Don't hand them your leash

During my time observing politics, day trading chatrooms, romantic relationships, and corporate culture there is an unfortunate trend that I have seen time and time again.  I call it handing over the leash. 

Handing over the leash happens when people will give over power and control of their life and critical life decisions. This is often done because of a mix of mental laziness, self-doubt, and fear of making a wrong choice, therefore not wanting to take on accountability, or weight of guilt and shame that comes from making a wrong decision. If we give the decision over to another person we think is smarter or more talented and it does not work out we can say, "I was following them. It's their fault, not mine". This pushes off criticism and accountability to someone else. Side note, how funny when things work out the same person will take credit for it and minimize the guidance they took to get to that decision. Humans are funny that way. The good ideas are mine, the bad ideas are someone else's. 

So handing over the leash. Think about it, a good exercise to do in your journal is to take inventory of people who you feel have control over your life. Look at the way that you have handed over the decision making to them. What is the fear guiding that position? What can you do to mitigate that fear?

Who decides what you do today? Your boss, your spouse, your parents? Is it you? Is it really you?  

You will say, "I have no choice". Many feel they have no choice however I invite you to sit with that for a moment. Do you have no choice or are you terrified to take responsibility and accountability? Could you take on the emotional weight if you were the reason the family couldn't make rent this month? Or what if you were the reason the team didn't win the big game? Take an example that applies for you. What do high-stakes consequences look like to you?

What is keeping you from being the best person to make that decision? 

Do you need: 

• More information?
• More time?
• More training?
• More experience? 
• More boundaries? 

Let's dig in to these. 

More information. Do you feel like you are not the one to be in charge because you don't know enough about it? So many deflect important political or financial decisions because they think someone else knows more about it than them. There is so much to know and they feel overwhelmed.

However, when you think about those who have the information they obtained it by studying, acquiring training, and through experience. It is by going through the process of doing "the thing" that we obtain the information to make better decisions later. Because here is the thing, of course you can read, take a course, have mentors. That is a good thing to do because you can dodge avoidable mistakes. At the same time you have to learn what works for you. One of the toughest lessons for me was learning that what works for them didn't work for me. Learning what works for you requires risk. It requires failure to learn cause and effect. I requires learning what works and celebrating the little wins. Tracking data is part of that process many times. Trusting your inner knowing and intuition also plays a major part in good decision making.
You may find that you have more information than you think from your lived experiences.

More time. There are a lot of people that quit or feel like they were a failure because an outcome didn't happen in the timeframe they had expected. Many big goals can take several years longer than originally expected to accomplish. That's not failure. That can be a difficult lesson to learn. For example, when learning day trading. There were so many layers of information, so many variables to take in at one time. There were so many 'psychological muscles' to develop in order to facilitate a successful trade. That takes many years to be able to take in all of that information in spilt seconds in order to do what needs to be done for a successful trading experience. It may take one person more time to develop that skill set than another. It's not failure if it takes you 5 years instead of 3. Or if it takes 10. Everyone is on a different timeline. Honor every journey. 

More training. Perhaps specific training is needed. Whether it is to learn lingo, processes, how to use specific platforms or tools. It is a benefit to speak to people who have been there before and have made the mistakes and know what to do. Experience is invaluable. However, when learning from others understand that situations change over time. It is important to keep information up to date. Can you image the world 5, 10, 30 years ago? Lately just a few moths can feel like a completely different world when it comes to culture, expectations, priorities of life. So with training maintain information and make sure your training is up to date for your area of interest and the expertise you wish to develop is essential to success. 

More experience. This is self explanatory you need more experience. With more experience comes confidence. Confidence leads to less fear in the decision making process. Less doubt. Begin to expect success instead of loss. It is tied into what we have already discussed with information and training. Let's move on. 

More boundaries. I typed 'More boundaries' for continuity. Stronger boundaries is more like it. It's about control. Coming full circle to the beginning of the conversation. When we give financial power away by depending on someone else to pay the bills. When we give emotional power away by depending on others for emotional regulation or validation to feel ok about ourselves. When we set our sense of happiness outside of ourselves and outside of our control. These are examples of ways we pass the leash to someone else. Working every day to claw back that control in small and significant ways all adds up. Why do we do this? 

The most compelling reasons that I have found to do this important work is that when we give the decision making over to someone else, we hand over results to someone else, and more times than not the results are disappointing. Of course there may be some short term satisfaction to say to someone else "you messed this up". Rather than feeling the weight of it being our fault, right? However, when you move with intention. When you guide the process then it is yours. There is power in that. I would be curious to hear, because I think that you will find that when you do take your own leash and intentionally guide yourself through the process of life you will find the results to be more successful and gratifying.