Focus on What's Right

The following passage is really speaking to me at this moment in my life...

We are so incredibly well trained to notice what's wrong in any given relationship, work situation, or experience that it's easy to overlook what's right. That's not surprising, because our entire education system trains us to notice flaws and mistakes: in school, the wrong answers are marked, not the right ones. In relationships, we spend a lot of time, energy, and money, often with the help of therapists, working on fixing what's wrong. At work, we study our failures and mistakes for hidden clues so that we can prevent them from happening again.
But what if we have it backward? What would we be like now if all the answers we got correct on every test had been marked? What if we spent as much energy in relationships noticing and appreciating the other person's gifts and talents and the strengths and beauty of the relationship itself as we do exposing and dealing with it's flaws? What if, at work, we spent an equal amount of time looking at what is working and how we can do more of that as we do analyzing what's wrong?
An "asset focus" - noticing and appreciating, as Joan Borysenko puts it, what doesn't need healing, is an incredibly powerful tool for creating connection, fostering creative thinking, and over overcoming obstacles. (M.J. Ryan)