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Opening

On today’s episode, taking real ownership of the things you are responsible for.

You’re listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, a podcast to inspire and equip you to partner with God in your daily work. Visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to learn more and download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You.

Episode

Have you ever had a project or a goal or something that just didn’t seem to move forward? Could be because you haven’t given it attention or just seems too difficult, whether it’s at your work or your personal life? Well, I’ve certainly had this moments.

I think we all have these moments and the first significant time I can recall feeling this way was on my first engineering internship and during my mid summer review, my manager at the time told me that I needed to take ownership of what was my biggest project for the summer – for the three months I was going to be there. At first, I was insulted by the feedback. I thought, “how could he say that I wasn’t owning the project?” I was giving updates on it and talking to people about it and taking steps to move forward.

But the more I thought about it afterward, the more I could see that he was right.

Eyes Wide Open

Unconsciously, it didn’t really matter to me if the project succeeded or failed because I thought it was too complicated for an intern. Someone had said that to me. And I couldn’t see an obvious solution. So I kind of took a casual approach to it. But after he told me that I needed to take ownership, I could see that was exactly what I had been avoiding. Because if I didn’t take ownership of the project and it failed, I think my mind could believe that failure was outside my control and that there was nothing I could do about it. That’s a pretty sneaky trick.

The truth was that if I didn’t own it, the project would never have had a chance to be successful. So when I got more serious about ownership with that project, it opened my eyes to the steps I could take, people I could talk to and to the ideas I could try.

In the end it ended up being a successful project. I come back to that all the time since then.

From Excuses to Ownership

There may be impossible goals that your leadership has set or a very difficult relationship at work or even outside of work. And I’m certainly not perfect, but whenever I catch myself coming up with excuses, it’s a signal to me that there may be something I really need to take ownership of.

When you really own something, you go deeper into it. There’s a difference in approach. It unlocks ideas, creativity, passion gives you where you can move forward.

In the Bible, God prepared Queen Esther for a time when she would need to take a risk to accomplish what she needed to, and he was uniquely positioned for that. But if she didn’t take ownership of it, her nation would not have been saved. And after she took ownership and made the decision, then she got the strategy for how to move forward.

We can never be reminded of this too often. There’s a book called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. He’s a former navy seal commander. A very intense guy. And he says that “leaders must own everything in their world. There’s no one else to blame.”

Whether you lead people projects or initiatives, you know you’re a leader and if you don’t own it, then we’ll always have excuses that will stand in the way of success. And we need to take true responsibility for the results if we want to see them, whatever it is that we’re looking at.

God Has A Plan

God has a plan for each of us. He has a path, He’s designed it, He’s guiding us, shaping us, preparing us. And we always got to remember that we need to be faithful even in the little things. If we want God to use us for the big things, sometimes we understand every detail of it. And other times it seems like we know nothing and we need to learn how to trust God and to move forward.

Galatians 3:23 says that whatever we do, what to do it with our whole heart and to do it as those for the Lord and not for man.

So what is it that you need to take ownership of? Whatever it is that you’re feeling convicted of right now, bigger, small. Take real ownership of it this week and see what God will do with it.

Closing

Thanks for listening to Your Faith At Work with Dr. Ryan S. Howard, if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d love for you to subscribe, share, and leave us a review. Be sure to visit your YourFaithAtWork.org to download your free copy of 21 Days to a New Workplace You. And remember, God wants to partner with you in your work every day.