This blog expands a bit on a recent Facebook post that I think you’ll enjoy.

It consists of an exercise in reflection, which usually brings  people to a new, useful, and enjoyable perspective.
Please go through the following steps one at a time, moving onto the next step only once you are fully satisfied with the previous step.

1. Imagine the best possible friend, either someone you know or someone you haven’t met but would love to know.

2. List the most important qualities that this person would have, those which make him or her such a valuable friend. Write them as characteristics, i.e., adjectives.

3. Ask yourself whether these qualities explain why this is the perfect friend, or if there are any others you could add.

4. Now look at that list again. Here’s the twist: People value most in others those qualities that they themselves possess, whether they know it or not.

5. Ask yourself in what ways you may possess those same features. How do you already show some of them?  One way of doing this is to ask yourself about “a time when” you acted in a way that expresses each quality.

6.  If you experience any difficulty with number 5, you can go back to the friend example, asking how this other person (real or imagined) might express each of the qualities.  Have you ever done something similar?

7.  Remember — you do not have  to be expressing a positive  quality 24-7 in order to possess it.  The situation is actually the opposite.  You usually cannot exhibit a talent that  you do not possess.  As a result, if you have ever expressed the quality, you most likely have it as a resource.

8. Now that you see yourself as having some of the innate gifts that would make you profoundly like someone else, what would you like to do with that information?

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