Deficit-Based Thinking

I have been at a Sr. staff retreat/meeting for the past two days and what have I learned? That I suck. Yesterday one of our exercises was deficit vs. asset based thinking (a fancy term for negative and positive use of words). We had a big list of deficit-based thinking phrases - they included things like:

• "That's just the way it is..."
• "Not this again..."
• "I'll never get this done!!"
• "That'll never change."

These phrases in asset based thinking should be replaced by:

• "Whatever it is, I'll work with it."
• "At least I know how to deal with this."
• "This will take longer than I expected."
• "How can I get around this?"

We had a little exercise where we had to determine which set of thinking we belonged to and, of course, I am more of a deficit-based thinker. That means I am negative and I suck (these are more deficit-based terms).

I think the only real way to transition from deficit to asset is a bottle of wine every morning before work.

Of course I am kidding.