One of the definitions of a liability is something that holds one back; a handicap, while an asset is considered a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality.

While most people refer to liabilities and assets in the material sense, I want to talk about them in the personal sense.

We all have qualities that we consider to be our strengths, our assets. We also have qualities that we consider to be limitations, or liabilities.

I want to offer something for your consideration: we have also been conditioned to believe that we have liabilities, but they are really assets in disguise.

My Story of Liability-Turned-Asset

I recently came to this realization, and it was from one of my own stories, which I am going to share with you:

When I was a child, I would be teased because of the way my voice sounded. Whenever I spoke, people laughed.

As a sensitive and self-conscious child, my reaction became to simply stop speaking, unless I had to.

I became one of those children that liked to sit in the back of the classroom in school and simply be quiet, unless the teacher called on me to answer a question.

My voice was my liability. I became the person on the periphery, on the outside looking in, the observer.

But an interesting thing happened. My not speaking created the way for an asset to become stronger: I became an attentive listener.

When you’re silent, you hear everything people say around you. You pay attention to the tone, the pitch, the diction, the enunciation, the inflection, and you learn to read between the lines, to decipher what’s really being said and not being said.

I took what people laughed at me about to another level. My ability to listen became an asset, a well-honed skill.

I knew I had turned a corner when I was in college for my Associate in Arts degree, and was taking a human growth and development class at the time.

I did my usual sit-in-the-back-of the classroom thing. The instructor would have these interesting discussions that I found myself raising my hand to participate in. When I contributed to the dialogue, he paid attention to what I was saying.

I remember the next moment, as if it were yesterday: we had a paper that we had to write, and he was returning them to us graded.

I received an A on the paper, and he had written on the first page in red marker: Stop hiding. And after that, I stopped hiding, and started talking more.

To help me become more comfortable with the sound of my voice, I bought an answering machine that I had to create a message using my own voice (My previous one had two installed voices on it, one male and one female; when people would call my home and leave a message, later they would ask me, “Who was that on the machine?”).

I sat down and created a message and made myself listen to it again and again for thirty minutes straight. That went a long way in helping me undo the conditioning I allowed others to do to me (I say “allowed” because I chose to buy into the belief, I chose to believe that what they were saying about my voice with their words and laughter was true).

I share this story with you not to gain sympathy or pity, but to say this: When I recently was reflecting on our liabilities and our assets, from a coaching perspective, I realized that my perceived liability is actually an asset.

People come to me to hear what I have to say, and pay me for the words I speak to them (I get paid in two ways: first, they pay attention, and then they pay me with money).

So, I use my voice in addition to the attentive listening skill my voice allowed to become stronger in my coaching practice. I now get the pleasure of using this one-two combo in helping other people re-frame their own liabilities, getting them to see the as the assets they really are.

A Parting Question About Liability

In closing, I want to leave you with this question for thought, which I recently posted on my LifePlan page on Facebook: What did you once consider about yourself to be a liability that you are now able to see as an asset? Why?

I would love to hear your stories. Please feel free to leave a comment, post a response on the LifePlan page on Facebook, tweet me on Twitter, or e-mail me at james@jameshimm.com with “Liability turned asset” in the subject line. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Seeing the asset in the liability,