We feel powerless about many things in our life. We don't want responsibility for the things we can't control. But when you refuse to take responsibility, you give up all power for the things you care about. The secret is to take ownership of everything.
Hunter Powers: Hello and welcome to The One, I'm your host, Hunter Powers, broadcasting live from our nation's capital, DC proper, Washington DC. And today's one idea is taking ownership of everything. I believe I first came across this idea in the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill many, many years ago. And it's certainly something that I've seen permeated through many, many different mediums. And the basic premise is that one of the secrets of getting ahead, of making progress, of getting to that next level is truly taking ownership of everything. And everything means everything. You can think of it as a thought exercise. You can think of it as a practical reality, but what if everything that was going on in your life right now, and everything that was going on around you, and truly everything was all your fault. Bad word isn't it, fault? All your responsibility maybe. All your work, all your outcome. All your possibility, all your opportunity.
Hunter Powers: I'm saying the same thing, but those words, they have a different feeling, don't they? But what if you took responsibility for absolutely everything, what next? If it as all your responsibility, your opportunity, your fault, how would you interact with the next step? And there are many points to this exercise, many inflection points in how you approach ideas, past, progress. How you attack them, how you accomplish.
Hunter Powers: The first part is reclaiming your power in the situation. Oftentimes we feel powerless about many of the things that are happening. There's something that we want, something that we're going after, something that we're trying to maintain. But there's all these forces out there we feel we have no control over. Well, I can't control what that person thinks, that was just pure randomness. I did my best, they're crazy, they're insane. It was completely unrealistic, no one could have succeeded. All of these are ultimately excuses, and most people put all of the power into the excuse. All of these reasons why you're not happy with your current situation, your current progress. They get the power, they get the weight, they have the force to do what apparently you cannot. The system is rigged, and it's rigged against me.
Hunter Powers: Maybe that's true by the way, maybe it is. It's rigged, and it's rigged against you, and the odds are against you and everyone that ever tried before failed, but you're still in this exact situation you're in. Let's just assume that that is the reality of everything that's happened before this point in time. And now you're given a choice, do I put all of the power in that? Or do I claim all of the power by taking responsibility for all of that? You say, "But I didn't do any of that. That was all done without me. I don't gree with any of that. Why would I ever take responsibility for it?" Because if you don't take responsibility for it, it's going to keep all of the power. That's how it works. And in general, we think of responsibility and ownership as something that requires alignment with our personal philosophy.
Hunter Powers: If it's something that I'm responsible for, it should be a reflection of me, and this is not a reflection of me, and therefore I'm not taking any responsibility for it. And so we have to get past this idea. Past the idea that responsibility requires alignment with who we are. Responsibility is alignment with where we are going. We take the responsibility because we are not going to allow the past to dictate the future. Let's take a look at a real world example, a simple example. Let's imagine that there is someone out there who has something that you want, maybe it's a promotion, maybe it's a raise, maybe it's permission to work on a project that you want to work on. Maybe it's a redefinition of the role that you have in a situation, a change in responsibilities. Maybe it's a physical item and you've gone and you've talked with this person on multiple occasions and you've made an excellent case for why this change should happen. It's completely logical, it makes incredible sense. If you went out on the sidewalk and asked 100 people who do they agree with, you or this other person, 99 would say you. Instantly, it wouldn't take them any time.
Hunter Powers: But still, this person always says, "No, that's not going to happen. We're going to do this instead." Whose fault is that? Remember, pretty much everyone agrees with you, your logic is sound. You made an incredible compelling argument for why this change should happen and happen now. In fact, it should have happened three years ago. Everyone agrees with you, except the one person who has this thing who seems to have the power to give it you. They always just say no. Whose fault is it, who should you be angry with, upset with? And of course, most people would say that person, they're crazy, they're insane. Who does that? Who doesn't agree with this incredibly compelling argument? But the answer is not that person, the answer is you. You're the one to blame.
Hunter Powers: You probably know that they don't respond to this completely compelling argument. You've probably had similar situations in the past where you've presented information in a similar way and they respond back, "No." And yet you've gone again, you've taken a whole bunch of time to put this together. You've gone on the sidewalk and asked 100 people and find that 99 agree. You've tested the idea to make sure that your logic is sound and you've gone and presented it one more time. And just as you could have predicted, they said no. It was a completely reasonable, completely expected outcome of the situation. Or maybe this is the first time you've ever interacted with this person and they said no. "But I did all of my research, I prepared, I was so well prepared. Couldn't have done any better." And then they said no.
Hunter Powers: Well, maybe you didn't do enough research. You didn't get the outcome that you wanted, did you? And again it's so easy to say, "Yeah, but that was them, that was all them. I did my part." And that's just an excuse. So, what do we do in this situation? We have to take complete ownership. The reason that we didn't get the thing that we wanted, the change that we wanted, was because we didn't make the right argument. Maybe we took the wrong approach, the wrong strategy. Maybe we were wrong to even try to make the change in this way through this person. Maybe there's a completely different person that we should have gone through to the change, or maybe this change is not the change that we actually wanted. And maybe this process of actually having this conversation with a person was a healthy step towards the change that we're going after.
Hunter Powers: But if it is all your fault, what are you going to do differently? Are you going to try something completely different, completely off the wall? You clearly don't understand this person. What if you approach the situation as I have no understanding or what this person wants, or what this person needs, all I know is that they have this thing that apparently I want. They are capable of making this change that I have to have. How do I figure out what it is that makes them tick, and how I can answer that in the form of giving them enough value that in their mind they will make this change? Because it really doesn't matter what you think, just because it makes sense to you, it couldn't be less relevant in this situation.
Hunter Powers: Now, you also have the option of changing the situation. Maybe what you determine is you're not actually interested in trying to create the change through this person, because it's not worth it. It is all your responsibility and you're not interested in that. That's not actually the thing that you wanted. You thought you wanted it, but you don't, and you try to take another angle. And that would be the most likely finding another person that can create this same change, or this same outcome that you're looking for. Or perhaps you realize that the amount of effort that it would take to get this change from that person you'd rather just do it yourself. And how do you get to these conclusions? It's by taking complete ownership of the situation. Taking complete ownership of the situation also simplifies. You don't have to spend a whole lot of time examining who's at fault, who am I going to rely on, where did this all go wrong. The answer's you. But that also empowers you to immediately create action towards the outcome that you're looking for.
Hunter Powers: And there are crazy examples out there, the ones that I see most often are something along the lines of you're driving your car down the highway, obeying all the laws, clear day, there's no one in front of you. Someone comes speeding up from behind, smashes into you. Whose fault is it? And they say well, it should be your fault, right, because everything is your fault. Now, there's legal fault, which is kind of something completely different. So, that person that rammed into you from behind, as long as they have insurance, there's a high probability that they will be paying to fix your car. And hopefully there's no bodily harm as a result of this unfortunate incident.
Hunter Powers: But, getting back to the original thing, maybe you could have been more alert in the moment. Maybe you could have taken more decisive action in diverting from the oncoming car. Were you completely aware of your surroundings? Were you watching everything? Were you considering the option that that car that was accelerating at a tremendous rate from behind you might lose control and might hit you? Could you have sped up? could you have pulled to the side? Could you have slowed down in the other lane so he would have zoomed by? I don't know, probably. You can probably justify at least one additional action that you could have done to reduce the probability of it happening. But you chose to focus on other things, can't focus on everything. And that's fine, but the point is that it was your fault. And that fault is a mindset.
Hunter Powers: If everything is your fault, everything is also your opportunity. And if everything is someone else's fault, then everything is someone else's opportunity. And this doesn't mean that you can't be successful without taking 100% ownership of everything, but it does mean that it's a lot harder to. You're going to end up relying on a lot of luck and happenstance to find your success. And maybe that's what you want, maybe you like that. As the wind blows. That's fine, and you might not like this, but you're going to have to take complete ownership that that's what you're doing. You are relying on luck and happenstance to find your success, because you refuse to take the responsibility for it.
Hunter Powers: And you'll probably deny that too, but you're not being honest with yourself if you do. So, take a moment, think about it. What would it mean if everything was my responsibility? If everything was my fault? If everything was my opportunity? How would I approach the situation differently, and is that a better approach? And you can think about that approach in the context of how you work on ideas and actions today, and how you might work on those actions in this next context. I believe you will see that that approach is a superior approach even in your current context, your current way of thinking of the world, where only a few things are your fault, your responsibility and your opportunity. That the ideas that are formed through this context, they're stronger ideas. And they're stronger ideas because they have to be by definition. They have to withstand far more fear than your current ideas.
Hunter Powers: Your current ideas are allowed to be weak, but if you're responsible for the world, your ideas have got to be strong. They are strong by definition because these are ideas forged in the context of total ownership. So, try it out, it's free to try. Money back guarantee. You've got a problem, you've got a situation, you've got an opportunity and you're not sure how do you move forward through it. Even better if you've been here before and it hasn't worked, and you can't figure out why. Or you think you know why, but you're really frustrated with the reason why. Take that situation, reframe it as I'm responsible for everything. What would I do next if that was true? Not saying it's true, but if it was true, what would you do next? What is the action that you would take? And then consider that game plan against the original.
Hunter Powers: I personally really like this idea. I find it to be a very healthy idea. It is a hard idea, but most hard things are ultimately good. And again, why? At the most simplest level, because the ideas that this system will produce are far stronger than the ideas that will come from a very limited sense of ownership. And that is your one idea for today. Until next time, broadcasting live from DC proper, I am Hunter Powers.