How to Own Your Talent, Ambition, and Success

You need to own your – fill in the blanks: success, authority, confidence, power, compassion, status, role, product, influence, etcetera. Yet every time you hear someone use the idea of owning something – your talent, skill, ambition, commitment – they always say it as though what you need to “own” is self-evident but with little or no indication as to how.

I am willing to bet that most people who tell you to “own it,” if you ask them “How?” they would fill the air with nothing that can actually tell you what to do as they navigate their way past that treacherous “How?” as fast as they can.

"You need to own your...” carries with it a serious burden because it sounds really good if not essential to do, but when you try and can’t because you have no process for accomplishing such ownership you end up feeling like there’s something wrong with you.

Define

Okay, what does it mean to “own” your success?

According to dictionary.com to own something is to take possession of it. This has to do with property rights and it applies to something outside of you, a material object of some sort---like a book or a car, or a computer. But intuitively it’s not right to refer to something that you are as though it were an object. How can you take possession of your authority? It’s not something you can see to take hold of. The same goes for power, compassion, talent, and the like. They are not objects.

You can certainly take hold of an object like an award for hitting your numbers. That award is not your success, it represents your success. Try as you may the object you can grab onto, to take hold of will always remain outside of you merely as a symbol of your success. But the intention of the phrase “own your success” suggests your success is a part of you. It is you. Inseparably.

“Integrate” is a much better image---that is to meld with something as it becomes part of you. Another image is “metabolize.” You take in food; it goes through the metabolic process and turns into energy to fuel you and mass to add to your body. The food has literally been turned into you and is you as you go forward.

Expand Your Awareness

It’s not possible to take something in if you are not aware of it. For example, as a freshman in college I had to choose an elective. I don’t remember why but I chose a 100 level philosophy course. The subject was entirely new to me and I discovered I had a disposition for it. I was praised by the professor for my insight, acuity, incisiveness, and clarity. I didn’t know I had those qualities before I attended the class but being acknowledged for them I took that recognition into who I knew myself to be, into my identity and was deeply changed.

As obvious as this may seem, you must be aware of the value of something in order to take it in and your taking in that value creates change in you. So to “own” something means, at the very least, that through your awareness you are changed by the process of “owning.” If there is no change then nothing’s happened.

Taking “It” In

It’s critical that to “own” something is to take it in. But just how do you take something in?

You must be open to change. And in the changing you will have to let go of some part of yourself, something about yourself you held to be true. You must release that which no longer works, no longer represents you, no longer feels right for who you are and what you’re doing.

I was a professional stage actor for the first twelve years of my adult working life. I’d performed in 85 shows and my performances ranged between very good and exceptional often receiving glowing reviews. And I loved it. Somewhere in about year eight philosophy resurrected in my psyche with a force I knew I had to follow. Initially I resisted because my theater career was progressing well. But as I began to read more philosophy I knew I would eventually leave my acting career. The more I “took that in,” the more I allowed myself to imagine a life based in philosophy, the more I accepted responsibility for what I was creating within me the more I transformed myself. Eventually I earned a PhD in Human Behavior, a double major melding philosophy and psychology and now, as an executive coach and writer, my self- transformation has served me well.

To implement “taking it in” you must intentionally and in detail imagine the new identity and the life that follows through your actions in order to bring it to life. To take something in does not always mean a major life change. But it will always mean change to some degree and the process is the same regardless of the size.

Necessary Elements

These are a few of the elements of “owning” something. You can apply them to your talent to you know better what you are capable of. You can apply them to your ambition so you can know what you want and where you are going. You can apply them to your dreams and allow yourself to realize them.

“Owning” has many branches and they all arise out of your imagination coupled with discipline and commitment. “Owning” is not trivial, it is the result of open, focused, and deliberate effort of continually creating yourself as you interact with the circumstances and the events you encounter in your life shaped and molded by who you are into who you will be.

What other element do you believe are necessary? I will organize them and write a follow-up post. Thanks in advance.

(Photo Credit: @muntz/flickr)

Jim Sniechowski has published his first novel, Worship of Hollow Gods, at Amazon.com.In Worship of Hollow Gods Jim bears witness to the world of a sensitive, nine-year-old boy, subjected to the underbelly of his Polish Catholic family in working class Detroit. The year is 1950. The family gathers for a Friday night family poker/pinochle party. The outcome reveals a world no one ever talked about then and are forbidden to talk about now---the unspoken, the impermissible, the reality beneath every family’s practiced facade---and what lies beneath when the front has been ripped away. Worship of Hollow Gods is available now in Kindle and paperback for athttps://tinyurl.com/hollowgods

James Sniechowski, PhD and his wifeJudith Sherven, PhD https://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabulous. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing. They are always succeeding. The question is, at what?