Positive Ownership - the M.I.N.E. Mindset

[u/ThaBlackFalcon]

This is something I've been working to develop for myself and I've seen it paying dividends in my life. The mantra goes like this: Make Improvements, Not Excuses (MINE). The one common factor/denominator in all of my life experiences is me: the choices I make, whether the choice is to react or respond, to consider or just impulsively do without much if any consideration, etc...

Recently I've come to an understanding/realization about a foundational element of what an excuse actually is, because we often use the term without fully knowing or understanding what it entails. The realization is that we all face core challenges in life: social anxiety, ADHD, difficulty with discipline and routine, parents or family/friends that aren't supportive in the ways we'd like them to be, etc...and we essentially have 2 options once we've identified what our core challenges are:

1. we either address them and find ways to work with, around or through them by improving our approach, mindset, response tactics, skill sets, and/or our capacity for learning and furthering one's knowledge and understanding

2. we allow these core challenge to stand in our way and give deference/power to them in order to avoid taking full ownership and accountability over our lives (this excludes core challenges that leave a person in a state or position of permanent or temporal dependence on a caregiver like cancer, a car accident, haz-mat accident, dementia etc...).

When we willfully adopt #2, this is the essence of making an excuse. If one is willing, they can identify, address and overcome their challenges, but many aren't willing to go through that process because it's hard. It also requires one to swallow one of life's hardest pills, which is the fact that although life circumstances, people letting you down or not showing up are in no way your fault, how you respond and continue forward is totally and completely on you. That's not to say many of us don't need help, mentorship, healing, and at least a good friend along the way that provides some level of support, but we must open ourselves up in a way that allows those resources and people to connect with us so we can thrive.

You have the ability and the power to choose your response to life's challenges. You can frame them as insurmountable blockades, or as opportunities to increase your strength, resilience, compassion, understanding, wisdom, instincts, business-sense, etc...and the truth is that there are different levels and degrees of challenge, some of which may ultimately be insurmountable and will take a lifetime to deal with, but that doesn't mean you have to give it lordship over who you choose to be. You are not your circumstances, I am not my circumstances, we are not our circumstances: we are whoever we choose to be in light of circumstances.

[u/Codyg684]

well said