The Resilient Mind

No, I don’t mean you need to buy more material possessions. I mean:

“To assume responsibility for a task, project, role, or situation. It involves acknowledging and accepting accountability for the outcomes and results that are expected or required. Taking ownership entails a proactive and determined attitude, where individuals demonstrate initiative, commitment, and a sense of personal investment in achieving success. By taking ownership, people are motivated to take charge, make decisions, solve problems, and follow through with actions necessary to achieve their goals. It typically involves being self-driven, reliable, and accountable for the outcomes of one’s actions.”

As much as I want to run to the defense of my fellow man, I can’t help but recognize it’s general truth. Looking around you see plenty of men doing big things taking ownership in life, but for the vast majority of us we are on autopilot, cruising through life waiting for our next task to be handed to us, our next opportunity to fall in our laps. It’s pretty apparent if you work with men on a regular basis, there are a lot of men that step up and take initiative in their roles, as many stand back and watch, waiting for direction, and are not really aware of the work going on around them.

Trust me when I say, it’s not a lack of ambition but more of a lack of ownership. Plenty of conversations demonstrate most men have ambition, it’s the lack of motivation to use that ambition to actualize someone else’s dream. Thinking “I’m not going to over exert myself for someone else’s company”. But, self-consciously that attitude takes form in our personal life. Haven’t you heard the term: “You practice how you play”?

If you spend most of your day slacking behind and waiting for direction playing confused, what makes you think you can just turn it on at will, “practice makes improvement”! Practice accountability and ownership with every assigned task and it can transfer well with your personal ambitions giving you the grit to manifest your own dreams.

I do however have to disagree with the notion that you can’t get a good education through experience. I believe education in itself is an experience. A surgeon cannot perform a successful surgery until he has experienced a few unsuccessful ones first. So, to imply men can’t learn from experience alone is a false assumption, but he must choose to take ownership and learn from the experience.