Total Ownership

You have one life. Make it yours.

Taking Ownership

A comment over on Instagram got me thinking about the difference between having accountability and taking ownership. It's subtle, but I do believe there is a difference between accountability and ownership. Accountability seems to be more reactive and obligation-based whereas ownership is a mindset and has more of a proactive stance.

Think about something like taking on a project and failing to meet the goals. Accountability would require me to acknowledge my fault and admit where I went wrong. Ownership would require that, but it would also require me to think about how to make things better the next time, and then to do that. Ownership has a forward thrust to it.

Real ownership goes beyond taking responsibility for what you did or did not do. It's not about self-criticism or martyrdom (both are subtle ways to escape having to make a change), but rather a mindset of keeping your side of the street as clean as possible without worrying about everyone else's.

It's a game-changer because nothing can ever change without ownership. Here are a few ways I've learned to take ownership over the last 25 years or so.

Own Your Choices

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

Viktor Frankl

No matter what happens to us, we always have a choice in how we respond, both internally and externally. I know that sounds harsh, but Viktor Frankl articulated the idea after being in a Nazi concentration camp that killed his wife, his parents, and his siblings, so I don't get to argue with him.

We cannot take responsibility or ownership for thoughts and emotions that arise, but we can and should take ownership of our response to them.

Someone says something to you, and anger arises. You cannot help the anger arising, but you are responsible for what you do with it. You can turn the other cheek or smack them in the face, but either decision is on you.

There's a deeper level of ownership that I encourage people toward and try to find in myself here as well. Depending on what you dwell on and how intentional you are about what you let into your mind and heart, anger will be more or less likely to arise, and it will be stronger or weaker.

I've noticed this in myself as many of the difficulties and challenges of the last year have tried to settle into my mindset. Because of this, it's been easier for anger to arise and harder for me not to respond out of it. Part of real ownership is acknowledging that what we do every day matters when things happen to us.

Reject Excuses

It's important to recognize and acknowledge external circumstances. It is important to recognize and acknowledge what went wrong or why something didn't work out.

It is even more important to recognize and acknowledge our role in these things so that we can do something about them. If you cannot do this, you are trapped in a world where everything is beyond your control.

This is a tough one in a culture that is based on victimization. We are taught to base our identity on the ways that other people have taken our power, and there's a chorus of people waiting to pat us on the back and tell us how sorry they are that our life is so difficult.

I talked about this on the podcast. I know it seems compassionate to offer somebody excuses, but in reality we are disempowering them. People did this to me using my mental health and addiction issues to explain why things weren't my fault. They were well-meaning, but I now recognize that they hindered me on my path.

Here's the thing though: I also have to take ownership for the fact that I allowed them hinder me. To some extent, I chose to believe them because it gave me a convenient excuse to not do better. That's on me.

Own Your Experience

Accept responsibility for your thoughts, your emotions, your beliefs, and how these things lead you to action or inaction. These things are influenced and impacted by external events, but as Frankl said, we have a choice in how we respond to that.

One of the amazing things about our mind is that it will confirm what we think we know. This is dangerous in the social media echo chamber we have created, but it's magical when it comes to how we see the world.

If you wake up every day and decide (and we do make a decision) that the world is full of mean people who will treat you poorly, your mind will confirm this. It will interpret every stray look as judgment, and every person who doesn't notice you will become someone who has rejected you. You will notice how many people stop and block the doorway to send a text message and take phone calls on speakerphone. You will be surrounded by rude, selfish people all day, every day.

On the other hand, if you wake up every day and decide that people are generally good and they're doing the best they can with what they have, your mind will work to confirm this all day. Stray glances will become bids for connection, and the people who don't notice you will become normal human beings who are wrapped up in the stress and struggle of their own lives. For every one person who blocks the aisle or talks on speakerphone, you will notice 10 who don't do things like that.

We are always cultivating our experience of the world, take responsibility for this so you can grow what you want to grow.

Cultivate Resilience

The idea of resilience is important because it accepts hardship as part of the path without giving us an excuse to avoid it or bypass it. You cannot have resilience without ownership, and you cannot have ownership without resilience - they both require you to take an active stance toward the world instead of being reactive.

Resilience is about how we respond to failure. It's about how we get back up and try again. A person without resilience cannot take any kind of ownership of their life because they are only in control so long as conditions are in their favor.

This is all well and good so long as life is being nice, but we all know that life is not always nice to us. Being able to fight from underneath when we have to is the only way we can exercise ownership when things are hard.

When you start cultivating resilience and recognizing that hardships are what teach us things and make us tougher, we are able to take ownership of them. We can lean into them when they arise instead of fleeing from them.

Refusing Ownership

While ownership is important in our lives, there are things we should never accept ownership of because they are not ours, and they will bring us down. Here are some things you should refuse ownership of in every situation.

Other People’s Emotions

If you've followed my work for long enough, you know that I will never advocate harming other people or making things hard for them. There’s no good in that, and I don't get any satisfaction from seeing people unhappy or anxious, no matter who they are.

I stand by that, but we cannot ever take ownership or responsibility for other people's feelings. The way another person feels and what they do with those feelings are beyond your control and ultimately do not actually have anything to do with you - they have to do with that person and their relationship with the world around them. Neither are yours.

Being trapped into accepting ownership of another person's emotions is the fastest way to find yourself in a manipulative relationship where you will never feel secure because you have taken ownership of something you can never have a real impact on. Take ownership of your experience and let other people do the same.

Other People’s Actions

This is similar to the one above, but this one can often have even more dire consequences. Of all the abusive partners I had as clients, almost all of them said something along the lines of “I love her, I don't know why she makes me act that way” or some other nonsense to excuse their behavior. Almost every single one of them blamed their actions on somebody else.

This is gross in and of itself, but the more sinister part was that their partner, the one who was being beat up and thrown around, often bought into this and accepted the idea that they were responsible for their partner’s actions. This is what manipulative do to the people who trust them.

What another person does is always their responsibility. Anyone who will allow you to take ownership of their actions is not the kind of person you want to be that close to.

Take complete ownership of your choices and let other people do the same.

The Past

This one is both near and dear and difficult for me. I was reckless and entitled when I was younger, and I hurt people through my lack of self-awareness. I don't recall ever intentionally hurting somebody, but my thoughtlessness led me to do it on multiple occasions.

I accepted responsibility for these things a long time ago and made amends where I could, and I didn’t stop with accountability. I took ownership of it, and I don't do thoughtless things very often anymore. I learned that my having changed and made amends did not always matter to the person who I'd hurt though.

This may sound callous, but you cannot accept ownership of someone else’s process of getting over something (or lack thereof). There’s a point where you cannot take ownership of someone you were a long time ago. At some point, you stopped taking ownership of wearing a diaper and being afraid of the dark, you can do the same with cheating on your girlfriend or believing something stupid.

Don’t let our current culture confuse you into thinking that it’s better to self-flagellate for eternity than it is to change and grow. Recognize mistakes and move on.

Journal Prompts

· How do I define ownership in my life?

· Where is it lacking?

· What situations have I handled with accountability but not ownership?

· How do I react when I’m faced with hardship?

· What excuses do I tend to make? How do they keep me from taking full responsibility?

· How do my daily habits and thoughts impact my emotions and reactions?

· What beliefs or patterns do I cling to that make it harder to take ownership?

· Where in my life am I taking ownership of things that are not mine to carry? How can I let them go?

Until Next Time

We'll have another podcast launch next Tuesday along with a useful resource here on Substack. I would love to hear any feedback about things you think it would be useful to talk about.

Thank you so much, take care.

James