Having sojourned nearly 60 years of life—the last 20-odd in many ways the toughest—I have developed a way of living or should I say coping that I think serves anyone.
In wellness terms, we often talk about not just surviving but thriving. In real terms, as is the nature of life, we are not always thriving, no matter what inner work we’ve done. I still have the odd day where I’m just surviving, and sometimes that feels a struggle—fortunately, it’s only a day here, a day there. I hope you find that validating. I have certainly had seasons of life where I battled most days for weeks and months.
What emerged for me out of a season of being a single father (2003-2007) was the concept that I could do it all—I could manage everything thrust my way because at times I was the only adult/parent around. Not all these circumstances felt good or fair, indeed many were incredibly hard.
This merges with the idea of extreme ownership. Retired Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink, authored the concept of leadership responsibility, high personal expectations of one’s own performance, and individual accountability.
The concept of extreme ownership is transformative:
it assumes we have some agency in every circumstance of life,
that we can make anything better by simply accepting
that taking ownership for our place in it is the key.
Faith plays a crucial part—indeed, it IS faith:
Having trust enough to acquire and maintain
an attitude of ownership—doing our best.
Biblically, it’s “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,
when you face trials of many kinds…” (James 1:2)
The rest of the James passage reveals the purpose in suffering.
This is the secret weapon of both success and joy, and I find it aligns with the biblical witness of wisdom as well as great secular models. Simply put, as us AAs put it, it works if you work it.
For me personally, no external thing can crush me if I don’t allow it. An important juxtaposition is being vulnerable enough to BE crushed for a time.
Life is crushing at times. It’s okay, even important, to BE crushed. But we don’t stay there. Extreme ownership dictates that we have immense personal agency to respond well when we simply OWN where we’re at, where we choose joy, accepting things may be dire, but there’s no reason they ought to stay that way.
We thereby choose to make the best of what we have, to open our minds to innovate out of our predicament, always honouring those about us, believing through the power of hope that things will get better.
For me, this is true resilience, the capacity to take stock at our lowest, knowing we have the power of response.
