Own your story - you can be the change
Taking ownership means acknowledging your reality and accepting where you are now, without blaming external factors. It means understanding your strengths and weaknesses, learning from mistakes, and proactively working towards your goals. Owning your life not only builds confidence but also makes you resilient, and enables you to navigate challenges with grace.
"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it." - Brené Brown
Be responsible for yourself - stop blaming and complaining
You are responsible for your emotional reactions and not for anyone else’s actions. When we feel an adverse emotional response towards someone else, we are instinctively inclined to blame that person for behaving a certain way and causing your reaction. But in reality, we are all triggered by certain situations, behaviors and words, due to our past experiences. The next time you are “triggered”, take a moment to think about your role in the situation.
In other situations, we often complain about things that happened to us. This is usually an automatic reaction, but it perpetuates victim behavior. If you hear yourself complaining, take a pause and think about what you could learn, or take a step back and try to see the bigger picture.
- Adopt a solution focused mindset - When faced with a challenging situation, we often tend to focus on the problem and go into great detail complaining about it or reacting to it. Rather than focusing on the issue and making it bigger than it actually might be, start thinking about solutions. Look at the problem as a puzzle and think of all possible options that could help in solving it.
- Be accountable - you always have a choiceWhen we allow external circumstances to dictate our reactions, we often tend to tell ourselves that we don’t have a choice. Even when we don’t do anything, and we have all the excuses ready in our mind, we’re still making a choice. Taking ownership means acknowledging our options, and taking personal responsibility for our decisions.
- Keep learning - While comfort zones may feel safe, change never happens there. To grow, develop, and create a fulfilling life, we need to step outside our comfort zone and build a sense of responsibility for our outcomes. Failing, learning, and practicing are the keys to progress. They help you identify a gap, develop a plan, and move forward.
"The best way to predict your future is to create it." - Peter Drucker
Taking responsibility for your thoughts, actions, and life requires a willingness to learn from your mistakes, own your successes and failures, and stop blaming others for your circumstances. But taking ownership of your life also builds character, grit, and self-respect. It allows you to confidently create a fulfilling, meaningful, and purposeful life where you decide the course it takes. It gives us a more positive outlook on life and a growth mindset.
So, take ownership of your life — own your decisions, be willing to fail, and become the change you wish to see.
