Blame and Power

[Music] this is a message about your personal power your personal ability to steer your life and your career and to influence people around you there is something about your ability to do all of that stuff that gets driven by how you think about things and how you talk about things here’s the concept there is only so much blame and responsibility and ownership to go around if you want something and don’t have it or if you don’t want something and do have it you might be in the habit of pointing to outside reasons for why that is so the thing that I want you to understand is the more you point to other reasons for why you don’t have something you want or why you do have something that you don’t want the less power and influence you have in being able to change your circumstances there’s really only limited ownership for these things and the thing is it can be easy to point to outside reasons for why you don’t have something that you want why you lost a project that you wanted um why you lost a really valuable team member why business is operating in a way that’s less than ideal for you right now there’s plenty of outside influences and factors that you can point to but the moment you stop taking responsibility for it the moment you don’t own the current situation is the moment that you hand your power over to something outside of your control now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that we’re all impervious to variables outside of ourselves that is definitely not the case we definitely do need to pay attention to things outside of us and those things can influence how things are going for us but the moment we blame what’s going on for us on something outside of ourselves that’s the moment that we choose to not pilot our own ship that’s the moment that we choose to surrender our own influence over things and I do want to give people permission to at times point the finger if they want to but it should be a temporary circumstance your default should be keeping the hands on the tiller of how things are going for you in your life in your career with your business business you want to retain ownership of that stuff if at any point anything unexpected happens and you have an emotional response to it it’s totally okay it’s totally fine to in the moment blame something else and momentarily surrender your ability to do anything about it but let that be a temporary thing retain ownership over your life your career your business your relationships retain ownership over all of that stuff the more you can hang on to that stuff the more you can steer Away From the Rough Waters and the more say you have in the future of things the more control you have over where you go in the future notice the patterns in how you talk about things if you complain about other people if you blame a loss on a competitor if you say boy this just wasn’t fair most likely you are surrendering your power I don’t want to make it a hard and fast rule because yeah sometimes things are questionable and it is fair to look into these things and to question the questions but if that’s your default if you think the world is set against you as a general rule probably in a general rule you are surrendering your power consider this and see if you can come up with a newer better more powerful way to interact with the world interact with the world as the leader of your own life your own career your own business [Music]