Ownership And Responsibility Quotes

you don't have to worry about burning bridges, if you're building your own

If you own this story you get to write the ending.

People that have been consistently hurt by others in life will only see the one time you hurt them and be blinded to all the good your heart has to offer. They look no further than what they want to see. Unfortunately, most of them remain a victim throughout their life.

Resolution, like responsibility, is a product of ownership, and kids can't resolve a conflict until they figure out how they contributed to it.

Blame doesn't empower you. It keeps you stuck in a place you don't want to be because you don't want to make the temporary, but painful decision, to be responsible for the outcome of your own life's happiness.

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.

If you want your prayers answered, you get off your knees and do the one thing you’re praying someone else will do for you.

Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where i end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. Taking responsibility for my life opens up many different options. Boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with. We must own our own thoughts and clarify distorted thinking.

Humility is the only thing that can restore a relationship, when respect has been lost.

When you blame others, what you are really saying is what is inside of you can’t be fixed, so you have no control of your own happiness. Therefore, you have made the conscience choice to give focus and fuel to a bad situation that will take you nowhere and give you nothing, but ignorance and pain.

Remember you can always change something when you can take ownership and responsibility for it.

I guess what I'm sayin' is, if you want to give Jules a job, be very careful.” “Why be careful?” Marnes asked. Marck gazed up at the confusion of pipes and wires overhead. “'Cause she'll damn well do it. Even if you don't really expect her to.

But really people are responsible for their own reactions/feelings and can’t go away blaming others with “YOU MAKE ME FEEL….” when they should really be saying “I FEEL…” because it gives them ownership over their own selves as opposed to constantly holding another accountable for their own happiness.

Don’t ever let your spouse or partner blame an outside person or persons for the ruin of your relationship or their past relationships. If two people are committed to one another then no one can change that.

A Master is not someone who merely revels in the benefits that he reaps from the power and control that he wields over his sub. A Master is not just an automaton who emotionally doles out orders and watches with amusement as his minions perform his bidding. A Master is not a person who only relishes the benefits that his superior status entitles him. Certainly all of these characteristics could and often do exist within a Master. He may be demanding and at times selfish. He may genuinely enjoy and even be aroused by the power that he has over a sub. He may be able to expertly control his emotions, issuing his commands and enforcing his discipline with stone-faced determination. But a true Master, a Master such as Matt, was so invested in his sub that he was actually in a way a slave himself. He was a slave to his love for me. He was a slave to his responsibility. He was a slave to the passion and the commitment. He was a slave to his overwhelming desire to protect his property at all costs. He was a slave to his slave. I knew without questions that he loved me so much he'd literally lay down his life for me. He owned me, and his ownership owned him

Decisions of character come from understanding that they are accountable to God only, not to family, spouses, religious leaders, corporations, public opinion or your own ego.

Success, meaningful success, begins when we take ownership and actively take responsibility for our part in the shortcomings of our life.

I can influence others, but I'm not responsible for others.

Being responsible is taking ownership of your life. It means you have taken the first radical step to becoming a complete human being—fully conscious and fully human. In taking responsibility and beginning the journey toward conscious living, you are putting an end to the age-old patterns of assigning blame outward or heavenward. You have begun the greatest adventure life has to offer: the voyage inward.

Leaders create leaders by passing on responsibility, creating ownership, accountability and trust.

Belief in the mission ties in with the fourth Law of Combat: Decentralized Command (chapter 8). The leader must explain not just what to do, but why. It is the responsibility of the subordinate leader to reach out and ask if they do not understand. Only when leaders at all levels understand and believe in the mission can they pass that understanding and belief to their teams so that they can persevere through challenges, execute and win.

The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind — of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive.

There is no ownership. There is only stewardship.

We cannot do things differently, we cannot carve out different ways of relating to others, until we can take responsibility for what we have done and those we have injured in the process.

On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.

Gratitude was never a noun; it's secretly a verb. It is not a place you accept defeat, settle in for broken dreams or call it the best life will get. Gratitude is getting out of laziness, self pity, denial and insecurity, in order to walk through that door God has been holding open for you this entire time.

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own. When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right. Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order. We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death. And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him. [excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968

What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it may be levity. If civilization is ever going to be anything but a grandiose pratfall, anything more than a can of deodorizer in the sh*thouse of existence, the people are going to have to concern themselves with magic and poetry. Reality is subjective, and there's an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as 'important' only if it's sober and severe. Your Cheerful Dumb are not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly LIKE themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

Keep in mind the following: what you really value in life is ownership, not money. If ever there is a choice—more money or more responsibility—you must always opt for the latter. A lower-paying position that offers more room to make decisions and carve out little empires is infinitely preferable to something that pays well but constricts your movements.

By placing His image in us, God assumes an extra measure of ownership and responsibility for our lives. We are His brand, His trademark.

Father of the fatherless son, now is the time to take ownership and see your own responsibility in the problem. Do not be a missing mystery. Do not be a fatherless father that covers up his flaws. Own up to it, and be the start of healing the unhealed fatherless son.

An infinity with God has always been a circle, not a straight line past all your mistakes.

The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your business. You own it as a sole proprietor. You have one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses: millions of other employees all over the world. You need to accept ownership of your career, your skills and the timing of your moves. It is your responsibility to protect this personal business of yours from harm and to position it to benefit from the changes in the environment. Nobody else can do that for you.

To name a thing is a proprietary act. It is a commitment. Of ownership or care or loyalty. It means something. With that single word I have declared that this little beast is mine, and that I have a responsibility to protect her.

Father of the fatherless son, do not underestimate the impact of your physical and emotional absence. Do not limit your role in your son’s life. Be the tools your son needs to help build his present and future. Father of the fatherless son, now is the time to take ownership and see your own responsibility in the problem. Do not be a missing mystery. Do not be a fatherless father that covers up his flaws. Own up to it, and be the start of healing the unhealed fatherless son.

It is your life...OWN IT! Your life purpose empowers you and enables you to live life abundantly. Empowerment begins by taking responsibility for your life and being accountable for your actions. Empowerment is the courage to live passionately and purposefully each day

Success is personal ownership of the dream, and responsibility for its desired outcome.

Personal growth doesn’t occur without effort. The effort is one of recognizing your own power, and taking ownership and responsibility for your own development.

More often than not, a statist's argument against Anarchism boils down to an unwillingness to take control and responsibility for their own lives, actions, and communities. The sad truth is that the human animal has been domesticated to the point where it actually fears Liberty.

The worst thing that can happen to you as a young person, is to refuse to grow up. You refuse to grow up when you believe that someone else must take responsibility for your life and life circumstances.

As you grow older, start using your brains, energy, and the means available to you, however little they may seem, to go after what you need to get better, so that you can have what you want to live the the life you desire.

When someone never takes responsibility for anything—words, actions, feelings—it is a challenging if not impossible way to maintain a relationship. They make up complex excuses and can rationalize anything. Be mindful as he shares the story of his life. Does he take ownership of past mistakes or missteps? Or does he share his history as though it were blameless and free of any errors on his part? Does he always seem to blame others for any negative situations in his life?

Experts have called behaviorial economists have noted an issue they call the endowment effect, Dr.Tolin says. Merely owning an item causes you to exaggerate its value, or "endow" it with more worth..... But the endowment effect can make even insignificant items feel more important to you.--pg17 Even when people don't talk about feeling responsible for an item and they don't fell like the item is too important to get rid of because it's THEIRS - and that's all there is to it. --p18

also have a new meeting minutes process. Everyone takes their own notes, but one person in the meeting volunteers to capture minutes. These are narrowed down to: Date: Meeting intention: Attendees: Key decisions: Tasks and ownership: The great thing about this new practice is that everyone in the meeting is responsible for stopping to say “Let’s capture this in the minutes”—not just the minute taker. And we now stop meetings five minutes early to review and agree on the minutes before we leave. Before we walk out of the meeting, the minute taker Slacks them to all of us and puts them in any other relevant channel so there isn’t any clean-up or synthesizing guesswork after we’ve dispersed.

Gene patents are the point of greatest concern in the debate over ownership of human biological materials, and how that ownership might interfere with science. As of 2005—the most recent year figures were available—the U.S. government had issued patents relating to the use of about 20 percent of known human genes, including genes for Alzheimer’s, asthma, colon cancer, and, most famously, breast cancer. This means pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and universities control what research can be done on those genes, and how much resulting therapies and diagnostic tests will cost. And some enforce their patents aggressively: Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, charges $3,000 to test for the genes. Myriad has been accused of creating a monopoly, since no one else can offer the test, and researchers can’t develop cheaper tests or new therapies without getting permission from Myriad and paying steep licensing fees. Scientists who’ve gone ahead with research involving the breast-cancer genes without Myriad’s permission have found themselves on the receiving end of cease-and-desist letters and threats of litigation.

While I told myself that each win was a small deposit on the ultimate ownership of the world welterweight crown, the enormous need in me to win touched a whole heap of other responses a fourteen years old can't really work out. It had something to do with rejecting the Lord, with my mother, the Judge, being surrounded by guys who came from wealthy homes, even my headless snake. While I didn't think of it as camouflage, I now know that it was, that I kept myself protected by being out in front. Too far in front to be an easy mark.

Your life is your responsibility. Take ownership to be kind to yourself by studying to the highest degree.

You can be free from whatever situation surrounds you to the degree that you are willing to take responsibility and ownership for it, even if it’s not your fault.

Ownership means once I detect a problem I own it. I am responsible for it.

Lack of ownership over your anger can incorrectly absolve you of all responsibility and so keep you stuck in the anger.

In cognitive therapy, we learn to take greater ownership of or responsibility for the catastrophic value judgments that distress us.

The goal of all leaders should be to work themselves out of a job. This means leaders must be heavily engaged in training and mentoring their junior leaders to prepare them to step up and assume greater responsibilities. When mentored and coached properly, the junior leader can eventually replace the senior leader, allowing the senior leader to move on to the next level of leadership.

Ownership is not about possession; it is about responsibility. What you own matters far less than what you take ownership for. What you take responsibility for is far more important than what you think you own.

The faculty and students share ownership of the learning outcomes; the students assume responsibility for their learning, and the faculty assumes responsibility for providing appropriate resources for that learning.

take ownership and stewardship over all of your decisions, actions, and outcomes, starting right now. Replace unnecessary blame with unwavering responsibility. Even if someone else drops that ball, ask yourself what you could have done—and, more importantly, what you can do in the future—to prevent that ball from being dropped again. While you can’t change what’s in the past, the good news is that you can change everything else.

In September, you son of a bitch, I am going to be thirty years old!" Correct, Monkey, correct! Which is precisely why it is you and not me who is responsible for your expectations and your dreams! Is that clear? you!

Boat Crew Six had become comfortable with substandard performance. Working under poor leadership and an unending cycle of blame, the team constantly failed. No one took ownership, assumed responsibility, or adopted a winning attitude.

There’s only one person walking in my shoes, and that’s me. And to state that someone else somehow slipped into them and therefore walked me out to this horrible place is to forget that, shoes or not, I still can choose where to walk.

The difference between ownership and stewardship is that you can do what you want with what you own. When you become a steward, you recognize that you have just as much control as an owner, but a responsibility that’s greater than yourself.

To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination. Surely, this process is not relationship, but mere imposition, and it is therefore essential to understand the difficult and complex desire to dominate. It takes many subtle forms; and in its self-righteous aspect, it is very obstinate. The desire to "serve" with the unconscious longing to dominate is difficult to understand. Can there be love where there is possessiveness? Can we be in communion with those whom we seek to control? To dominate is to use another for self-gratification, and where there is the use of another there is no love. When there is love there is consideration, not only for the children but for every human being. Unless we are deeply touched by the problem, we will never find the right way of education. Mere technical training inevitably makes for ruthlessness, and to educate our children we must be sensitive to the whole movement of life. What we think, what we do, what we say matters infinitely, because it creates the environment, and the environment either helps or hinders the child. Obviously, then, those of us who are deeply interested in this problem will have to begin to understand ourselves and thereby help to transform society; we will make it our direct responsability to bring about a new approach to education. If we love our children, will we not find a way of putting an end to war? But if we are merely using the word "love" without substance, then the whole complex problem of human misery will remain. The way out of this problem lies through ourselves. We must begin to understand our relationship with our fellow men, with nature, with ideas and with things, for without that understanding there is no hope, there is no way out of conflict and suffering. The bringing up of a child requires intelligent observation and care. Experts and their knowledge can never replace the parents' love, but most parents corrupt that love by their own fears and ambitions, which condition and distort the outlook of the child. So few of us are concerned with love, but we are vastly taken up with the appearance of love. The present educational and social structure does not help the individual towards freedom and integration; and if the parents are at all in earnest and desire that the child shall grow to his fullest integral capacity, they must begin to alter the influence of the home and set about creating schools with the right kind of educators. The influence of the home and that of the school must not be in any way contradictory, so both parents and teachers must re-educate themselves. The contradiction which so often exists between the private life of the individual and his life as a member of the group creates an endless battle within himself and in his relationships. This conflict is encouraged and sustained through the wrong kind of education, and both governments and organized religions add to the confusion by their contradictory doctrines. The child is divided within himself from the very start, which results in personal and social disasters.

Tortured Genius.” By this, he did not mean the artist or musician who suffers from mental health issues, but in the context of ownership. No matter how obvious his or her failing, or how valid the criticism, a Tortured Genius, in this sense, accepts zero responsibility for mistakes, makes excuses, and blames everyone else for their failings (and those of their team). In their mind, the rest of the world just can’t see or appreciate the genius in what they are doing. An individual with a Tortured Genius mind-set can have catastrophic impact on a team’s performance.

Serve the work” is about stewardship. Three of these behaviors are: I take responsibility for our community’s and consumers’ experience. I am responsible for the energy I bring to situations, so I work to stay positive. I take ownership of adapting to the fast pace of this environment.

Jesus provides a perfect example of why ownership is not about taking possession of what’s in front of you but about taking responsibility for what has been entrusted to you. The men who multiplied the master’s wealth were not the owners of that wealth, but they did take ownership of it.

I also don't think that parents should pay for their children's graduate or law school. Helping a student with a four-year bachelor's degree is very generous, but an advanced degree should be considered a personal responsibility. That will ensure that the coursework is taken very seriously and makes the young person take ownership of their degree. and when they graduate, it's a shared accomplishment that the whole family can be proud of. But do not encourage graduate school just for graduate school's sake. Work experience is much more valuable if the decision come down to that.

If an average man’s natural desire were to be a good husband and father, then their work would have been easy. But in early Rome, for example, bachelorhood had to be forbidden by law.[ix] The problem with the view of the social conservative is that it assumes a man’s duty to his wife and children is more natural, and therefore more easily enforced, than it actually is. They often do not see the immense work that had to go into making men good husbands or fathers, nor the great privileges through which men had to be enticed to accept these duties; still less do they see or dare to mention the great work—some would say oppression—that had to be exerted to make women faithful wives and mothers.[x] Social liberals and feminists make the same mistake. They assume the problem is that men desire patriarchy and ownership over the wife and family, that men desire dominion over wife and children. They do not see these are, in part, methods some civilizations resorted to in order to induce men to accept the responsibilities of father and husband. Men deprived of patriarchy have no reason to accept duty or responsibility, nor the loss of freedom that goes with family life.

When I started managing, my leadership philosophy was simple: The Golden Rule6 makes a lot of sense. Give everyone an explicit area of ownership that they are responsible for. Reward and status should derive from finishing high-quality work. Lead from the front, and never ask anyone to do something you wouldn’t.

corruption is defined in narrow terms to nail the poor deluded fool who slips a £20 note inside the cover of their passport before handing it to the Border Force officer who is checking travel documents with a CCTV camera looking over her shoulder. There’s nothing corrupt about the government minister who announces new and impossible performance targets for a hitherto just-about-coping agency that manages transport infrastructure, drives it into a smoking hole in the ground, and three years later retires and joins the board of the corporation that subsequently took over responsibility for maintaining all the bridges on behalf of the state—for a tidy annual fee, of course. After all, the minister is a demonstrable expert on the ownership and management of bridges, and there’s no provable link between their having set up the agency for failure and their subsequently being granted a nonexecutive directorship that gets them their share of the rental income from the privatized bridge, is there?

There is only one person to blame for this: me. I am the commander. I am responsible for the entire operation. As the senior man, I am responsible for every action that takes place on the battlefield. There is no one to blame but me. And I will tell you this right now: I will make sure that nothing like this ever happens to us again.

Life is simpler when we feel controlled. When we tell ourselves that we are controlled, we can shift the responsibility of freeing ourselves onto that which controls us. When we do that, we don’t have to bear the responsibility of our unhappiness or shoulder the burden of self-ownership. We don’t have to do anything. And nothing will ever change.

This book is a one-of-a-kind personal antiracism tool structured to help people with white privilege understand and take ownership of their participation in the oppressive system of white supremacy. It is designed to help them take responsibility for dismantling the way that this system manifests, both within themselves and within their communities.

DeVoto observed in the 1940s that no rancher in his right mind wanted ownership per se of the public lands. That would entail responsibility, stewardship, and worse, the payment of property taxes. What the rancher who is farsighted has always wanted, and what extractive industry wants in general, is private exploitation with costs paid by the public.

It will be very hard. You’ll make a million mistakes, and you’ll pay for them all, one way or another. But the hard parts will be your parts, they won’t be hard parts other people have imposed on you for their own reasons, or maybe for no reason at all. And your ownership of them – your responsibility to and for them – makes all the difference in the world.

As actor and comedian Lily Tomlin once said, “The road to success is always under construction.” So don’t allow yourself to be detoured from getting to your ONE Thing. Pave your way with the right people and place. BIG IDEAS Start saying “no.” Always remember that when you say yes to something, you’re saying no to everything else. It’s the essence of keeping a commitment. Start turning down other requests outright or saying, “No, for now” to distractions so that nothing detracts you from getting to your top priority. Learning to say no can and will liberate you. It’s how you’ll find the time for your ONE Thing. Accept chaos. Recognize that pursuing your ONE Thing moves other things to the back burner. Loose ends can feel like snares, creating tangles in your path. This kind of chaos is unavoidable. Make peace with it. Learn to deal with it. The success you have accomplishing your ONE Thing will continually prove you made the right decision. Manage your energy. Don’t sacrifice your health by trying to take on too much. Your body is an amazing machine, but it doesn’t come with a warranty, you can’t trade it in, and repairs can be costly. It’s important to manage your energy so you can do what you must do, achieve what you want to achieve, and live the life you want to live. Take ownership of your environment. Make sure that the people around you and your physical surroundings support your goals. The right people in your life and the right physical environment on your daily path will support your efforts to get to your ONE Thing. When both are in alignment with your ONE Thing, they will supply the optimism and physical lift you need to make your ONE Thing happen. Screenwriter Leo Rosten pulled everything together for us when he said, “I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” Live with Purpose, Live by Priority, and Live for Productivity. Follow these three for the same reason you make the three commitments and avoid the four thieves—because you want to leave your mark. You want your life to matter. 18

The glint of her ring catches my eyes as she flattens her palms against the table, reacting to my thrusts with fresh sparkles like it’s alive. And suddenly, I feel it. I feel my newly married status. I feel the heady euphoria of ownership, of possession, of responsibility. The weight of what I’ve picked up. She’s wearing my ring. She’s carrying my child. She’s fucking mine.

Entitlement is a double- edged sword (or a double-jawed trap) for kids. On one edge it gives kids all that they don’t need—indulgence, dullness, conceit, and laziness; and on the backswing, it takes from them everything they do need—motivation, inde- pendence, inventiveness, pride, responsibility, and a chance to really work for things and to build their own sense of fulfill- ment and self-esteem.

With such variation in individuals on the team, the challenge for any leader was to raise the level of every member of the team so that they could perform at their absolute best. In order to do that, a leader must make it his or her personal mission to train, coach, and mentor members of the team so they perform to the highest standards—or at least the minimum standard. But there is a dichotomy in that goal: while a leader must do everything possible to help develop and improve the performance of individuals on the team, a leader must also understand when someone does not have what it takes to get the job done. When all avenues to help an individual get better are exhausted without success, then it is the leader’s responsibility to fire that individual so he or she does not negatively impact the team.

God designed the universe according to his nature, life works better when we do it his way. When we are caring, responsible, and attuned to him, we have a better prospect of a good life. Reality is on your side. It is constructed so that immaturity causes your child some discomfort; ownership should bring some measure of satisfaction and fulfillment. Allow your child to experience both realities so as to learn boundaries: “Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor” (Proverbs 12:24).

What I discovered was that senior executives often presided. They organized work, then waited to review it when it was done. You were a worker early in your career, but once you climbed to the top, your role was to preside over a process. Well, my kind of executives dig into the details, work the problems day to day, and lead by example, not title. They take personal ownership of and responsibility for the end result. They see themselves as drivers rather than as a box high on the organization chart.

In general, the values of our culture require that perspectives remain unintegrated—for once it is integrated, a perspective gives us sensitivity rather than leverage; kinship rather than ownership; responsibility rather than power; and an attentiveness to the present rather than to schemata. Our patrifocal culture warns that such sensitivities are hindrances to our willpower—and we learn our lessons early, so that our resistance to the integration we so desperately need is often too subtle to notice.

She pulls up to the drive way Parks the car, Gets Out, Walks up to the door, And embraces me with an iron hold She is a friend and hugs me the same way she used to, Her hands sliding into their old creases along my body I let her into the house, knowing I could never refuse As she walks through my doors, she reminds me why she stands in my living room She tells me that she has returned because of my actions I didn’t learn from the last time Its my fault I should have been better, she berates me I should have let people in, she tells me I should not have gotten mad, she shares with me I should not have locked myself away, she lets me know I silently bear all the responsibility for her return As we start to get deep into conversation, I realize she has brought her bags Suitcase after suitcase lets me know she is here to stay She tells me she will run my life from now on She will make my schedule She will direct how I act She has come to my doors, breached my walls, destroyed my defenses, and announced her ownership. Crownless in my own kingdom I am defeated. This old friend is called Loneliness

Of the many exceptional leaders we served alongside throughout our military careers, the consistent attribute that made them great was that they took absolute ownership—Extreme Ownership—not just of those things for which they were responsible, but for everything that impacted their mission. These leaders cast no blame. They made no excuses. Instead of complaining about challenges or setbacks, they developed solutions and solved problems. They leveraged assets, relationships, and resources to get the job done. Their own egos took a back seat to the mission and their troops. These leaders truly led.

Likewise, we “trusted the process,” but the process didn’t save Toy Story 2 either. “Trust the Process” had morphed into “Assume that the Process Will Fix Things for Us.” It gave us solace, which we felt we needed. But it also coaxed us into letting down our guard and, in the end, made us passive. Even worse, it made us sloppy. Once this became clear to me, I began telling people that the phrase was meaningless. I told our staff that it had become a crutch that was distracting us from engaging, in a meaningful way, with our problems. We should trust in people, I told them, not processes. The error we’d made was forgetting that “the process” has no agenda and doesn’t have taste. It is just a tool—a framework. We needed to take more responsibility and ownership of our own work, our need for self-discipline, and our goals. Imagine an old, heavy suitcase whose well-worn handles are hanging by a few threads. The handle is “Trust the Process” or “Story Is King”—a pithy statement that seems, on the face of it, to stand for so much more. The suitcase represents all that has gone into the formation of the phrase: the experience, the deep wisdom, the truths that emerge from struggle. Too often, we grab the handle and—without realizing it—walk off without the suitcase. What’s more, we don’t even think about what we’ve left behind. After all, the handle is so much easier to carry around than the suitcase. Once you’re aware of the suitcase/handle problem, you’ll see it everywhere. People glom onto words and stories that are often just stand-ins for real action and meaning. Advertisers look for words that imply a product’s value and use that as a substitute for value itself. Companies constantly tell us about their commitment to excellence, implying that this means they will make only top-shelf products. Words like quality and excellence are misapplied so relentlessly that they border on meaningless. Managers scour books and magazines looking for greater understanding but settle instead for adopting a new terminology, thinking that using fresh words will bring them closer to their goals. When someone comes up with a phrase that sticks, it becomes a meme, which migrates around even as it disconnects from its original meaning. To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. It is the responsibility of good leaders to make sure that words remain attached to the meanings and ideals they represent.

Liberals hate the Pilgrims for their religious faith and devotion, but they should hate the Pilgrims because the Pilgrims learned the hard way that liberalism just doesn’t put food on the table. Collective farming is a recipe for collective starvation. No sense of ownership means no sense of personal responsibility. The Pilgrims learned it in 1620. The French learned it in 1789. (Although they could stand to learn it again.) The Soviets learned it in 1989. The Chinese are learning it right now. And when everyone is hoping that someone else will put food on their table, it creates not only starvation—it creates discord.

Having to remind your partner to do something doesn’t take that something off your list. It adds to it. And what’s more, reminding is often unfairly characterized as nagging. (Almost every man interviewed in connection with this project said nagging is what they hate most about being married, but they also admit that they wait for their wives to tell them what to do at home.) It’s not a partnership if only one of you is running the show, which means making the important distinction between delegating tasks and handing off ownership of a task. Ownership belongs to the person who first off remembers to plan, then plans, and then follows through on every aspect of executing the plan and completing the task without reminders. A survey conducted by Bright Horizons—an on-site corporate childcare provider—found that 86 percent of working mothers say they handle the majority of family and household responsibilities, “not just making appointments, but also driving to them and mentally calendaring who needs to be where, and when.” In order to save us from big-time burnout, we need our partners to be more than helpers who carry out instructions that we’ve taken time and energy to think through (and then who blame us when things fall through the cracks). We need our partners to take the lead by consistently picking up a task, or “card”—week after week—and completely taking it off our mental to-do list by doing every aspect of what the card requires. Otherwise we still worry about whether the task is being done as we would do it, or done fully, or done at all—which leaves us still shouldering the mental and emotional load for the “help” or the “favor” we had to ask for. But how do we get our partners to take that initiative and own every aspect of a household or childcare responsibility without being (nudge, nudge) told what to do? Or, to simply figure it out?

In mythology, the transformative acts of people who seek self-knowledge by pursuing an epic adventure always seem too activate from some sort of dying to the world. Following this origination formula, I shall enter the unground labyrinth to confront my malevolent self, and wage a battle seeking to annihilate the demonic core of my being. We can only destroy those demons that we take personal ownership of and responsibility for creating. Can I use writing as a sorcerers tool to descend into the crooked lanes of my spiritual labyrinth to confront the warlock of an egotistical self? Can I use writing as an intentional mechanism to attempt undergoing a spiritual purification?

The Dark Knight His gift is that he pushes a woman’s emotional and sexual edges. The Dark Knight lives at his own edge. The Dark Knight is named the dark knight because he’s ready and willing to face danger, and even death, to be fully alive. You don’t have to risk your life to traverse this edge. You need only to be willing to pull back the curtain of fear and look at where you’re hiding or what you're hiding from. A man who lives at his edge is exciting to a woman because he demonstrates courage and bold resolve. He knows how to push a woman’s sexual and emotional edge and open her to hidden aspects of herself – because he doesn’t avoid his own. The Lover His gift is the gift of sexual integrity. The Lover owns his sexuality. He takes responsibility for what arises in him sexually and how he acts on that – never pretending that his sexual excitement controls him. By being in sexual possession he can give a woman something most men cannot: sexual freedom. The Lover is a powerful amalgamation of all the types, but most especially The Sage and The Dark Knight. His integrity builds trust, like The Sage. His fearlessness inspires passion, like The Dark Knight. His willingness to take responsibility sets a woman free. Your opportunity in embodying this archetype is parlaying ownership and responsibility into a very deep sexual connection with a woman.

To really be free of fear involves being free of the feeling of any personal responsibility of ownership for everything - even of our body. If we feel that we are a separate individual who personally owns or possesses even just a body, fear will hound us. What we feel we own is felt to be personal and what is felt to be personal is felt to be separate from others and life, and then fear seems warranted. But when nothing is experienced as personal then nothing is felt to be separate and fear falls away. So regardless of how much money, if any, we have in the bank and how many material possessions we own, each of us is invited to the deeper surrender of ‘owning without owning’.

But whatever my reasons, whatever my baggage, I take responsibility. I still made choices—many wrong choices. Can I blame Callum or anyone else for seeing only my past? I could try to tell Callum how I’ve changed—about my breakdown, my therapy, the changes I’ve made in the past two years. I haven’t just turned over a new leaf. I uprooted the whole plant before starting from a new seed. He wouldn’t believe it though. Callum is going to believe what he wants. Which serves my purposes just fine. He believes I’m still a rogue and I’ll force him to face his feelings about Serafina. She’ll get her happily-ever-after, and I’ll … well. I don’t know. I would disappear to my duchy, but if I don’t perform for Uncle, I won’t have that for long. He’ll find a way to turn the conservatorship into ownership.

Unless we do conscious work on it, the shadow is almost always projected; that is, it is neatly laid on someone or something else so we do not have to take responsibility for it. This is the way things were done five hundred years ago, and most of us are still stuck in this medieval consciousness. The medieval world was based on mutual shadow projection; it thrived on a fortress mentality, armor, walled cities, possession by force, ownership of anything feminine by male prerogative, royal patronage, and city-states in perpetual siege at each other’s gates. Medieval society was almost entirely ruled by patriarchal values that are famous for their one-sidedness. Even the Church took part in shadow politics. Saints like Benedictine monasteries and some of the esoteric societies avoided the projecting game.

As an experiment, I tweaked the questions using Kelly’s “Did I do my best to” formulation. • Did I do my best to be happy? • Did I do my best to find meaning? • Did I do my best to have a healthy diet? • Did I do my best to be a good husband? Suddenly, I wasn’t being asked how well I performed but rather how much I tried. The distinction was meaningful to me because in my original formulation, if I wasn’t happy or I ignored Lyda, I could always blame it on some factor outside myself. I could tell myself I wasn’t happy because the airline kept me on the tarmac for three hours (in other words, the airline was responsible for my happiness). Or I overate because a client took me to his favorite barbecue joint, where the food was abundant, caloric, and irresistible (in other words, my client—or was it the restaurant?—was responsible for controlling my appetite). Adding the words “did I do my best” added the element of trying into the equation. It injected personal ownership and responsibility into my question-and-answer process. After a few weeks using this checklist, I noticed an unintended consequence. Active questions themselves didn’t merely elicit an answer. They created a different level of engagement with my goals. To give an accurate accounting of my effort, I couldn’t simply answer yes or no or “30 minutes.” I had to rethink how I phrased my answers. For one thing, I had to measure my effort. And to make it meaningful—that is, to see if I was trending positively, actually making progress—I had to measure on a relative scale, comparing the most recent day’s effort with previous days. I chose to grade myself on a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 being the best score. If I scored low on trying to be happy, I had only myself to blame. We may not hit our goals every time, but there’s no excuse for not trying. Anyone can try.

He expects it from Malcolm and Harold; Malcolm because he is happy and sees a single path—his path—to happiness, and so therefore occasionally asks him if he can set him up with someone, or if he wants to find someone, and then is bewildered when he declines; Harold because he knows that the part of the parental role Harold most enjoys is inserting himself into his life and rooting about in it as best as he can. He has grown to enjoy this too, sometimes—he is touched that someone is interested enough in him to order him around, to be disappointed by the decisions he makes, to have expectations for him, to assume the responsibility of ownership of him. Two years ago, he and Harold were at a restaurant and Harold was giving him a lecture about how his job at Rosen Pritchard had made him essentially an accessory to corporate malfeasance, when they both realized that their waiter was standing above them, holding his pad before him

I will revisit the details of repair, including lengthier scripts for handling these tricky moments, in the next part of this book. But for now, I want to offer some baseline to-dos: Say you’re sorry, share your reflections with your child—restating your memory of what happened, so your kid knows it wasn’t all in his head—and then say what you wish you had done differently and what you plan to do differently now and in the future. It’s important to take ownership over your role (“Mommy was having big feelings that came out in a yelling voice. Those were my feelings and it’s my job to work on managing them better. It’s never your fault when I yell and it’s not your job to figure out how I can stay calmer. I love you”) instead of insinuating that your child “made you” react in a certain way. And remember: as a parent, you are your child’s role model. When your child sees you as a work in progress, he learns that he, too, can learn from his struggles and take responsibility when he acts in a way he isn’t proud of.

Don’t come to someone with feedback (or a problem) unless you have one or more solutions—In this approach the responsibility lies with the person giving the feedback to also come up with the best solution for acting on the feedback. That sounds totally reasonable and helpful: you’re telling people about the problem and the solution in one bite. • The feedback sandwich—You know this one. You open with good news, slip in some bad news, and then close with good news. That way, the person in front of you is opened up for the bad news by hearing the good news and still likes you in the end because you’ve closed with something good.6 And we’re supposed to give more positive feedback than negative feedback (the best ratio is at least 3:17), so this puts us well on our way to that. • Socratic questioning—Here, you leave people to draw their own conclusions by simply asking a set of helpful questions to take them to the realization that there’s an issue (and the hope is that they’ll then ask you for a solution or even stumble on your solution and offer it up as if it were their own). This, we’re told, increases ownership of the issue because the other person—the person needing to change—came up with the idea himself.

when someone is not leading you, then you lead them. You pick up the slack for their weakness. My leader doesn’t want to come up with a plan? That’s okay. I will. My leader doesn’t want to give a brief? That’s fine. I will. My leader doesn’t want to mentor the younger troops? That’s okay. I will do it. My leader doesn’t want to take the blame when something goes wrong? That’s fine with me. I’m going to take the blame. And you have to think about that one. That one can be tricky because you think to yourself, “If I take the blame, I’m going to look bad. I’m going to look bad in front of the team and in front of the more senior boss—my weak boss’s boss.” But think about it from a leader’s perspective. Let’s say the mission was a failure, and the boss comes in to find out what happened. Listen to the way this situation plays out: I’m the guy that was in charge of the mission and I say, “Sorry, boss, we failed. But it wasn’t my fault. It was his fault,” and I point the finger at someone else. Now imagine that the guy I pointed the finger at says, “Yes. It was my fault. Here’s what happened. Here are the mistakes I made. And here is what I am going to do to fix the situation next time.” Who does the senior boss respect more? The guy who blamed someone or the guy who took responsibility—the guy that took ownership? Of course, it is the guy that takes ownership of

Effective leadership begins with having the right mind-set; in particular, it begins with having an ownership mind-set. This means a willingness to put oneself in the shoes of a decision maker and think through all of the considerations that the decision maker must factor into his or her thinking and actions. Having an ownership mind-set is essential to developing into an effective leader. By the same token, the absence of an ownership mind-set often explains why certain people with great promise ultimately fail to reach their leadership potential. An ownership mind-set involves three essential elements, which I will put in the form of questions: •  Can you figure out what you believe, as if you were an owner? •  Can you act on those beliefs? •  Do you act in a way that adds value to someone else: a customer, a client, a colleague, or a community? Do you take responsibility for the positive and negative impact of your actions on others? These elements are not a function of your formal position in an organization. They are not a function of title, power, or wealth, although these factors can certainly be helpful in enabling you to act like an owner. These elements are about what you do. They are about taking ownership of your convictions, actions, and impact on others. In my experience, great organizations are made up of executives who focus specifically on these elements and work to empower their employees to think and act in this way.

We have become so trusting of technology that we have lost faith in ourselves and our born instincts. There are still parts of life that we do not need to “better” with technology. It’s important to understand that you are smarter than your smartphone. To paraphrase, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your Google. Mistakes are a part of life and often the path to profound new insights—so why try to remove them completely? Getting lost while driving or visiting a new city used to be an adventure and a good story. Now we just follow the GPS. To “know thyself” is hard work. Harder still is to believe that you, with all your flaws, are enough—without checking in, tweeting an update, or sharing a photo as proof of your existence for the approval of your 719 followers. A healthy relationship with your devices is all about taking ownership of your time and making an investment in your life. I’m not calling for any radical, neo-Luddite movement here. Carving out time for yourself is as easy as doing one thing. Walk your dog. Stroll your baby. Go on a date—without your handheld holding your hand. Self-respect, priorities, manners, and good habits are not antiquated ideals to be traded for trends. Not everyone will be capable of shouldering this task of personal responsibility or of being a good example for their children. But the heroes of the next generation will be those who can calm the buzzing and jigging of outside distraction long enough to listen to the sound of their own hearts, those who will follow their own path until they learn to walk erect—not hunched over like a Neanderthal, palm-gazing. Into traffic. You have a choice in where to direct your attention. Choose wisely. The world will wait. And if it’s important, they’ll call back.

Five minutes later he was out of there. About thirty seconds to do the job, and three minutes thirty to cover his tracks. He could have done anything he liked in the virtual structure, more or less. He could have transferred ownership of the entire organization into his own name, but he doubted if that would have gone unnoticed. He didn’t want it anyway. It would have meant responsibility, working late nights at the office, not to mention massive and time-consuming fraud investigations and a fair amount of time in jail. He wanted something that nobody other than the computer would notice: that was the bit that took thirty seconds. The thing that took three minutes thirty was programming the computer not to notice that it had noticed anything. It had to want not to know about what Ford was up to, and then he could safely leave the computer to rationalize its own defenses against the information’s ever emerging. It was a programming technique that had been reverse-engineered from the sort of psychotic mental blocks that otherwise perfectly normal people had been observed invariably to develop when elected to high political office. The other minute was spent discovering that the computer system already had a mental block. A big one. He would never have discovered it if he hadn’t been busy engineering a mental block himself. He came across a whole slew of smooth and plausible denial procedures and diversionary subroutines exactly where he had been planning to install his own. The computer denied all knowledge of them, of course, then blankly refused to accept that there was anything even to deny knowledge of and was generally so convincing that even Ford almost found himself thinking he must have made a mistake. He was impressed. He was so impressed, in fact, that he didn’t bother to install his own mental block procedures, he just set up calls to the ones that were already there, which then called themselves when questioned, and so on. He quickly set about debugging the little bits of code he had installed himself, only to discover they weren’t there. Cursing, he searched all over for them, but could find no trace of them at all. He was just about to start installing them all over again when he realized that the reason he couldn’t find them was that they were working already. He grinned with satisfaction. He tried to discover what the computer’s other mental block was all about, but it seemed, not unnaturally, to have a mental block about it. He could no longer find any trace of it at all, in fact; it was that good. He wondered if he had been imagining it. He wondered if he had been imagining that it was something to do with something in the building, and something to do with the number thirteen. He ran a few tests. Yes, he had obviously been imagining it.

SELF-MANAGEMENT Trust We relate to one another with an assumption of positive intent. Until we are proven wrong, trusting co-workers is our default means of engagement. Freedom and accountability are two sides of the same coin. Information and decision-making All business information is open to all. Every one of us is able to handle difficult and sensitive news. We believe in collective intelligence. Nobody is as smart as everybody. Therefore all decisions will be made with the advice process. Responsibility and accountability We each have full responsibility for the organization. If we sense that something needs to happen, we have a duty to address it. It’s not acceptable to limit our concern to the remit of our roles. Everyone must be comfortable with holding others accountable to their commitments through feedback and respectful confrontation. WHOLENESS Equal worth We are all of fundamental equal worth. At the same time, our community will be richest if we let all members contribute in their distinctive way, appreciating the differences in roles, education, backgrounds, interests, skills, characters, points of view, and so on. Safe and caring workplace Any situation can be approached from fear and separation, or from love and connection. We choose love and connection. We strive to create emotionally and spiritually safe environments, where each of us can behave authentically. We honor the moods of … [love, care, recognition, gratitude, curiosity, fun, playfulness …]. We are comfortable with vocabulary like care, love, service, purpose, soul … in the workplace. Overcoming separation We aim to have a workplace where we can honor all parts of us: the cognitive, physical, emotional, and spiritual; the rational and the intuitive; the feminine and the masculine. We recognize that we are all deeply interconnected, part of a bigger whole that includes nature and all forms of life. Learning Every problem is an invitation to learn and grow. We will always be learners. We have never arrived. Failure is always a possibility if we strive boldly for our purpose. We discuss our failures openly and learn from them. Hiding or neglecting to learn from failure is unacceptable. Feedback and respectful confrontation are gifts we share to help one another grow. We focus on strengths more than weaknesses, on opportunities more than problems. Relationships and conflict It’s impossible to change other people. We can only change ourselves. We take ownership for our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions. We don’t spread rumors. We don’t talk behind someone’s back. We resolve disagreements one-on-one and don’t drag other people into the problem. We don’t blame problems on others. When we feel like blaming, we take it as an invitation to reflect on how we might be part of the problem (and the solution). PURPOSE Collective purpose We view the organization as having a soul and purpose of its own. We try to listen in to where the organization wants to go and beware of forcing a direction onto it. Individual purpose We have a duty to ourselves and to the organization to inquire into our personal sense of calling to see if and how it resonates with the organization’s purpose. We try to imbue our roles with our souls, not our egos. Planning the future Trying to predict and control the future is futile. We make forecasts only when a specific decision requires us to do so. Everything will unfold with more grace if we stop trying to control and instead choose to simply sense and respond. Profit In the long run, there are no trade-offs between purpose and profits. If we focus on purpose, profits will follow.