The upside of equity
The only way to win is to have something to lose.
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong
The grass is greener where you water it.
Sometimes things really do suck. Projects get mismanaged. Jobs are a bad fit. Relationships run their course. Not everything deserves our continued investment.
But most of the time, things suck because we stop investing in them.
If we skip the oil changes and ignore the check engine light, our car doesn’t suck; we do. The same principle applies to the worthwhile pursuits in our lives: our jobs, our relationships, our creative work, etc.
The less we invest, the worse things get. And the worse things get, the easier it is to shift blame externally.
It’s a self-defense mechanism. The more reasons we create that something is broken, the less responsible we are for its failure, and the less work we need to do. If we convince ourselves that something is unsalvageable, we don’t have to try harder. When we can blame something else, we don’t have to make any changes to ourselves.
It’s a natural instinct to protect our ego and conserve our energy, but if we don’t realize we’re doing it, we become insufferable, entitled, and chronically disappointed. We believe the whole world is rigged against us and nothing is worth investing in.
Skin in the game
To live a fulfilling life, we have to invest in things that matter to us.
That means accepting risk. It means rolling up our sleeves, doing the work, and taking ownership of the outcomes regardless of whether they are good or bad.
It’s much harder than externalizing responsibility. When things go wrong, and we’ve committed fully, there’s no one else to blame but ourselves.
But when we take ownership, we’re not only accepting the risk of failure. We’re building equity. We get to participate in the upside when things go well.
If we play the blame game, we rarely lose, but we can’t win.
The upside of equity
When we commit to making meaningful progress on the pursuits we care about despite their flaws, we will inevitably face failure and embarrassment. But we also give ourselves the chance to succeed and enjoy our lives.
A funny thing happens when we shift our effort from finding imperfections to fixing them. Things get better. The more we believe in something, commit to it, and invest in it, the better it becomes.
The only way to truly participate in the upside is to commit despite imperfections. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is ever fully ready. But if we don’t commit, it only gets worse.
When our jobs, relationships, or any pursuit feel like they’re failing, we need to resist the urge to find all the reasons that it’s not our fault and try to improve things ourselves before giving up.
The grass is greener where we water it, so we should consider where we’re investing our efforts before we shift blame to everyone and everything else.
The only way to win is to have something to lose.
Prompts
Where in your life does it feel like the deck is stacked against you? Why?
Have you taken ownership of the situation, or are you focused on shifting blame externally?
What does taking ownership look like? How will you decide if it really is out of your control?
Deep Dive
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
A simple and powerful message from a Navy Seal.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin