There is this beautiful line that has been used millions of times when a couple breaks up: it’s not you, it’s me. The one breaking up tries to minimize the hurt for the other person while putting an end to a relationship that is not working for him or her. For all that it is well intended, it puts the other person in the victim role in that there is nothing that you could have done to change the outcome. In many discussions that I have with people around me, especially in large companies, I get a sense of “learned self-helplessness”. People know that things are not going as they should, but they feel the lack of agency to do something about it. Humans build relationship networks around them that sometimes act as a straightjacket. Jocko Willink, an ex-Navy Seal commander, wrote a book with the title Extreme Ownership. The concept is that you never give up agency. Instead, everything that happens to you, you own and you deal with. Similarly, Stoicism encourages us to focus on what we can control or at least influence and to ignore everything else. More than 5 decades into this life, I am still struggling with that lesson sometimes. So, as an encouragement to you and me: I own it. It’s me!