My wife isn’t an overly ambitious person. But one thing she enjoys doing is reading. She can spend hours with books she loves, except that she feels guilty about not doing the chores and not being ‘responsible’ enough. So to her, reading doesn’t bring much value, compared to starting a business, giving birth to children, etc.
I told her that there’s obvious value in what she loves doing over and over again. It’s just that she’s weighed it with a different scale that measures it differently. To a book author, of course there’s value in people reading books. To book sellers, too. And book collectors.
We often choose to look at the world with specific lenses, and that sometimes skews our perspective of things so much that there’s something lacking in our lives.
Because of that, we sometimes fail to evaluate the true value of something we truly enjoy doing.
The value of something is maximized when that value is best articulated by the person who enjoys it the most. If you can describe in detail why something means so much to you, that proves its real value to you. Things get hazy and gray when things can’t be described in detail, so a lot of value is lost in transition. Don’t let that happen. Find what makes you tick – make sure you know EXACTLY why.
Being able to describe in detail what something means to you helps you to know what you want in life. And this is key to unlocking a lot of possibilities and opportunities in life. Conversely, being unable to comprehend, describe, and articulate value leads to confusion, frustration, and loss.
Also, don’t let others define what you should value the most. If you enjoy doing something, and it’s the only thing you can do over and over again without any prompting, inspiration or cajoling, then there must be some obvious value you get out of it, even if you have problems admitting or seeing it.
The only catch is, of course, it shouldn’t harm others in the process.
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I love reading and I would love for people to see that what I enjoy has values! Your wife is very lucky to have you see that although she doesn’t believe it :)