Learn to take ownership

If you want to improve, you must learn how to take ownership. It sounds easy. It seems like we already take ownership of our lives.

But if we look closely, we see that this isn’t the case. Instead, we often find someone else to blame. We find a scapegoat.

We say we would have a better career if we had a better boss. Or we argue that we would be better off if the government stopped interfering with our lives.

Maybe we blame our parents for not giving us what we wanted when we were young. Or we say it isn’t fair that we don’t have more talent doing what we love.

Sometimes it is a specific incident. We blame our friend for dragging us to the bar when we really wanted to study. Or we blame our coworker for not doing a better job on the project we worked on.

This type of thinking is very common. But it will hold you back. Often, it holds you back without your knowledge. You go along assuming you are doing everything right. Yet your mindset sabotages you.

The truth is that it is easy to take responsibility for your life when things are going well. It is natural to puff out our chests and claim credit for the wonderful work we did.

When things go against us it becomes more difficult. Instead of taking responsibility, we search for excuses. We call them reasons, or we say it isn’t our fault, but the result is the same. We point to something external for our failures and shortcomings.

Taking responsibility isn’t about guilt. It isn’t about trying to beat us up in our minds. It is to free us. When we take responsibility for our past, we are saying that we also are responsible for our future.

The two are linked. When we put the fault on others, we let others dictate our future. When we take the blame, it becomes easier to gain control in the future.

Since it is easier to take responsibility when things go right, we create a positive reinforcing feedback loop. As we succeed, we can easily claim credit. It is even easier to take the blame on those small missteps because we know overall, we did a great job.

Therefore, we must learn to feed this cycle. We must have wins in our life. We need to take responsibility. This frees us to control our destiny instead of being pulled by others wherever they happen to want us to go.

The opposite path also exists. When we have some failures, it is easy to push the blame to others. When we have larger failures or numerous mistakes, we lose our ability to control the future by blaming the past.

This creates a negative diminishing feedback loop. At each pass we find we have less control and more failure to account for. It becomes more and more difficult to take ownership.

So, learn how to shift your response. Learn how to take responsibility regardless of the outcome. Learn that you can create the feedback loop that you choose.

Small changes end up having major impacts. Flipping the feedback loop is possible and will create a wealth of wisdom and leverage to keep improving. Find a few wins to offset the losses. Find the success that you claim credit for to help you take account of your failures. This will unlock the ability to keep improving and getting better over time.