We introduce a force decomposition to construct a potential function in deterministic dynamics described by ordinary differential equations in the context of dissipative gyroscopic systems.Such a potential function serves as the corresponding Lyapunov function for the dynamics,hence it gives both quantitative and qualitative descriptions for stability of motion.As an example we apply our force decomposition to a four-dimensional dissipative gyroscopic system.We explicitly obtain the potential function for all parameter regimes in the linear limit,including those regimes where the Lyapunov function was previously believed not to exist.