Being a source of something scarce makes you valuable to the people in your life — family, friends, your employer, your community.

So, speaking of scarcity in today’s environment, here’s something very valuable you can do:

Be someone who starts and encourages upbeat conversations.

People are gloomy. The news is gloomy. The sky is falling.

Be the person in your environment who’s the optimist, who celebrates what is going well (it’s there — look for it…). Encourage people, pat them on the back.

Talk about how the world is being reinvented. Talk about all the opportunities on the other side of the anxiety and disruption. Tell funny stories. Laugh a lot.

I guarantee you will be very nearly alone in that effort. This makes you the source of something scarce. This makes you valuable, and valued, among the people you care about most. 

Great problem solvers are among the scarcest things in the world. There simply aren’t enough of them, and there never will be.

What do the laws of economics teach us about scarcity? That the things of which there are very little or never enough, but which are in great demand, are the most valuable things in the world.

If there’s anything the world needs desperately right now, it’s people who are great at solving problems. In fact, if there’s anything the world always needs, in good times and bad, it’s people who are great at solving problems — in short, who are great at what they do.

No matter what you do, you have an opportunity to be great at it — to solve the problems and challenges you encounter on a daily basis with a high level of skill, and with passion and enthusiasm as well.

Almost without exception, the people in organizational life that I encounter are feeling exceptionally insecure — worried, understandably, about their jobs. A great deal of their energy is spent fretting about their short-term professional safety and security.

I tell them that the only thing they can control — in a time when it seems so much is beyond our control — is their ability to solve problems. It’s also the only genuine source of personal security and safety.

So, put your energy into:

One. Building your problem solving skills. Learn, grow, practice, experiment. It’s the best investment you can make, in good times and in bad.

Two. Embracing the opportunities created by today’s problems. The whole world is being reinvented. It’s painful, of course, but the more innovative and clever you can be, the more adaptive you prove yourself, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Three. Understanding the the better you and your colleagues are at solving today’s problems right now, the safer and more secure you’ll all be — personally and organizationally.

Four. Being great at helping others be great problem solvers. This is the essence of leadership. 

Of course, being a great problem solver is no guarantee of personal economic security in today’s environment. Many people are suffering what is, we hope, short-term pain.

You simply have to have faith that, over the long-term, there is always a place in the world for a great problem solver.

I changed the battery in my son’s car last weekend. Man, am I pumped!

I know it doesn’t seem like much but, to a bookworm like me, flirting with the alchemy of wrenches, grease and electricity and not making a hopeless mess was a pretty big deal. So, I’m going to take a minute and celebrate. Woo-hoo.

It’s not something I do every day — in fact, the last time I did it was, let’s see…hmmm. Never. Yes, never would be the last time I changed the battery in an automobile.

In fact, I’ve never done any car repair of any type at all. Like many Americans, I find it far too complicated. A simple cost-benefit analysis leads one to the conclusion that paying someone whatever price far outweighs the hassle — and the fear — of disassembling and assembling parts of your engine only to find in the end a few extra bolts and washers left over on the garage floor.

When I was growing up, this was the kind of thing my father — and I suspect many other men — did all the time. He built our garage with the help of a friend, constructed about 40 percent of our in-ground pool, repainted at least one of our cars, and generally built, fixed, and altered things as needed. He always knew the right tool to use, too.

He did these things, I think, because he could, but also out of a sense of frugality.

Frugality existed as a core value of many, if not all, previous generations of Americans, and rarely, if at all, in the current one. I would have to admit that I place convenience and comfort far ahead of frugality in my daily life.

One result is — for me, I now realize — an unnerving lack of skills necessary to thrive or survive in a period of enforced frugality — in other words, a severe or prolonged economic meltdown in which I was personally affected.

I cannot repair my own car, and I cannot fix a roof on a house, nor a leak in a basement. I cannot — heaven forbid it comes to this, ever — grow or kill sufficient quantities of food to feed my entire family (let alone my voracious sixteen-year old son). 

I imagine I could learn. I imagine necessity, hunger and pain would be effective, swift teachers. But, it would be nice to be able to do these things for yourself because you can — and because you never know when you might have to.

But I’m getting there. I can change the battery in a car.

I subscribe to Dictionary.com’s “Word of the Day” because, as the folks at the Reader’s Digest used to say, it pays to enrich your word power.

Each daily email features a word, ranging from those we use every day to, more often than not, those that only the biggest boobs among us work hard to slip into normal conversation — say, like deipnosophist. Along with a definition, or definitions, and some examples of usage, you can learn the origin of the word.

It is this latter feature that interests me the most. First, it is fascinating to see that no language is an island, and English in particular has been pollinated with ideas, concepts and words from Greek to Old Norse.

Second, every language has its own DNA visible through its origins, and is itself a form of DNA woven through our culture and history — in many ways, forming the building blocks of who we are and how we think. Sometimes the origin of a word, which often exposes the thought processes of the ancients who developed it, is more enlightening and meaningful than the word we are left with today.

Pusillanimous, which flitted into my inbox a few days ago, is one of those words.

It means “cowardly” or “lacking in courage or conviction.” But, as you can see, it is not a word most of us trot out on a daily basis.

Instead, the origin of the word is a more beautiful, elegantly simple definition of the concept of cowardice. It comes from two Latin words — pusillus, meaning “very small, or tiny;” and animus, meaning “soul.”

“Tiny soul.” Doesn’t that perfectly illuminate what a lack of courage truly is?