your most precious thing. shaking up your attachments.

Scan your home, all that you own etc. Then, review your schedule, your hobbies, your career, your favourite activities and perks of your life and identify your Most Precious Thing. Now ask:

What would give you acute panic to part with? What are you loath to let go of?

STEP 2

Imagine giving away your Most Precious Thing.

Not just doing without it for a while, but actually giving it away to other people for them to enjoy.

How do you feel?

Imagine giving away hundreds of your Most Precious Thing — they have it and you don’t. Give it freely. With a smile. To anyone and everyone. How does that feel?

Terrifying? Heavy with guilt? Panicky and pissed off? Enlivened and relieved?

This could bring up a dozen different intense emotions. There’s no right or wrong “result” with this contemplation. It’s meant to stir emotion and possibly create some expansion in you. Maybe it touches on your longing, wounds of inadequacy, addictions. Maybe it fills you with gratitude or possibilities.

I love beautiful things (my love of shoes alone is well documented on Instagram, ahem)– but I’m not that into stuff. I love my lifestyle — but it could change in a heartbeat. I had to dig deep on this one. Hmmm… precious…

My music – I really don’t want to live without it. It’s not just because I’ve spent beaucoup bucks over the years downloading stuff (I like to pay for music, support artists n’ all that,) it’s the playlists, man — curated moods that tell the story of where I’m at in life. Ya, my music is a Most Precious Thing. But I could give it away. There are a million songs I’ve yet to meet. Next…

Realization: Future’s wide open. Art is endless.

I had to dig deeper to find my uncomfortable place with this — which is the point of this exercise. Stuff… hmmmm… My car… now, I LOVE my car. It’s not about the kind of car — it’s just having a good, warm vehicle to facilitate my freedom and comfort. I love driving, I love going where I want to go, when I want to go there. It would suck to be without my car, a Most Precious Thing.

Realization: Freedom. Mobility. Essential. If my time feels impinged on, it really messes with my head. How can I create more peace around my relationship with time and how much I cram into a day?

My son. My girlfriends. My health. Beyond precious. Not even going there. The thought of parting with any of them… that makes it hard to breathe. Let’s stick to “things”. Next.

And then, eureka… My MOST Precious Thing! My career. To make a living making what I make. My platform. My identity. My freedom (there’s that word again.) Could I bear to give it away? “Here, have my career.” Who would I be without all… this? Hmmm. The consideration makes me want to puke — and fly. Panic. Peace. Hmmm. Empty. Full. Really real.

Deep breath.

Realization:

Still me.

No tunes. No wheels. No readers.

Still me.

My Most Precious Thing.

Danielle LaPorte is many things, not the least of which are: an author, truth speaker and most recently the creator of the Desire Map program. Get to know her better at daniellelaporte.com.