Taking Inventory of Our Mental Assets and Liabilities©

Last night I came across a great thought by Napoleon Hill, one of the early apostles of success and positive mental attitude which provoked my thinking. He spoke of taking “inventory of mental assets and liabilities.”(1) This was a new idea to me; one which it struck me was a great one, a very useful one.These days it seems that we only inventory our mental assents but it is rare to consider our mental liabilities.The exception here may be the stark recognition of our nearly total lack of education, or lack in a specific field which interests us. Otherwise there also seems to be a tendency to assume that the right mental assets–good memory, quick mind, and the like will compensate for any liability we may have.

It is useful, however, even if it is hard on the ego, to be honest in evaluating you mental liabilities. To do so, one needs to think broadly about what constitutes a  “liability.” Mental liabilities can go far beyond a poor memory, a bad or mediocre education, or being a bit slow to pick up on complex ideas and principles.  

Mental liabilities may also include mental laziness, cynicism, doubt, mental procrastination, lack of interest in or concern for truth, avoiding problem solving, over reliance on feeling and emotion rather than rational thinking, limited vocabulary, limited ability to express one’s self in writing, dependence on the opinions and thinking of others, poor reading skills, bad attitudes about school and education generally, lack of curiosity, apathy and/or indifference, contentment with one’s opinions, prejudices, biases, and ignorance; lack of understanding of the dangers and limitations ignorance imposes on a person; pride, arrogance, hubris, conceit, being a know-it-all--all of which inhibit your teachability; unreasonable skepticism, hypersensitivity to the opinions of others about you, and a host of others.[Feel free to add to this list in the comment section.]

One must admit that the list in the preceding paragraph contains some fairly lethal liabilities, which if not corrected will at the very least keep us on a low plane intellectually, and at worst to lead to a disastrous waste of one’s life. Introspection about one’s mental liabilities is important because recognizing a weakness is the first step to correcting it; the first step to overcoming mental liabilities. It is a challenging thing to list in two columns one's mental strengths and weaknesses. To do the latter may require more thought than the former, inasmuch as most of us are perhaps more aware of our mental strengths, or what we think they are, than we may be about our mental weakness, which we may tend to ignore. It is quite a challenge. Are you up to it? I urge you to give it a try, it may be a game changer for you.

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:

1.  Napoleon Hill, cited in Angela Ahrendt, “From the Heart,” commencement address at Ball State University, 8 May 2010, available online at:

http://cms.bsu.edu/news/articles/2010/5/angela-ahrendts-commencement-address-from-the-heart