Hero/Heroine or Victim, to me it’s a choice!

Above all, be the heroine in your life, not the victim!

Nora Ephron

I am dedicating this post to a real life hero and friend that we lost this week far too early to pancreatic cancer. Dear friend, from diagnosis to your last hours you embraced your situation and fought your fight with your head held high. Words can’t descibe how impressed and how sad I am. Rest in peace, big lion!

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When I say “victim” you might think of someone that has fallen victim to a crime. And of course, that is a very special situation and is definitely never their choice! What I am talking about might seem provoking and for me provoking a thought process is the main purpose of my blog. However there is never a one size fits all thinking behind it. It is my opinion which is based solely on either my own experience or observations I made in my life.

People working with me know, that I am obsessed with “ownership” (aka accountability). I demand it from myself first and foremost but also everyone in my team as much as I demand it from the partners working for our company. I think obsession is not even an exaggeration. And just to be clear, I am not talking about ownership of a lot of money or other material things…now wouldn’t that be nice?

Why the obsession, you might ask? Because, in my experience, if there is no ownership, there is no development, growth or success. Without ownership there is relying on others or coincidences, chances and ultimately personal stagnation.

As you can imagine, ownership is more easily found in times of success. Suddenly even everyone – even those that did not own the work – want to own the success. Does that ring a bell? On the flip side there is usually a lot less ownership to be found in times of failure. No surprises there either.

Now, is this really the true explanation for my obsession with ownership? Yes and no. It is playing a big role in it, but there is also a much more personal part to this. I, myself, had to learn to take ownership. Ownership of my own life – the good, the bad and yes, especially the ugly. Only when I made the decision to do exactly that, was it that my life took a turn for the better. I would even say it turned out pretty great.

And now to the very personal part of my obsession. I grew up in one of those not so rarely found families, that seemed to have it all. And with all I mean alcohol (addiction), fights and other drama and not much money to live on.

When I was in my early teens, I could actually not believe I belonged into this family. But my research in form of a thorough investigation into my parents paperwork turned out a legitimate birth certificate and no adoption papers. So there was that.

Pair the above with growing up in a very small village where everyone knows everyone and most importantly has an opinion about everything. Add the fact that puberty hit me far too early at only 10 years old. Needless to say, based on pictures of actually my entire teenage years, I searched and found comfort in food . And thanks to that, you can also add the already mentioned bullying or fat shaming.

I moved out as soon as I was 19 years old and of course thought things could only get so much better. Wrong! Things, if left to their own devices, are usually not getting better. Problems have the tendency to grow bigger, if left unattended. Who knew? I would find out rather quickly.

After I moved out, I half-heartedly studied at the University of Muenster, political and germanistic science and sociology and whole-heartedly wallowed in the grievances of my past. I indulged in mourning the things I did not have growing up. And in lot’s of food, especially sweets as well. I was not too successful in my studies, but who could have expected that from me? Did you read how I grew up? How could I be blamed?

I managed to let a few years pass by like this. Took some jobs to survive, had an on-off relationship allowing someone to not love me enough to fully commit. I did not love myself after all, why should he? Right. Bottom line: I was as miserable as many would expect me to be. Self-fulfilling prophecys are sending their regards.

Things started to change a little bit, when a friend of mine hired for his Customer Service company and asked me to help out. I enjoyed doing what I did and finally pushed myself to commit to something in order to not lose what I liked doing. I started owning up to something in my life – doing my job. But there were a lot more mistakes made and blamed on my past, my difficult childhood and the fact I had not been given a great life on a silver platter.

Thankfully at some point I realized, I had to make a decision. I could definitely continue like this and as an outcome live a life all to similar to what I experienced as a child. But that outlook was not very appealing. And the first steps I had taken with the job in Customer Service showed me something. It showed me that taking ownership and being in control felt so much better. Surprisingly even though not everything went well or the way I wanted it to. I also really liked working in Cutsomer Service. Still do.

The next step was the hardest and I would lie if I would say it is not still hard once in a while today: I had to let go! I had to accept my childhood and my past as it was and realize, it made me the strong person I actually was. It made me resilient. I was still around after all. I spent a lot of time thinking and in the process relived some of the moments that haunted me (which is where the almost photographical memory turns into a curse more than a blessing). Yes, that was tough. But it also gave me closure. And reassurance that it WAS. I will never be able to go back and change that. I can however choose my attitude about it and I can take active ownership of my future. And that is what I did…

…step by step. I did not turn my life around from one day to another. However I made an effort. I invested into my own life and I took ownership. Having met my wonderful husband helped tremendously, but I also understood painfully I could not be relying on someone else to own my life. I had to fully own it myself.

Things were or are not perfect – the perfect life is a myth that keeps us from enjoying the wonderfully imperfect life we are already having. I lost a few jobs (as I shared earlier), I still made some not so great decisions. And I owned all of it. I changed my mindset from “things are happening to me” to “I am making things happen.” It changed my life and the way I feel about it entirely. I feel empowered. I take failures as nothing but a challenge, to find a solution.

While walking my own path I noticed that, whenever I saw people take ownership, something good happened. And even if they did not get the outcome they expected, they were able to own the outcome with their heads held high. They often times even enjoyed the failure, as they learned it was part of the process and if owned up to it could turn into something really great.

I was excited to see that in others’ lives and in my own. Ownership – especially of the ugly and the failure – has made me become the person I am today. Blaming did nothing for me. Blaming kept me from growing. Kept me from seeing what I could achieve. Kept me from making things happen. It would have kept me from meeting my husband, moving to the US, losing the weight (literally and figuratively), meet this adorable pooch and build a career that I actually am proud of.

Whenever I am beating myself up for having wasted quite some time, I am reminding myself that blaming (even myself) for things that can’t be changed anymore, as they are in the past, really does not make any sense. It would only lead to history repeating itself, weighing me down and holding me back once again.

And transfered to Business I am a true believer, that blaming, especially others, is NEVER an acceptable approach. Being able to pinpoint who’s fault something is, does not lead to any solution. It does the opposite – it keeps us from looking for one!

Because of my journey and also because solution finding is one of my top strengths (per Clifton Strengths Strengthfinder by Gallup www.gallup.com – I am not associated with this company, but a true fan of their approach and tests), I am not accepting problems if presented with them. I encourage everyone around me, that is facing a problem, to immediately shift their mind to solution finding. I have several reasons for this approach, none of them are that I do not care about there being a problem.

Wallowing in the problem creates a negative thought process weighing us down and making us feel like we are a failure. There is a very fine line from thinking about the problem to thinking about “who’s fault” this is. Naturally our mind wants to be able to get rid of the weight of a problem, and blaming someone usually presents itself as an easy outlet. While we think about the problem or who is to blame, we are wasting time (see above, you can easily waste A LOT of time, a couple of years even), that could have been used for finding the solution.

Putting our mind on finding a solution requieres, you guessed it, taking ownership. And even if a problem is not our fault, we can still own resolving it, can’t we? Well we only really can, if we can get over the feeling that owning the solutions means we admit being at fault.

This is not to say the problem should be ignored. We need to analyze what went wrong – but not necessarily focus on the “who” – in order to find a solution.

Back to the family I grew up in. No one would be surprised if I blamed my parents. It probably would be something society would accept as reasonable. But is it really that easy? Maybe they, like me in my early twenties, did not know how to play the cards they were dealt? And most importantly, would blaming them make anything I experienced feel any better? No. It would not. I tried.

Let me close this very personal post in saying that, in my humble opinion, there is a choice. We can’t choose the cards we are dealt. Our choice is whether we are actively playing or are being played. The game is happening, with or without our active participation.

All we can do is control our attitude about a situation or a problem and actively manage what WE are turning this experience into. I personally think it is perfectly fine to decide, that doing nothing is the right thing in a certain situation or for the time being. What matters is, we MADE a decision and we are in charge.

Being in control or charge or owning comes in many different behaviors and actions. Activity is the cue here vs. passivity. For me, like many others, the most difficult and at times most important form of “owning” our life is asking for help, when we feel overwhelmed. We feel taking help means we lose control – the opposite is the case! Never think requiring help means being out of control. It is THE first step of taking control.