I have been anticipating writing this essay since the idea for this blog went from idea to reality.  People who know me know that this concept of owning your decisions and actions, owning your own role in creating the situation you are in, is a BIG hot button of mine.  I’ve built your expectations of an “essay to beat all other essays” as I’ve teased the appearance of this entry.  We’ve been building up to it over the last three essays, discussing first identifying the RIGHT problem to solve, then thinking forward a few steps in your decision-making process to ensure you are making the best decision, followed by a discussion on the consequences of the actions (or inactions) you take.  It all boils down to this thought, though:  whatever decision you make, whatever actions you take (or don’t take), whatever consequences occur because of those decisions and actions, you must own the outcome and deal with it.  So, here we go. (Steps up onto soapbox)

All of you out there, whether you’ve been in large multinational corporations or small “mom and pop” shops know someone like this:  They walk around every day grumbling about how unhappy they are.  “This place SUCKS,” you will often hear them sneer.  “I hate it here.”  After a while, you lose your patience and ask the obvious question:  why don’t you leave?  Invariably, the answer is “I can’t.  I’m stuck here.”  Oh, I got so tired of hearing “victim talk”!  You were not stuck there!  You just didn’t like the consequences of your other options.  You chose to stay, whether you wanted to admit it or not.  That was usually when I wanted to scream, “Shut up about it and make the best of the situation!  Own your choice to stay.”

I know another person, a serial small time entrepreneur.  He has had glimpses of brilliance, but invariably within a year or two each venture has failed.  Miserably.  Every time our paths would cross, there would be another sob story about what went wrong.  It was always due to issues beyond his control:  I couldn’t find good employees; the location was bad; there was too much local competition; and, my favorite, I was misled about the opportunity.  Do you know what I have never heard from him?  I have never heard any such version of:  this is what I’ve learned from this venture and what I know to look out for next time.  Never, I repeat, never has anything ever been his fault, or had he done anything which he could consider learning from for his next venture.

While I hesitate to go here, there is an awful lot of victim-playing going on in our current social environment.  The types of opportunities available to certain groups of people have changed as our economy has evolved.  Accepting that and asking the hard questions about what you need to do differently to get on a better path is hard work.  And often depressing.  And can leave you feeling helpless and hopeless.  For many, it is easier to play the victim and blame the “other”.  Unfortunately, our current social environment has embraced blaming the “other” to a violent and clearly counterproductive degree.  I know it’s hard, but OWN your situation.  Life may not have treated you fairly but blaming someone else is not going to make your situation better.

Although I’ve now spent about half this essay talking about how annoying, frustrating or even dangerous it is when other people don’t own their choices, I want to focus on you.  Or, rather, get YOU to focus on you.  As much as I’d like to complain about the behaviors of others, I can’t make them act any differently.  I can only affect my own actions, just as you can only affect yours.  So, as I step down from my soapbox, let’s discuss some ways to resist playing the victim and set strategies for successfully owning your own decisions and their consequences.

First, let’s be clear and honest about one thing:  consistently owning your decisions and their consequences, consistently resisting playing the victim, is difficult work.  It is downright exhausting.  And it is hard.  You will, at times, blame others or something out of your control.  That’s ok.  Sometimes that becomes a self-preservation mechanism.  The key is to not do this most of the time nor to get stuck in that mode even for a given situation, like a job loss or relationship crumble.

I hear the cries from the gallery:  “Sherri, what do you, or anyone else, care about how I handle my own crises?  It’s none of your dang business.  Leave me alone and stay in your lane.”  I hear you and in some cases that is true.  However, in most cases, you not owning the consequences of your decisions affects many others.  And those of us affected care very much!  Even if we don’t care much about you, personally, we care that you’ve impacted our situation.  So, gallery, it’s not just about you.

Over the years, I have sat on panel discussions aimed at various age ranges, to discuss “what should students/young adults do to best prepare themselves for success in the ‘real’ world?”  I would listen to my fellow panelists wax poetic for extended periods of time discussing various strategies for success.  When the mic came to me, I always shared some short version of this:  Show up on time; do what you say you’re going to do; own the consequences of your decisions and actions.

As someone who has hired and managed scores of people over my career, these were always my guiding principles for evaluating employees and the standard to which I tried to hold myself.  It’s not rocket science, but nor is it necessarily easy.  I promised strategies, so here is what I recommend:  as noted above, no one can hold themselves to this standard 100% of the time.  It’s ok to give yourself a little pity party.  We all do it.  But make it short and keep it as private as you can.  Remember that you are not doing this to be accountable to anyone but yourself.  Others will benefit, but no one more so than you.  You are worth it.  You want to like what you see when you look in the mirror.  It can be extraordinarily frustrating to see many others around and above you shirking responsibility but I guarantee this:  over time, it will in some way come around to them; and the longer it takes the worse it will be.  Shut them out.  Focus on yourself.  Show up on time.  Do what you say you’re going to do.  Own the consequences of your decisions and actions.