Ownership Challenge Example: The Cell Phone

Scenario:  You go out to lunch with your wife’s brother Matthew once a week or so because you work close to each other.  You enjoy catching up with Matthew.  But, Matthew has a discourteous habit—he always has his cell phone next to him and he answers it whenever it goes off.  You may be mid-sentence, and the phone will ring.  Nine times out of ten, Matthew will look at who is calling, make a curt, half-hearted apology to you, and dash away.  You are frequently left sitting and waiting.

This behavior makes you feel annoyed and disrespected.  Your other friends and acquaintances don’t do this, and Matthew’s job does not require him to be on-call.  You feel your blood pressure rise when he repeats the bad habit, and the friendship will suffer as you lose patience.

Ownership Challenge:  How can you take ownership and personal responsibility for your choices—and, by extension, your happiness, satisfaction, contentment—in this situation?

STEP 1: Notice the countless variety of choices available to you in response to any external situation.

This external situation was imposed on you—you had no control over finding yourself dealing with Matthew’s rudeness.  However, though it is not your fault, it is now your situation to deal with.  The mistake—the failure to take ownership—would be to say something like, “Matthew acts like a jerk sometimes, but my hands are tied.”  Proceeding as though you have few or no choices in a situation causes you to build up all kinds of negative feelings toward the other person or even yourself.  Perhaps you will begin to feel that you are simply a victim of Matthew’s bad behavior.  This mindset decreases your overall contentment and satisfaction.

Taking ownership means turning your attention to the choices you do have.  There are many, many ways a person in your situation could make a change.  It may be helpful to visualize possibilities spreading out around you in all directions.  There are countless paths you could follow.  Here, for example, you can see the Ghostwriter considering four options:

Step 1 is about becoming aware that a wealth of possibilities—from launching murderous rampages to embarking on the path to Enlightenment (and all the not-so-extreme options in between)—are within your power at any given moment.  You usually don’t need to spend any energy thinking about the extremes—just do whatever works for you to open your mind to all the viable possibilities.  What have you already been doing?  What might some other person do whom you admire?  What would be easiest to do?  Hardest?  What would you be proud to see your own child do?

Some choices you come up with may not appeal to you as much as others.  Don’t get lost in that now—that’s what Step 2 is for.  At this point, it is an ownership cop-out to brush aside a choice by saying, “That’s not something I would do,” or “That might be fine for someone else, but I’m not the kind of person who can do that.”  Your job is to think about what any person could do to change this situation.  Just because something is not a normal behavior for you does not change the fact that it is an option. 

The Ownership Sinkhole

Eliminating viable possibilities during Step 1 means you fall

right into the Ownership Sinkhole!  There are bees in the

in the Ownership Sinkhole.  You don’t want to go in there.

This is so important it should be said twice:  Do not eliminate choices now because they seem unnatural or daunting.  Otherwise, you buoy up a false notion that you lack the power as a person to make those choices.  This is a smokescreen that makes it seem like you do not have choices (power) that you actually do have.  What if there were a million dollars in it for you?  You could find a way.  Do not let your brain drop an anchor just before you try to set sail.  In Step 2, you will have the chance to become aware of and own why certain choices do or do not work for you at this time.

  

STEP 2:  Notice your priorities and take personal responsibility for whatever choice you make based on those priorities.

Noticing Your Priorities

Now we need to think about your priorities: What do you want to see happen?  What goals or potential outcomes of this situation are most important to you to strive for?  Before you get started, remember to keep your priorities achievable and practical: you want to identify things that are not too general and that are within your control.  This may sound a little tricky, but you’ll see it is really just common sense.  Here are some priorities that could emerge from the cell phone example.  Notice how they either fall within the green area (the Winner’s Magical Zone of Specific Controllable-ness) or within the white area (the Too-General-and-Too-Uncontrollable-So-Try-Again Zone):

Try to come away with no more than a handful of achievable priorities—the fewer the better.  This requires a little thoughtful reflection.  Trusted friends and loved ones can be a helpful sounding board in a complex situation, as can a counselor if the waters seem especially murky.  It is okay if your priorities compete with one another. Here are several questions that may help you start to uncover and narrow down priorities.  There are no right or wrong answers to these questions—remember that your goal is get a clear view of whatever matters most to you—not those around you.  Responses are different for everyone.

• Do you want anything to change?  (In other words, do you want to take any new action?)  What is good about the way things are now—what do you get out of it if things stay the same?  What is unsatisfactory about the way things are—what do you lose if things stay the same?  What is likely to happen if you continue doing what you are doing now?  What is the best-case scenario if you take no new action?  What is the worst-case scenario if nothing changes? 

• Look ahead.  If you want to make a change, imagine what you would most like to see happen.  What are you required to do to make this a reality?  How would it feel to experience the potential benefits?  What would you have to give up to make this happen?  How do the benefits compare to the costs—which feel more significant?  Which elicits a stronger emotional response?  Is it worth more to you to endure the costs of a new approach for the potential benefits, or to let the situation be as it is now to steer clear of the potential costs?  How will you reflect on this situation when you are as old as your parents or grandparents? 

• Look back.  What has or hasn’t worked for you in the past?  What choices have you made before in similar situations?  How did you feel about the outcome?  What past choices have made you feel especially proud?  Satisfied and content?  How about unsatisfied or uncomfortable?  How do you compare those situations to this one? 

So let’s get back to our cell phone example to see how things play out.  Say you ask yourself, “What is good about the way things are now?”  You have a strong positive response, and thereby discover your first priority.  You very much like spending time with Matthew, and you want to continue to enjoy lunch with him from time to time.  At the same time, you will be unsatisfied if things remain exactly as they are now: you are beginning to resent Matthew, and tension is building in the friendship.  Lunches are becoming a greater source of strain for you than enjoyment.

Here is an outline of the Ownership for you to print

out to entertain your children while you make it

through the rest of this example.  Perhaps you will

want to talk to them about the Ownership Challenge

after they color in the picture.  (Tip: Increase the

educational value of this exercise by asking the

children to draw in various sea creatures as well!)

So now you have identified a second priority: you do not want to tolerate the annoyance and irritation of Matthew’s discourteous behavior.  Notice how this priority is about what you can do—your priority should not be, “Matthew needs to change his behavior.”  That would not be fully achievable and practical: his behavior is not fully within your control.  You can stay away from Matthew, you can attempt to influence him to adopt a new behavior, or you can remain the passive recipient of the effects of his current behavior.  With your second priority, you acknowledge that being passive is no longer satisfactory.

Finally, as you consider the kinds of things you may be required to do to satisfy your second priority, let’s say you arrive at a third—you do not wish to have a confrontation with Matthew.  You imagine how uncomfortable it may be to act in any manner other than passive, and a big part of you wants to retreat and just let things be the way they are.

Taking Personal Responsibility for Your Choice

You have already recognized that you have power in the face of an external situation—you have many possible choices in response to Matthew’s behavior (Step 1).  Now, you are also aware of your priorities.  Those priorities will be your roadmap to completing Step 2: how do you want to use your power?  Of the choices you’ve brainstormed, which one gives you the greatest chance of achieving your goals and satisfying your priorities?

This is a straightforward decision if your priorities all point in the same direction—if, say, you’re driving, you don’t want to get a ticket, and you’re not in a hurry, so you choose not to speed.  Easy.  But, what if your priorities compete?  In the cell phone example, your second priority (no longer tolerating Matthew’s annoying behavior) competes with your first and third priorities (continuing to enjoy lunch with him and avoiding a possible confrontation).  You will usually have competing priorities.

Now you must take an honest look within yourself and choose a top priority.  Which one feels like it gives you the best chance at overall satisfaction, contentment, and enjoyment in the future?  Imagine acting on each priority—which one feels right?  Which ones leave you at all unsatisfied in the long run?  Feelings of dissatisfaction can alert you to the existence of a higher personal priority, whether you’ve noticed it or not.  If you have difficulty choosing or even noticing your top priority—which is natural, particularly in complex emotional circumstances—you may need to keep brainstorming or processing.  Again, trusted friends, family, and therapists can be a huge help if things feel bewildering.

Click to enlarge

It may be a close call in the end, but, to enjoy the fruits of the Ownership Challenge, you must choose a top priority.  The Challenge doesn’t care what you choose—it doesn’t care whether you’re Goofus or Gallant.  It only cares that you identify a top priority, because this is what empowers you to take personal responsibility for your happiness.  The very worst thing you can do is to hand your power away—to languish in thoughts of what you can’t do, waiting for other people to make the realizations, decisions, and changes you hope they will make, instead of stepping up and owning your part.

Let’s say, for our cell phone example, that the second priority happens to win out (no longer tolerating Matthew’s rude behavior). Perhaps you realized that your first priority—enjoying your lunches with Matthew—was hindered by having to tolerate the behavior, so that priority took a back seat.  Your third priority—avoiding an awkward situation, ultimately felt less important when you thought of the potential benefits of being assertive with Matthew.  You have your roadmap.

Now for the reward.  Your choices—the power you do have—are easy to narrow down once you look at them through the filter of your personal goals.  Good thing you opened your mind to so many choices—that really improved your chances of finding winners in the end!  If you had started with few or no choices, had closed your mind to things, you’re less likely to find something here; or you’ll skew your priorities to match what feels like a restricted reality.

Your choices—the power you do have—are easy to

narrow down once you look at them through the

filter of your personal goals.

With your priorities clear, you choose to talk to Matthew and see if you can influence him to change the behavior.  You feel this will give you the best chance of satisfying your top priority while leaving the door open for your other priorities.  If this works well and you are satisfied with the outcome, you have created greater happiness for yourself.  If this doesn’t work, you know you have a 100% chance of meeting your top priority waiting in the wings—you can stop having lunch with Matthew altogether.  You hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, you can take another moment with the Ownership Challenge to confirm your choice before you take the plunge.  You may discover that you are strongly resistant to the idea of calling off those lunches altogether simply because of the cell phone.  Perhaps you choose to meet less frequently, or you take a new approach and reframe the behavior when you do encounter it, conditioning yourself to think, “That’s a bad habit of Matthew’s, but everyone has bad habits, and I’m glad to have a moment of quiet to relax from my busy day.”  You have these and many other good choices available to you.

No matter what happens, the responsibility to make a choice is on you.  You have power to respond in many constructive ways to an unsatisfactory situation whether you choose to recognize that power and act on it or not.  When you do, you feel surprisingly empowered.  It is refreshing and liberating to approach external situations with a clear view of your choices and your priorities.  Whether you opt to tolerate a family member’s annoying habit, assert yourself at work, make friends with a crocodile, pursue a lifelong dream—you are in charge of your own happiness and no one can strip you of that power.