The Process of Taking Ownership, part 1

I don’t know about you, but my best victories in life were all because of me. And all of my worst mistakes in life were someone else’s fault. Seriously! 🙂I would have been an amazing student if I was only given better teachers. I would have been a star athlete, but my coaches never put me in the right position.

It is so easy to blame everyone else for what is wrong with us, but somehow that never provides the freedom and joy we’re seeking. We do not have to take ownership for everything that has happened in our lives. We are not responsible for where we were born, for our family of origin, for how people have mistreated us, or for all of the evil in this world. And yet:

Our future depends on us taking ownership for what we are responsible for.

What happens when we refuse to take ownership? We get stuck and we stay that way. We forfeit the growth that could propel us into our God-given purpose. We begin to live with a victim mentality. 

4 Steps to Taking Ownership

Step 1: Recognition

You’ll never take ownership for something you can’t see. Even if everyone around you sees what’s going on, you’ll forfeit taking responsibility until you can see what you’ve done. There’s a Scripture that invites us to invite God into helping us see what we might be missing.

Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

We’re not inviting God to know something He doesn’t know yet. We’re inviting God to show us something we don’t know yet and to lay ourselves open before Him. We aren’t focusing on what someone else has done in the process, at least not yet. We’re asking God, “What is in my heart? What am I anxious about? Is there any offensive way in me that I need to recognize and take ownership for? Lead me in the way everlasting, which is to say help me to be formed more into your ways.”

Step 2: Admission + Confession

Admission involves naming what you have done without making excuses for what you have done. Whether you’re talking to God or another human being, you can say, “Here is what I did that was wrong and I want to confess this to you. I take ownership of my actions and I also want to ask for your forgiveness.