On Ownership

When you make the transition from renting to owning an item (like a house) it can bring you an immense amount of pride. That item is yours and you’ve worked hard to amass enough capital to call it yours. That house can bring you joy every day just living within its walls.

Ownership comes with responsibility, however, and now anything that happens to that house falls on you to take care of. If the sink breaks, that’s on you. If a hail storm breaks one of the windows, that’s on you.

This type of mentality around ownership contributes to all aspects of life, but many humans don’t treat it the way they’re supposed to. Some humans think that placing the ownership on someone else when something goes wrong will make their lives easier.

Some humans forget that there’s only one owner of their life. That they’re not renting their life from someone else and everything in their life they’re accountable for.

This way of thinking can be detrimental to personal growth and cultivate a victim mentality. It can destroy teams at companies and leads to wars among nations. This mentality goes against the very nature of humans being imperfect creatures.

Remember, a change of mindset and lifestyle always starts with recognizing that something is amiss. For the next week, if you find yourself blaming someone at work or at home, catch yourself in the act. Unwrap what happened and see if it was really that other human’s fault and what was under your control.

Own your life.

Essay inspired by Jocko Willink’s “Extreme Ownership”.