STEP 1 FIND THE VALUE AND TOSS THAT TRASH

"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

— Warren Buffett

A few weeks ago, I pulled my truck up to a house and found a big pile of green garbage bags lying next to the can. As I started to throw them into the truck, the guy who lives there walked up to me.

"I'm sorry for the mess," he said.

"You don't have to apologize," I replied. "You can throw out anything you want."

"I know. That's the problem. This was my mom's house. She has Alzheimer's and I had to move her into a home. Every time I pick up a vase or a bowl or a magazine, I ask myself, 'Does this have a great story behind it or is it junk?' Unfortunately, her memory is too far gone to help me." He looked away for a moment. "I just know I'm throwing away some of our family history. And it's killing me inside."

What he said really got me thinking. As I looked at the tons of trash that passed through my truck — all the stuff that I'm hauling out of people's lives — I realized it was there because people decided that it had no more value to them anymore. What was going on in their heads? How did they make those choices? So I started examining how my brain makes basic keep-or-toss decisions, and it didn't seem very hard: Keep the jewelry (high value) and toss the broken mug (low value).

I also realized that the same kind of thing goes on in my mind. I have a huge collection of thoughts, beliefs, and opinions in my head, or TBOs for short. They cover everything about me: my intelligence, my skills, my looks — the whole way I think about myself and how I fit in this crazy world. I've been collecting these feelings for years, ever since I was a little kid. I assumed that I made keep-or-toss decisions about my thoughts just like I did with my other stuff: keep the obvious ones like I'm a pretty decent artist and throw out the useless ones like I'm the worst painter ever. Then I looked a little closer at what was actually happening.

Since I've had some of these TBOs for so long, my brain naturally says, "Hey! These must have real value." It never even occurred to me to question whether I need them anymore, just like I never questioned why the closet was so full until I opened the door and everything fell onto my head. I'm holding on to garbage in my mind that should have been tossed a long time ago — and I'm tossing things of tremendous value that I should never have let go in the first place. Why, then, can't I toss that trash? Why do I insist on dragging it around with me year after year, long past the time when it's actually useful? It's because I don't have a working knowledge of value. That's what this chapter is going to focus on.

THE CENTRAL ROLE OF VALUE

Even though there's garbage in my truck, I don't treat my truck like garbage. That's because it's the most important tool I need to do my job and I value it very highly. I've taught myself to tune in to all the subtle ways that it works, so much so that I can tell when there's an issue with the engine or the hydraulics just by the way the truck sounds. But it wasn't always like that. When I first started out, everything was so new I couldn't see a problem until it was right on top of me.

The same thing was true growing up. When I was a kid, my folks never sat me down and said, "Here's how to tune in to your brain and figure out which thoughts to keep and which ones to toss." Instead, they put me in a sweatshirt, dropped a backpack on my shoulders, and sent me off to school with all the other kids.

What a rude awakening that was! I got into fights. I had crushes. I had friends who duped me. Without a user's manual, my little mind had no idea how to deal with all this new input, so it whipped up negative TBOs like I must be stupid when a teacher embarrassed me and I'm a weakling when I got my butt whipped by another kid. Pretty soon, all that chatter showed up in my behavior. I stopped raising my hand in class. I thought twice about where I went on the playground. It didn't matter that some teachers liked me or other kids wanted to be my friend. My brain kept latching on to the negative thoughts, as if those TBOs had the power to crush anything that tried to prove them wrong.

Now, fast-forward twenty years. When my boss asks for a volunteer to head up the truck safety program, does my hand go up? Of course not. I'm still listening to the I must be stupid voice in my head. When there's an opening for a route supervisor, do I apply for it? No way. I'm stupid, remember?

I know it sounds silly, but that's how I'm wired. I won't take...