I took my three kids to the playground the other day. They eventually found the swings. My 6-year-old boy started playing by himself, swinging on his belly. He would twist the swing in circles, wrapping the supporting chains around each other. Once it was tight enough, he’d let go and let the swing whip him around in circles as it unwound. You’ve probably seen this (or have done this!) yourself.

My 4-year-old daughter wanted in on the fun. She went to where my son was and started trying to push him off his swing so she could have it. There was an empty swing next to them – but she wanted his swing. He got off and went to the empty swing.

Having secured her swing and her future fun, she flopped over on her belly and tried to spin around in circles. But it wasn’t working. The fun wasn’t happening.

She got off and went over to her brother on his new swing. Again, she tried to push him off. She wanted that swing. This time, he wouldn’t get off. So, she sat down and cried.

The fun swing had moved with my son. That is clearly not fair.

How We Disempower Ourselves

My son was making his own fun. He was able to do that on any swing. Or no swing at all. In fact, he soon decided he had enough, and moved away to play in a different part of the playground.

My daughter believed that fun was in the swing. That if she just had the right swing, the fun would happen. If she wasn’t having fun, her swing clearly wasn’t working.

Of course, the reality is that she is smaller than her brother and doesn’t yet have the strength to twist a swing up. She could have asked me (or her brother) for help. She could have created her own way to play on the swing. She could have played anywhere else on the playground. But her sense of desire and potential for fulfillment was shaped and defined by what she saw her brother experiencing. Which limited her ability to have fun.

My daughter didn’t know this, but she was disempowering herself.

Fun wasn’t outside her ability to experience – even if twisting the swing around was. She let others define her desires. She made her ability to experience fun dependent on whether or not “the equipment performed for her.” She wasn’t using what she could control to create what she wanted.

Our Attitudes and Our Choices

There is another brother in this story.

My 8-year-old son recently broke his arm. His right arm is in a cast from his fingertips to his bicep. He was at the playground too, which was designed for kids with two working arms. But he was still having fun. His fun wasn’t dependent on what the others were or weren’t doing. It wasn’t dependent on the equipment that someone else designed or built.

He primarily did two things:

• He played with others
• He found someplace comfortable to sit and enjoy the sun

Arguably, he was more limited in his playground options than my 4-year-old. Nevertheless, he found his own ways to enjoy himself. He just chose to.

The Danger of Comparisons

I’m a coach and consultant. But I always work with a coach myself. It keeps me growing.

Currently, I’m working with a coach named Craig Ballantyne. Craig talks about the “black heart of envy.” This is when we let jealousy, especially around someone else’s apparent success or happiness, into our lives. It begins to cloud and distort our perspective. It disempowers us.

I’ve definitely struggled with this. It is a way of viewing the world that is entirely wrapped up in comparisons. For many people, comparisons are almost compulsive.

In other articles, I’ve written about how comparisons are often what separates confidence from arrogance. Confidence says, “I (or we) can do this.” Arrogance says, “I (or we) are better than you at doing this.”

Black heart comparisons are also comparative. They assume that if someone else is experiencing something we think is positive – there is something unfair or undeserved going on. It assumes that they didn’t have to do the work, they were given a leg up, they were born with something we don’t have, etc.

Black heart comparisons disempower us.

What Matters for Leaders

As leaders, it’s easy to look at other leaders and their organizations and focus on the shiny side: Their apparent success, the award they just won, the contract they landed, their new growth, their new building. A black heart perspective causes us to ignore the work that got them there, and the likely challenges they are experiencing now, many of which may not have existed before achieving “success”.

Basically, like my daughter, we think that “success” or “fun” is something that happens to us. Not something that we create through making certain choices over time.

This disempowers us.

Letting others define our desires or standards of success or happiness, or contentment, or significance, or anything else – is giving away our ability, or power, to experience any of those things. Largely because we are creating moving goalposts. When we let our ability to have “fun” (or succeed, be happy, etc.) be dependent on what someone or something will or won’t do for us – we give away our ability, or power, to experience any of those things.

We give the power to those we believe we are dependent upon. Often we then resent them for taking the power we gave them – real or imagined.

In the Playground of Life

Each of my kids show up at exactly the same playground. My kids aren’t the same. They each have different abilities. They were each different in terms of how they choose to experience and take advantage of the opportunity of the playground. However, their levels of “fun” are directly associated with their attitude and their choices.

Many leaders are facing challenges right now. Some of these challenges are even imposed by the decisions and choices of others. But it’s our decisions and choices that matter most. As leaders – the more we own our attitudes and our choices – the more likely we are to own (and like owning) our results.

Are there any areas in your work or life where you have taken on someone else’s definition of success?

Are there any areas in your work or life where you have made your success dependent on the choices of others?

What is the one thing you believe you need to do to better own your future?

Take good care,

Christian

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