Recently I gave a talk on ownership at a leadership conference. How different would our families, our communities, our nation, our world be if each of us took ownership for our actions, attitudes, behaviors and results!
Ownership is at the heart of successful people. People who realize and believe that they can indeed control their actions, attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes in life have such a deeper, richer, and more satisfying life. Those who take ownership for their mistakes will look to improve and learn from those mistakes and be better.
Unfortunately we live in a society that seems to encourage us to shift blame and point the finger. Rather than take ownership we search for excuses of why we’ve come up short. Rather than take action and accountability we waste our time deceiving ourselves while trying to deceive others.
Ownership is much like the “window and the mirror” philosophy of great leaders found in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. Great leaders look in the mirror when things are not going well and try to figure out what they can do better to produce better results. Likewise, when things are going well, they look out the mirror to give praise to others and good luck. Contrastingly, poor leaders look out the window when things are going bad and seek to blame something out side of themselves for the poor performance and when things go well, they look in the mirror praising themselves. Too many of us fall into this type of thinking however it would greatly benefit us to look in the mirror when things are not going as well as we’d like and out the window when life is better than expected. Regardless if it is always our fault when things go poorly, having this attitude and living this philosophy will be a great benefit to us.
Finally, it is sad to me when we allow others to “control” us. For example, if my boss treats me poorly and in turn I have a bad attitude all day at work and then continue with it at home, who can I blame? The truth is, my boss didn’t force me to have a bad attitude. I made that decision. Allowing people the ability to “control” what only we can truly control is insanity. If we have a bad attitude, or behave poorly, or don’t reach our goals, regardless of what others have done to us, we can only blame ourselves.
As we take ownership of our lives, we will be much happier and more successful. Get rid of the blame game and enjoy the peace and excitement that comes from living a life of ownership—a life that you control! The day we believe we are fully responsible for our outcomes in life is the day we become free and the day we can begin to improve our results. Enjoy the life that comes with ownership!
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