The person who is more likely to blame outside factors usually has a higher sense of self-worth and confidence: Of course, the problem wasn’t me. I’m awesome. When a person takes a high degree of responsibility for failure, they tend to have a less elevated sense of self and consider their success more the result of hard work than of talent.
So on this spectrum, there is an unexpected relationship between ownership and risk. When a person has high self-confidence yet takes minimal personal ownership for failure, that person will most likely become a low risk taker. You would intuitively think that the person who perceives himself as more talented and less responsible for failure would be the higher risk taker. But what’s been found time and time again is that a high view of self, coupled with low personal responsibility for failure, can diminish a person’s ability to take necessary risks and embrace challenges that do not guarantee success. A more grounded sense of self with high personal responsibility for failure postures a person to have higher resiliency and greater courage when facing necessary challenges.
You would in turn also conclude that the person who sees himself as less talented, who sees success as the outcome of his hard work and takes high personal responsibility for failure, would be low risk. But the opposite is true. When you take personal responsibility for failure, you actually gain power rather than lose it. If it was your fault, if it’s your failure, you have the power to change the result. If it wasn’t your fault, if you have no relationship to the failure, you are powerless to change both the outcome and the possibility for success.
You can hear this language all the time when you listen to certain professional athletes during interviews. Assuming they’re on the losing team, they will blame the lineup of players on their team. However, if they win, they’re likely to claim it is further evidence of their greatness. They are always responsible for the victory and never responsible for the defeat. They take ownership for success but never for failure.
The same dynamic can be observed when an athlete is involved in an individual sport. If they lose, they may claim it’s because of an injury or weather conditions or another external variable. If they win, they of course claim it’s further evidence of their personal greatness. Many times this is why if a world-class athlete in an individual sport does not live up to expectations, they will immediately fire their coach. They figure someone is to blame, and the one certain thing is that it is not their own fault.
I recently met with a business owner, who shared with me how they were struggling through the loss of employees that were leaving the company. Their industry is one that lends itself toward personal friendships and relationships among people who work together. The owner felt a profound sense of betrayal, not just because the employees chose to leave them but because each time they left, they would blame the owners for creating a negative environment. I reminded the owner of how over the years when those same employees worked for other companies, each time they left, they created negative scenarios to justify their leaving.
When you have a high self-image with a low relationship to personal responsibility, you have to create a scenario in which someone or something else is to blame. The important thing to remember is not that you need to have a lower view of yourself (although that may be true too) but that your power comes in taking personal responsibility for your life.
The way of the warrior is a path toward ownership. The warrior takes responsibility for their life, their actions, and the world around them. The warrior knows that they own nothing, so they can risk everything. The warrior knows that the measure of their success is not in the outcome but in the intention. The courage to face the challenge is the victory. The warrior is not afraid to be exposed by defeat. Defeat does not diminish the heart of the warrior, for they do not fight for their own fame but for the freedom of others.
If your view of yourself is greater than what reality can bear, you will choose to protect yourself from great risks because you cannot bear the blunt-force trauma of failure. If you know that failure is a temporary condition and believe hard work will see you through, you’re more likely to take bigger risks. If your practice in life is taking great risks, you are all too familiar with the impact of failure. Ironically, if failure is not an option, neither is taking risks. Failure is an inevitable ingredient of success. And because you know that, you know that failure is not terminal.
Years ago, we at Mosaic had a massive breakdown at one of our events. The next day all the leaders of all the teams met to assess the breakdown. I remember asking for clarification and asking what I thought was a pretty simple question: “Who is responsible for this particular area where the breakdown happened?”
One by one, everyone in the room told me it was not their responsibility. It was a strange and surreal moment to be sitting in a room full of executives where apparently not one of them was responsible for the principal item on our agenda.
I paused for a moment, took a deep breath to think it over, and then gave everyone an assignment: “I want you to go find the person responsible for this so I can hire them, because they are the only person who should be in this room.”
If you’re not responsible for a problem, you don’t have the power to fix it. Find the person who takes responsibility and you’ve found the person who has the power to bring change. You cannot own the moment if you do not take ownership. The warrior may never own anything but is responsible for the things that matter most. This is the way of the warrior.
CODE 6
The Warrior Harnesses Their Strength
The warrior knows their power. Even in defeat, the warrior is never powerless. Even when they are weak, the warrior knows their true strength. The warrior has a fire within that always burns brightly even in the darkest moments. Yet the warrior knows that the fire burns only if there is more wood to be consumed. The warrior understands the relationship between wood and fire and knows that the soul is a fire that must be fed to burn brightly. The warrior has learned how to harness their strength, focus their power, and replenish their energy. It is in this practice that the warrior becomes like a force of nature. The warrior always fuels the fire of their soul.
To survive a long winter, the warrior goes out morning by morning to secure enough wood to keep the fires burning within their shelter. They understand that the fire is life. If the fire goes out, the cold will overtake them, but wood keeps the fire burning. The warrior is the one who must feed the fire. There are some questions you must answer: What is it that feeds the fire within you? What is it that feeds your soul? What is the wood that you must work hard to gather to ensure that your fire does not go out?
The wood is not the same for everyone, though there are certain things that fuel us all. You will know the wood of your soul when your fire diminishes in its absence and when your fire intensifies in its presence. To identify your wood, the fuel to your fire, you must be mindful of what makes you feel most fully alive. What is it that ignites your passions? What are the moments in which you feel most energized?
The warrior finds their greatest strength when they love to live and live to love.
Love is the warrior’s greatest strength. When we love our lives, we are inspired, encouraged, and energized to face even life’s greatest challenges. To find your strength, you must know the source of your power and recognize where your energy comes from. At our most basic level, humans are energy wrapped up in skin. We were not designed for lethargy, we were not made for apathy, and we were certainly not created for mediocrity. The warrior knows how to harness their energy and replenish it for the next great battle ahead.
I live in a city where people don’t talk a lot about God but instead talk a lot about energy. In fact, the use of the word energy here in Los Angeles has almost become a cliché. I cannot tell you how many times I have had people, usually from the entertainment industry, come up to me and open with “I love your energy.” My w
ife, who grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, hates everything about the language of energy. I think it frustrates her that people give credit to an inanimate force rather than a personal Creator. But for me, energy has been a point of focus for nearly forty years. Although there may be individuals who use the word energy in trite or empty ways, there is an entirely new wellness industry that has come to understand it as a source of health, healing, and strength.
Some of my interest in energy has been very personal. Many years ago, my mom bought me my first nice watch. It was an elegant but simple Gucci timepiece. I remember feeling that the gift was so extravagant. Looking back now, I realize that it cost a few hundred dollars, but at that time in my life, that was a month’s rent. It was only a few weeks after I had the watch and had worn it proudly every day that it stopped ticking. This watch was supposed to be of the highest quality, and suddenly I found it less reliable than a ten-dollar drugstore watch. I was both surprised and frustrated.
I took the timepiece to a watch repair shop. The employees checked the battery, and there was nothing wrong with it. In fact, when they went to work on the watch, it was running just fine. Of course, they changed the battery anyway. They had to charge me for something. I left a little bit confused, but I was also happy that my watch was not defective.
A week or two later, it stopped running again, so I repeated the process. I took my watch back to the shop. They checked the battery and changed it even though it was fine. The watch worked perfectly until, of course, I wore it for another week or two.
It was then that I began to entertain a bizarre concept: perhaps the problem was not the watch, but me. So I began to test the theory. I would wear the watch for a few days, and it would stop. I would put it in one of my drawers, and then a few days later it would be working perfectly again. After a few days of watching it keep time perfectly on the top of my dresser, I would wear it again, and it would stop.
I finally confirmed my theory by buying a second watch. To my surprise, the second watch had the same reaction as the first. After I wore it a few days, it stopped keeping time. So I began to alternate watches, and when one stopped, I switched to the other. I began to research widely and discovered that although it’s rare, there are a handful of people around the world who can’t wear watches because every watch they try dies. This phenomenon, as weird as it sounds, is due to the high electrical currents in some people’s bodies. Depending on the level of electrical currents in your body or if you have been exposed to high volumes of electricity, you can literally interfere with the inner workings inside your watch. It sounds kind of insane that one of the top five reasons for why a watch has stopped is that certain human beings emit high electrical currents.68 I wouldn’t believe this except that it happens to me every single time. I can share with you only my personal experience. For years I was unable to wear a watch for more than a few days at a time. On the upside, it launched me into my hobby of collecting watches—this way I always have a working watch to bring into rotation.
At one point in my life, I found myself having the same experience with our old-school computers. It is not insignificant that a human being can carry so much energy that it can literally shut down a computer.
The most frustrating aspect of this is how often the security alarms at airports go off when I walk through the metal detectors. Since 2001 my traveling handle has been “random search.” On one of my more recent trips, I asked the TSA agent why it is that the alarms constantly go off when I go through. He explained that they are set to identify higher electrical frequencies, and if you happen to have a higher electrical frequency, you set it off.
All this is to explain why I have had such a fascination with energy on a personal level and why, even when the language of energy has not been commonly used in conversations of our faith journey, it’s more important than you may know. You don’t simply have energy; you are energy.
E = MCMANUS2
Probably the most popular and significant contribution that Albert Einstein made to modern science is his formula E=mc2. Einstein’s theory of special relativity states that the increase of the relativistic mass (m) of a body comes from the energy of motion of the body, which is kinetic energy (E) divided by the speed of light squared (c 2).69 Basically, he explained the relationship between mass and energy: energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared.
In practical terms, the less energy, the more solid the mass. The more energy, the more fluid and dynamic the mass. In other words, a rock creates less energy than a river. For our purpose, an apathetic person has less energy than a person filled with passion. Wood has the potential of energy. Fire activates the energy within the wood. I have also just seen E=mc2 as an abbreviation for Erwin McManus.
But what Einstein came to understand about the universe has as much significance for our personal lives as it does for an understanding of reality. Humans once understood mass and energy as two different things. It would have been seen as superstition to understand that the material that makes a ship is of the same essence as the material that makes the ocean. In many ways science is now more unbelievable than magic was three thousand years ago. This is captured in the idea that energy equals the sum total of mass in relationship to the speed of light in a vacuum. Or to summarize, energy and matter are two different forms of the same thing. It seems like magic that energy and matter are two different forms of the same thing, but science is sometimes stranger than fiction.
The way my simple mind translates all this is by realizing that coal is made of the same material as a fire. Coal simply is less motivated, or to be more specific, less energized. It also means that, although we know that energy cannot be destroyed or created, it can be released or contained. So the potential of an object in stasis may be far more dynamic than it appears if the proper heat is applied. For instance, coal contains within it tremendous energy for heated power and that actually turns into thermal energy when it is set on fire. What I want to share with you next may seem figurative, but it is actually more literal than you may know. You are born a piece of coal; you must become a fire. This is part of the warrior’s journey. To find the fire that burns within you is central to the way of the warrior.
I see the contrast every day, not only here in Los Angeles but also as I travel around the world. I meet people from every walk of life who seem to have endless energy for what they do. Their chosen fields are often as varied and unexpected as is humanly possible. Some are doctors, some architects, some painters, some dancers. Others are chefs or baristas or teachers or researchers.
Although their professions may have nothing in common, their labors have this one thing in common: They have endless energy for what they are doing. Their energy materializes itself in hard work, determination, resilience, excellence, and passion. Surprisingly, the same passion that they demonstrate at work affects every aspect of their lives. Sometimes their passion is all-consuming; they love their work and neglect their relationships. They are driven to create great art and seem to have no interest in creating great wealth. Some of the greatest works this world has ever seen were created by individuals with an all-consuming passion.
There are others who carry the same level of intensity, who express the same level of passion, but that passion is not isolated to a singular focus, but to life itself. These people are passionate about their work and passionate about their family and passionate about experiencing the beauty and wonder of life. They, too, bring an endless energy to everything they do, but their energy is less focused on what they do than on who they are. They have found the secret to being fully alive. They have also learned that energy expended must also be renewed. They have discovered the importance of caring for their private worlds and have recognized that their true strength comes from within. They know that to release more energy than they receive is a dangerous thing.
The warrior knows that they are not the ultima
te source of their own strength. They know that the fire within them can go out if it is not cared for properly. But we are designed to live with passion. There is a default mode we can surrender to where we simply just exist, paralyzed by apathy or despair or discouragement. It may seem as if fear is a fuel to the fire, but in the end, all it does is diminish it. Fear consumes our energy, whereas faith restores it. When you live by faith, you find energy to live your life at full strength.
The warrior also knows that the fire within them can become a destructive force. The fire within can be stoked with the wrong wood when we are consumed with anger, envy, bitterness, jealousy, or hatred. The fire destroys not only our own souls but also the lives of those who come within the range of our flames. The warrior knows the danger of this fire and understands that it can be consumed only by a greater fire. When Jesus tells us that the most important commands from God are to love him with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves, they are mandates to know God as the all-consuming fire that burns within our souls.
Energy Grid
Few people here in Los Angeles have accomplished as much as my friend Mark Burnett. I once asked him what the number one characteristic is that he looks for when hiring key staff members. Without hesitation he answered, “Energy.”
It shouldn’t have surprised me, because Mark is one of the most energetic people I have ever known. It is not an exaggeration to say that when Mark Burnett is in the room, it is electric. It’s funny to recall the first time I ever met him. I had just spoken at a conference, and as I walked off the stage, he said to me, “You have so much energy.” Now knowing him better, I take that as his greatest compliment. This was no cliché; this was a genuine observation from a person whose own energy I deeply admire.
The Way of the Warrior Page 11
