This morning, the hot story everywhere I turned was about the American family’s drop in net worth. Data provided by the Federal Reserve shows that the median net worth (as in “assets minus liabilities”) in 2001 was 106,000 dollars. In 2010, it dropped to 77,000 dollars, a fall of almost forty percent from a peak of more than 120,000 dollars in 2007.

What does all this mean? Well, to put it bluntly, the median (that’s the number in the middle of a data set, not a calculated mean) net worth of a middle class family in America has taken a nosedive. The reason behind this, according to experts, is primarily the result of the housing crisis, which forced many families out of home ownership and into rentals or devalued homes.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the finances of this – mostly because I’m not a financial guru, and I see too many variables in this data to draw a lot of vast, sweeping conclusions about the future of the economy and the middle class. I’ll leave that to the experts.

What concerns me most about reports like these is that they have a way of lowering morale. Think about it. If your boss showed up at a staff meeting and told you that your business was worth forty percent less than it was a few years ago, what would you do? I’m fairly confident that I’d go into panic mode with the majority of my co-workers.

Equating home ownership with personal success is quickly losing its place as a standard measure of achievement. Some of us may never own homes (and hence may have lower net worth than others), but does that really matter anymore? It seems that in this day and age, where the world around us is streamlined to be lighter, faster and sleeker, we shouldn’t need a clunky mortgage payment to make us feel as though we’ve made it. I’m not saying owning a home is bad – but it doesn’t have to be for everyone.

Let’s step back for a minute and think about this. The Fed has just confirmed that the housing crisis took its toll on a lot of people in this country. Okay, I don’t want to brag, but that’s just not news to me. And while I owned a home back in the day, and now rent, I have to say that my life is way better without that added financial obligation.

Am I worth less in terms of physical assets? Sure – but the mental strain and pressure of paying for things I couldn’t afford has decreased. I still stress about money, of course, but I don’t worry about foreclosure or sinking into a financial pit with no hope of rescue.

Instead of taking this news as another depressing update on the sad state of the economy, try to find the positives. Maybe being worth less can help us shift our focus from stuff we don’t have, and zero in on changes we can make. The economy is in a tough spot; job growth is stagnant and the hope we may have had a few months ago is wavering. We can’t immediately change that, but we don’t have to dwell on it.

Instead, focus on things you can control – the effort you put into your job, your dedication to causes that matter, and the love you give your family. In the end, aren’t these the ways we should measure what we’re worth?