Personal Growth – Pay In to Take Out

In our home, we try to avoid using the word “stupid,” because you never know when a word like this might boomerang through the voices of four and six year old boys, returning to hit you smack across the face. But tossing it from my vocabulary, as I have, doesn’t mean that the word fails to describe how I sometimes feel.  One of those “feelings” camped out in my life recently, (like yesterday). 

For over twenty years, I’ve taught, trained, coached—whatever you want to call it—people on how to build into their lives a measure of depth and meaning.  I’ve watched countless people grow personally, professionally, and spiritually and become what they only previously hoped and dreamed they could be. But once these people acquire a fortune of personal character and professional experience, what comes next on the personal growth agenda?  Well, after yesterday, I realized how poorly I’ve helped them in answering this question.  But the answer is so obvious, that when I realized it, I began to feel, well, you know—the “S” word.  So, let me explain it to you exactly the way it came to me.

When you make a house payment, in the beginning a lot of your money goes toward paying interest. But with time on your side, eventually the money migrates away from paying interest and over towards principal.  Anyone who owns a home probably already knows this. When the portion of money headed toward paying the interest leaves your back account, all you can do is wave bye-bye and thank it for the privilege of allowing you to purchase a home without paying cash up front.  Interest is the price we pay for “now” instead of “later.”

But principal works very differently.  When the portion of money that leaves your account goes toward principal, it transforms into something brand new called equity.  With a simple signature on a check or monthly auto withdraw from the bank, your money takes on a whole new identity. 

Money that becomes equity behaves very differently than when in the form of income, and sometimes on the whims of the market, loses its value seemingly overnight (Circa October, 2008).  Which means the cash value of your home today may not be worth the same tomorrow.  Now, I’m not a financial expert, and in no way am I suggesting what you should or should not do in relation to your house, but I do know that equity does a poor job in bringing a person any sense of long lasting security.  Now-a-days, looking to your home’s equity as a source of security takes one long roller coaster ride through the emotions.

This brings me to yesterday’s “ah-hah” moment. As each time you make a house payment, income turns into equity, so too does a portion of your daily experiences turn into Personal Growth Equity (PGE).  Most of what you learn and know you paid for with a hard knock or two, and the amount you fork over each time contributes to the amount of your PGE.  So, every experience—good or bad—in some way adds to your life.

But a lifetime of equity in personal growth and maturity goes to waste if you just allow it to sit in your life, doing nothing.  If you’re not careful, some circumstance or event might come along and strip away all the personal equity you’ve accumulated.  That’s why you have to pull all that equity out of your life and redeploy it somewhere, specifically in others.  

What if you took all of your life lessons and maturity you’ve acquired, in whatever arenas you’ve learned them in, and put all that Personal Equity to use in others?  How might your investment pay off?

Typically, you get paid for the job you do.  Your employer doesn’t pay you today for what you did a year ago.  A day brings a wage that only a day can bring.  Day after day you live in a cycle of “work-for-pay,” and each day you do, a tiny bit of experience and expertise deposits into your life.  Pretty soon that tiny bit each day adds up to a whole lot of wealth in personal growth!  But if you just let it sit there and do nothing, you’ll never get out of life what you put in. If not reinvested, the sweat equity you’ve earned via your many life experiences loses value over time.  So, why not take an inventory of all the “experience assets” your life has accumulated and begin determining how to get them out of your life and into others?  And perhaps, as you redeploy your personal equity in others, along the way someone might pay you for your services! 

Remember, this is all new to me too, so why don’t we do it together?  Why don’t we begin by looking into our own lives to see what equity we might bring to the table?  And why don’t we take a risk and share our insights with one another?  I believe a portion of my personal equity lies in the ability to teach others how to communicate as well as show them how to take that ability and translate it into either more satisfying personal relationships, or professional skills that lead to more income.  In either case, I feel an obligation to take from my life and give to others. 

So I’ve decided to offer three months of one-on-one training to one person desiring to learn how to communicate better in either personal or professional relationships.  But in return, I want this person to invest a portion of his or her personal equity back in me. Now, I assume your first reaction leaves you wondering what you might have to offer.  But don’t listen to any lying thoughts that talk this way.  You have a lifetime of experiences that have taught you lessons that I could never learn—unless of course you teach me.

So again, this is a two way street; I invest in you, and you invest in me.  Deal?  If this sounds interesting to you, use the comments box below to tell me how I can help you personally or professionally and also include a brief description of your personal equity and what you can invest back in me. In a few days, I’ll pick a person, and together the two of us will build into each other’s lives. Over the next three months, I’ll provide periodic updates as to how things are going.  And if you see someone comment on something you might be interested in, let that person know.  You never know what lifelong relationships might begin. The more personal equity we take from our lives and redeploy in others, the better community we can build!