If the business owns you – it’s time to own yourself.

The Grounded Man Episode 09

Do you feel like your business was meant to give you freedom, but somehow it now owns your time, energy, and headspace?

In this episode, John explores why many hardworking men feel trapped by the very business they built. He talks about separating your identity from your business, setting clearer boundaries, and building the self-awareness needed to respond instead of react.

For more on the Deru approach to leadership from the inside out, visit www.derunation.com and explore more resources from John 

00:01:03 — Freedom and Business

00:03:18 — When the Business Owns You

00:05:20 — The Impact at Home

00:06:26 — Setting Boundaries

00:08:13 — You Are Not the Business

00:09:09 — Ego and Identity

00:11:06 — Taking Responsibility

00:12:49 — Building Self-Awareness

00:14:58 — Changing Your Mindset

00:17:35 — A Healthier Business Relationship

00:19:29 — Closing Remarks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So when the outcomes of the business are threatened by people or markets or events, that feels like a personal attack. And when it feels personal, it owns you. That's what ownership is. Ownership is personal. So it owns you. So if the business outcome, if the business owns you, then the outcomes of the business own you. And that's what drains you. That's what steals your time, your energy, and your headspace. So you need to separate, you need to see yourself, I am the one leading the business, but I'm not the business. I am the one leading it. Welcome to the Grounded Man podcast by Deru. I am your host, John Douglas, and founder of Deru, and this space is for hardworking men building businesses, carrying responsibility, and providing for their families who feel they should be freer. You see, the world has changed, and leading through hard work and long hours now limits a man's influence. The new way is mastering the inner game of leadership so you can carry it well, enjoy what you're building, and still feel free. Hello, John Douglas here, and you're very welcome to this episode of The Grounded Man. Do you feel like you've built something solid in life in terms of a business? And you feel you should have more freedom than you actually get to experience within that. Because one of the main reasons I see men in business work hard is to have freedom, whether that's working, having the freedom to work on what they want to work with, work with who they want, have financial freedom, give their family more choices, having more time, more health, whatever that might be. Yeah, and they've built this business as a vehicle for that, to obtain and achieve that, yet they don't actually get to feel it, don't actually get to experience it as much as they could. So perhaps this relates to you. Perhaps you can resonate with this, that you feel like you should have more time, that you should have more health, better health because you have more time, or better relationships, or be meeting up with your friends more, or doing more for yourself, maybe spending more on your activities and hobbies, perhaps getting to work on things that will really grow the business and improve it. And instead you find yourself doing an awful lot of firefighting and fixing, and other people seem to own your time and your energy and your headspace. And so the relationship with the business has become a little bit distorted. Okay, you're not as happy as you could be with it. You're not feeling as fulfilled as you could be with it. That's what this episode is about. And so, where would you really like to be? You really love to be in a position where you have a very calm mind, it's peaceful, you have some presence, your mind is focused, it's confident, it's certain in where it's going, it has that clarity. You're getting to focus your actions on the things that are really going to move the needle in your business and looking after yourself and your family in the process. You have a team that steps up, they have high standards, and you basically get the time to spend on the things you enjoy most. And that's really what freedom is about. That's what freedom is to Deru. And so we're trying to move you from frustration with something that feels like it's owning you to freedom where you actually own it. And that's the gap. That's the gap, is going from being owned to actually owning it. And I'm going to talk you through how we do that. So, why is owning it so important? Like, why do we want to own things rather than be owned by them? Well, I suppose it's like all life, we don't want to be trapped. We want to be free. And so, if we're not free, what are the consequences of this? Like, what are the consequences if our minds keep racing and won't be calm and still? What are consequences if we're disconnected from what we're doing? You know, maybe the work starts feeling like it's transactional. It becomes a job rather than a passion, and therefore you're less fulfilled. Perhaps when you don't own your own headspace, your mind is constantly under pressure from the events and the situations that are happening outside. And this can cause stress and this can cause frustration. And it's like you try harder, you work harder, and it doesn't leave you any better off. And is it any more frustrating than hitting the right bullseye, getting the right target hit, but it's the wrong target? Like you able, you're able to do more, but it's actually not moving the needle. And so this bec this causes you to become even more delusional to what you're doing and question yourself even more what you're doing. And so then you lose some confidence and you lose your certainty and you lose your vision and you become disconnected from that purpose, and it's all driven by problems and pressure, and not by something that's meant to be enjoyed. And then in the business, when you don't own your own time, where's it going? Well, maybe you're constantly reacting. Maybe every time the phone beeps or something buzzes or an email comes in, your mind jumps to problems. What is this? What's this gonna be? What am I gonna have to deal with? What am I gonna have to fix here? And so it becomes a burden that you that we carry. So the responsibility that I talk about, it's not about what you carry, it's about how you carry it. And the business is no different. If you feel trapped by the business in some way, like it owns you, you're not carrying it right, you're not positioning it right. And what I want you to understand is this is a relationship. It's not you, it's a relationship between you and the business, but it's not you. But when you don't see it as a relationship, you just think it's you and you think I'm doing something wrong, I'm not doing enough, I should be further ahead. And it just creates a load of doubt and worry. And then when you bring this energy home to your family, what are they getting to experience? Are they getting to experience the best of you? Or are they experiencing what's left over? Are they getting the absent father or the absent husband? Okay, sure you might be there, you might be doing the things, but are you fully there? Are you really there? Are they really getting your fully undivided attention? And maybe they are at days. But maybe every morning you get up, you maybe you have that dread of getting up and having to go in again and face the challenges of whatever it is because you feel trapped. Maybe you don't even get to sleep well that because of this. Maybe you're waking up in the middle of the night, waking up at 3 a.m. worrying about the financial pressures. Because what is actually owning you here? What's actually owning you is most of it's you can't control it. It's things that have happened and they're done now. They're done. You haven't hit targets, you haven't closed the sale, you haven't uh been able to lead the team as well as you thought. Okay, it's done. Whatever's happened, happened. Or it goes into the future, anticipating what might go wrong and then overthinking it. Or it goes into outcomes, timing, what other people think, what other people say, especially those closest to you. And a lot of it's you things we can't control, but we're owned by it. And so we don't have clear boundaries. And that's what a relationship is is boundaries. Except I want you to think about it not in terms of having a good relationship with people, having a good relationship with how you work, having a good relationship with your business and setting clear boundaries here. Because if you feel that other people disrespect your time and your energy and they seem to take it all the time, we have to remember we're not putting in clear boundaries. So if they feel open, they feel like they can approach you in a certain way that steals your time and energy, and then you start to become resentful of that. You have to ask yourself, have I actually got clear boundaries in place where I've communicated pretty consistently? And I don't accept, I don't tolerate low standards. But where am I tolerating those low standards because I'm afraid? And this is what we need to clear out. Whatever we're afraid of happening. Like, what are we afraid of happening if we don't feel like we have to give everything to the business? Or what are we afraid of happening if we detach from the business? Does it mean we don't care? Does it mean that we we're not a good leader? Does it mean that we don't work hard? Are we afraid we might work as hard as we as we've done before? Are we afraid that we might not hit the targets, even though most of the time we do, we feel it, you know it's cost us more than we've actually got from it? Is it what's it a fear of? A fear of other people walking out, a fear of people leaving the business, a fear of letting clients down. You see, you become owned by outcomes when you don't have a good relationship with the business, when you think you are what you do. If you think I am the business, well then all the outcomes of the business become a personal they become personal. So when the outcomes of the business are threatened by people or markets or events, that feels like a personal attack. And when it feels personal, it owns you. That's what ownership is. Ownership is personal, so it owns you. So if the business outcome, if the business owns you, then the outcomes of the business own you, and that's what drains you, that's what steals your time, your energy, and your headspace. So you need to separate, you need to see yourself, I am the one leading the business, but I'm not the business. I am the one leading it, and I have a relationship with my business, but at the moment it's one where I give a lot and I don't seem to get back much back much from that. I give a lot, but I don't seem to get back much from that. And so when you diffuse and detach from it, you can get all your time, your energy, attention back, and you get to choose how you spend it and invest it. Because at the moment, you don't get that choice. Because what robs it? It's the old conditioning. So this all goes back to how your mind is conditioned and you know the ego wants to survive, and ego uses fear as a tool to survive. And fear is a pretty good tool when you want to survive, but you have to ask yourself the question am I done with surviving? Like I built a business and I sacrificed my time and my energy and my effort over the years, maybe decades, to be free. And am I done with surviving now? Do I actually want to be free to thrive in and outside of work and just thrive in general in my life? Because if you do, then you have to remove like move away from the ego being in control and the fear and that identity tied with the business. And you need to detach from that and actually know who you are behind that. Who are you behind that business? Like if that business disappeared tomorrow, who are you? And very simply, whoever you are is the person you choose to be right now in this moment. So you can choose to be, I'm a calm man, I'm a grounded leader, I'm a peaceful father. You can choose to be these things, and when you choose your identity, you're choosing to be free. But you can't choose those things when you don't see that you're that you're separated from the business. If you just feel like you are the business, well then you can't choose any of those things because the business owns you. So you need to stop taking it personally by knowing who you are. So this is where you need to take personal responsibility. So when you take personal responsibility, that's when you're creating the space for you to step back and think and create a space between what's actually just happened and my reaction to it. So I'm not the one reacting, I'm the one responding. I'm responding in a way that's aligned with how I want to show up in this moment, how I want to lead others in this moment, being in the right energy, the right frame of mind, and choosing to focus my time on what's most important and not let something else come in and take that from me. So you need to accept that you need to put boundaries in place. You need to accept that your boundaries haven't been there. You need to accept that although you've given everything and worked hard for this business, you've done it in such a way that it's drained you, that it's taken your time, your energy, your headspace. Just accept that. It has done. If you're listening to this and this is resonating, well, it's already done that. So let's let's just accept that. And that's a blow to the ego. Because it almost feels like a waste, but it's not a waste because you've learned so much through it. You've learned so much, you've grown so much. And actually, do you know what? A lot of the things that you built are really, really good. You've really good people around you, you've good systems, you've good clients, you have a load of good stuff there. The fact is that you've built this vehicle for freedom. It's all the vehicle itself is actually pretty well tuned because all your energy has been focused on what you're going to do, and you keep working on, you keep working like a machine on the machine, and you just keep making it better. The problem is you haven't talked about the human side of it, which is it starts with you. You're the you're the person, you haven't talked about your growth in this and what you want, and giving yourself permission to say, actually, I want more freedom of this, I want more time, I want more headspace, I want more energy, and unapologetically going for it, taking it by putting up clear boundaries. So this accepting this feel will always feel like a betrayal. Because what you're betraying is not the business, you're betraying an old identity, an old mindset, old habits. And so you have to accept that I need to have new habits now. What a great habit to form is taking the first hour or two every morning for yourself, whether it's going for a walk, going to the gym, reading a book, working on your mindset, actually writing some journaling, a reflection. Journaling isn't therapy. It's reflection. It's writing down, okay, how did how did I feel this week went? Did I feel free? Did I feel energized? Did I feel powerful? Did I feel confident? How did I feel this week? Maybe I felt a bit worried. I felt a bit isolated at times, I felt a bit guilty. Becoming aware of this, of these emotions, these emotions are your body. This is somatic. This is in the body. And so the fear doesn't live in the mind because you're not like consciously thinking about, oh, I'm afraid of this, I'm afraid of that. No, you feel it. And you feel it through those negative emotions. Every time you use those negative emotions, you're probably putting energy into things you can't control, and you're probably it's probably rooted in fear. So you either take back that. And the self-awareness piece allows you to do that because you can separate yourself from what's around you. That's what self-awareness is. You're becoming aware of yourself within your surroundings. And you, if you don't do that, then you and your surroundings, there is no awareness between them because they're just one and they're fused together. And therefore, you can't create anything new in that because you you are owned by the outside. And that's the outside-in way of working and living. The inside out way is starting with that self-awareness through who am I? How do I want to be today? What are my goals? What do I want to be free to do and to have? And what do I want to be free from? And start to think about it and start to feel like you are that leader and start to show up like that leader. Because the truth is you probably are showing up a lot like it anyway, but you just mightn't feel like it. So a lot of what I'm talking to you about here is not that you have to do more or do anything different. You have to be someone, be something different. And being something different is in, is it kind of more in your body? You have to kind of feel different. You have to feel like I am on the right path here. I am confident, I am free, I am present. And telling yourself, allowing yourself to go there and to be that. But again, that feels like a portrayal because it's like if I'm not under pressure, always switched on, always in the business, what will happen? Will I portray my team? Am I portraying my family? Am I not being a good father? Am I not being a good leader? Am I not being that's the kind of that's what it feels like inside. That's the the friction that comes. It's a bit of a terror barrier that comes when you're trying to change. Change. Because it's the comfort zone. The comfort zone is really the familiar zone. What we feel familiar, and when we're trying to leave that, we feel some tension and friction. Because but it's not a bad thing, it's actually a good thing. It's only a bad thing when it owns you. When you feel tension and friction, it's because something owns you. When you're feeling a bit of tension and friction because you're choosing to change and you're leading yourself, that's very positive. So just learn to discern between when you're feeling it. Like, is it coming from the outside in or is it being led from the inside out? So any of the friction that comes from leading from the inside out is good because it's leading to something that's going to give you more freedom and less frustration. So I want you to reflect and build a good relationship with your business by creating that space in the morning for yourself and by physically creating taking that time, you're physically creating the space which allows your mind to take the space. It allows your head to be more still and actually see, hold on there, how I'm working is actually not how I want to live. There's a big disparity between how I'm showing up and actually who I want to be. So I need to be aware of who I am and who I want to be and align with that and goes and choose that every morning. And every morning, not like I'm going to do it once a month. That will do nothing for the conditioning. The conditioning is like, think of yourself as a fish in the ocean. The conditioning is like the ocean and you're the fish. So you need to give more and more energy to it so you can actually change and see that actually, oh, I'm I'm living in the ocean. I'm actually not the ocean. And so that's what I mean by giving energy to it every day so you can actually shift the conditioning, shift the wiring because it's deep-rooted. It goes back decades in yourself, but it could go back millennia in your ancestry. And you're changing some of these beliefs that are deeply wired. That's what you're doing. So are you going to be the first person, maybe in your family, who leads differently, who works differently, and is free because of that? So, what's the impact of having a relationship with your business rather than just you being the business? Well, when you have a relationship with something or with someone, you you can trust it more because you understand it more. And to understand somebody else more, you actually have to understand yourself. So there's a there's a balance here between you and the other party. And so now you can set yourself and position yourself in such a way that you both win. Because you can be more intentional about it. You can't be intentional about it when you've when you feel trapped by it. You can only feel intentional about something when you have the freedom and you allow yourself that that space. So imagine, imagine waking up every day going into a place that you built that is is a freedom zone. You get to work freely in what you want, you're getting to grow the business, move the needle, mentor people, have uh those meetings with clients, develop future opportunities, develop a stronger culture and going home with more presence, having more time to yourself, being able to go out and for a run or a cycle or play golf to do something you love to do, maybe to coach more or mentor more in the community and sport, whatever that might be, imagine having that freedom. That is the impact of you owning yourself and not being owned by anything outside of yourself. So ask yourself today, what is owning me? If I feel like the business is owning me, what is owning me within that business? What do I need to let go of? What do I need to detach from and realize it's a relationship and it's not me. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening today. I really enjoy sharing this wisdom because it doesn't come from me, it comes through me from the work I do with men like you that I serve. So if the idea shared today resonated, be sure to like and follow the show. And if another man would value it, share this episode with him. Because the more men who hear this, the more of us can break free from pressure and enjoy what we're building. So let's enjoy the build together. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.