn more about improving your game, snag a few of those tips buried inside this message.  The leaders with high values might be gathering, footnoting and correcting my words as I close down this piece.  That is also what great leaders do.

Why do things become more valuable when they are suddenly taken away?

Some of us have already found this out.

Until next time...