I’m sitting in one of my remote office locations – Chili’s across from Gate A38 on Concourse A of Detroit Metro Airport.  It’s been a long day.  Snow and more snow.  Flight delay after flight cancellation after flight delay.  Here I sit – frustrated by my need to fly to New Jersey.  Sure, I’ve completed a lot of work on my laptop.  Sure, I could be sitting outside in all of this snow, instead of looking out from the warmth of an enclosed building.  But, come on, flight delays, especially multiple ones, can be frustrating.  It’s enough for anyone to start questioning the efficiency of flying.  Ugh!

I was pondering all of this negativity and scarcity when the server returned with my credit card receipt.  I expected her to join in this scarcity thinking by offering some snide comment about failing to allow her to turn her table all afternoon.  Instead, she shattered my half empty glass with one remark.  “Have a blessed day,” she remarked with a smile.

“A blessed day!”  Really?  Does she know what it’s been like? 

But, she is exactly correct.  Today is a blessed day.  I am blessed.  You are blessed.  Have you attended one of my workshops and seen the glass on the PowerPoint slide that can be viewed as either half empty or half full?  It merely depends on your perspective.  It’s so easy in our culture to see what we do not have instead of what we do have.  We are quick to identify the needs in our community and often miss the assets of our community.

We need more people, more money, less conflict, more visibility, more staff, greater vision.  We compare our organization to the one that seemingly has the proverbial full glass.  Yet, abundance crowds in around us.  We just miss identifying it.  Sometimes we even perceive an asset as a need.  I encourage you to take a moment right now and thank God for the abundance that you experience in your daily life.  Go ahead – share a prayer. 

Now look around your organization.  Look for signs of abundance that you’ve overlooked because of focusing on the emptiness above “the water line” in your community.  Assets flow like a river all around you.  They exist in your community.  Recognize them.  Share them.  You will be amazed at the blessing that these assets will create when joined together with other assets, like particles of hydrogen and oxygen to form H2O.  An abundant vision will flow!

It’s time for me to catch a flight to New Jersey.

“Have a blessed day!”