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In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to feel that external circumstances dictate our existence. We attribute success and failure to factors beyond our controlthe economy, the government, societal expectations, or unforeseen events. But heres the thing: Blaming externalities diminishes our sense of agency and hinders our growth and fulfillment. The opposite is also true. Choosing personal sovereigntyclaiming our power as the ultimate architects of our life experienceleads to a more empowered and authentic existence. The illusion of control From a young age, we are conditioned to seek validation and direction from external sources. Society’s norms, cultural expectations, and even well-meaning parents and leaders teach us to relinquish personal agency. Over time, this reinforces the myth that our locus of control is external. We learn to attribute our outcomes to others, creating a cycle of dependency and disempowerment. Psychologically, we create a self-serving bias. We attribute our successes to personal efforts while blaming our failures on others or external circumstances. The bias serves as a defense mechanism to protect self-esteem, but it also impedes our self-awareness and growth. The consequences of externalization When we habitually blame external circumstances for our unhappiness or failures, we surrender our power to create change. This leads to feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and resentment. It also stifles personal development, as we fail to recognize our role in shaping our experiences. For example, continually attributing a stagnant career to a difficult market or unsupportive colleagues prevents us from examining our own actions, decisions, and attitudes that contribute to the situation. By not acknowledging our part, we miss our opportunities for learning and growth. And we miss the chance to initiate change. What is personal sovereignty? Personal sovereignty is the recognition that we hold the ultimate authority over our lives. It involves taking full responsibility for our actions and outcomes. Yes, external factors influence us, but we hold the power to choose our responses. As psychologists often note, Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Embracing personal sovereignty requires a shift from external validation to internal guidance. It means trusting our inner voices and aligning our actions with our core values and beliefs. This alignment promotes authenticity and empowers us to navigate life’s challenges with resilience and purpose. Lets explore how to do this. The 6 steps to personal sovereignty Self-reflection: Regularly engage in introspection to understand your motivations, desires, and fears. Journaling or meditation can aid in this process, helping you to connect with your inner self. Accept responsibility: Acknowledge your role in your life’s circumstances. Recognize that while you can’t control external events, you do control your reactions and decisions. Challenge limiting beliefs: Identify and confront beliefs that constrain your potential. Replace them with empowering narratives that reflect your true capabilities. Set boundaries: Establish clear boundaries to protect your energy and focus. This includes saying no to commitments that don’t align with your values or drain your resources. Cultivate self-trust: Build confidence in your decision-making abilities. Start with small choices and gradually take on more significant decisions as your self-trust strengthens. Seek growth opportunities: View challenges as opportunities for learning. Embrace discomfort as a natural part of the growth process. We, alone, hold the power to choose. At the heart of personal sovereignty is the power of choice. Every moment presents an opportunity to choose our thoughts, attitudes, and actions. By consciously making choices that align with our best and most authentic selves, we reclaim our power and transform our life experiences.For example, my own background as a Soviet refugee could easily have made me angry or bitter, with ample reasons to justify a lackluster existence in the U.S. Instead, I chose to earn an advanced education that I continue today. I created a career path spanning decades that allows me to offer a better life for many communities in the U.S. and throughout the world.Kellan Fluckiger, my coauthor, can tell similar tales about choosing growth after decades of struggle with depression and self-sabotage. Well into his adult life he created a path of recovery and growth even after a near-death illness, to inspire millions, first through an award-winning choir and currently as a business coach who has written 12 No. 1 best-selling books, with more to come. These outcomes would not occur without the choice to take full responsibility for our own outcomes, regardless of the unexpected hurdles beyond our control. It’s also important for all of us to recognize that embracing personal sovereignty is a continuous journey, not a destination. It requires ongoing commitment, self-compassion, and courage. As we navigate this path, we not only enrich our own lives but also inspire others to reclaim their power and live authentically. Final thoughts In a world rife with uncertainties and external pressures, embracing personal sovereignty offers a pathway to empowerment and fulfillment. By recognizing our role as the architects of our life experiences, we move from a state of passive existence to active engagement. This shift enables us to live more authentically, make meaningful contributions, and experience deeper satisfaction. As we embark on this journey, let us remember that true power lies not in controlling external circumstances but in mastering ourselves. By reclaiming our personal sovereignty, we unlock the potential to create a life that truly reflects who we are and what we value. Gene Eidelman is the cofounder of Azure Printed Homes. Kellan Fluckiger is the founder of Kellan Fluckiger International, and the creator of Your Ultimate Life. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
Category:
E-Commerce
Within three months of becoming CEO of the Honest Company in 2023, Carla Vernón slashed 25% of its eco-friendly goods. That seems tame in comparison to what happened when Brad Charron joined Aloha as CEO in 2017: He killed off every product category. Now on the other side of major rebrands and company pivots, these CEOs say there wasnt necessarily a playbook to follow when they joined their respective companies as outsiders. While assuming the role of turnaround CEO proved difficultand not one either would like to undertake againthere are many lessons learned, which they shared during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. When Charron was initially approached about becoming chief marketing officer of Aloha, he was unimpressed with the product lineup and after about an hour meeting with the team, he concluded the organic, plant-based food company wouldnt be in business a year from then. He ultimately decided to join Aloha as CEO, giving himself a made-up title of re-founder, and initiated a company re-start, killing off all of existing products like trail mix and chocolates and launching the current lineup of protein bars, powders and drinks. It was a complete destruction because that was what was needed, Charron told the SXSW audience. You couldn’t step-change your way to fixing all that illed it. While Vernóns changes at Honest were less drastic, she had the added pressure of overseeing a publicly-traded companyWall Street gave me no grace. Honest had gone public less than two years before she arrived and while private, it had experimented with launching products in a wide variety of categories, she said. One of her first tasks as CEO was to evaluate the wide range of Honest items, from the core or hero products beloved by consumers to those with varying success by financial metricsand everything in-between. In the end, 25% of the products were slashed. People think that that’s risky, but our company grew revenues for the first time in two years when we had less variety in our portfolio because we could focus on what mattered and what was good, she said. Product quality is your number one focus. EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES Empowering employees to have a sense of ownership at both Honest and Aloha was also key to these turnaround success stories, the CEOs said. There is more scrutiny and skepticism of the outsider, both from the employee base and from the investor base, who has to figure out whether they can trust you managing their money, Vernón said. One of the things I introduced is that every single full time employeeI don’t care if that is the office mom or if that is the CFOthey are all shareholders, and so they are all invested in us figuring out how to be aligned with our retail partners and with our investors. Charron likewise focused on ensuring employees felt a sense of ownership in Aloha. The most precious thing we have in the world is our time, and there’s nothing worse than wasting your energy and your heart and your soul on something that’s not symmetrically set up for a future success, he said. I had to find people who would be willing to kind of put their skin on the line a little bit and be an employee-owner mentality. NAVIGATING DIFFICULTY Even though he came into a situation he knew would be difficultand proved to be difficultand Charron said it was important to recognize that fixing so much that was broken wouldnt happen quickly. Everything across the entire ecosystem of the company needed to be questioned and we needed to have patience that eventually we were going to build something that was going to work, he said. That’s really kind-of the core discipline that has gotten Aloha to where it is today. Vernón had more time pressure to enact a pivother first earnings call was eight weeks after she became CEOand she needed the buy-in of the board of directors and investors. While she said working at Honest has been the thrill and adventure of a lifetime, there were some tough days early on and thats when she leaned on her support network. It was a very, I think fragile moment for us as a company and I am so proud that we’ve come through actually stronger.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced it will reconsider the reach of the nations bedrock clean water law and likely further limit the wetlands it covers, building on a Supreme Court decision two years ago that removed federal protections for significant areas. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said at agency headquarters in Washington that officials will listen to concerns from farmers and other groups worried about federal interference in how they use their land and then set limited, predictable and lasting rules defining which waterways the Clean Water Act protects. President Donald Trump sought to shrink the law’s reach in his first term while prior Democratic administrations have expanded federal power to regulate the nation’s lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and oceans. That’s created drastic swings in how the law is interpreted and applied. In the 2023 Supreme Court case Sackett v. EPA, the majority of justices largely agreed with the Trump administration’s limited approach. That decision departed from decades of federal rules governing the nation’s waterways. When the Biden administration rewrote protections to comply with Sackett, however, some conservative groups believed that the rule still protected too many wetlands and improperly limited private property rights. On Wednesday, the EPA issued guidance about how the ruling should be implemented to exclude certain wetlands. We are not looking for this to be a ping-pong anymore, Zeldin said. What we are looking for is to simply follow the guidance from Sackett. That decision was one of several Supreme Court rulings in recent years that drastically shrank the federal governments power to regulate the environment and industry. Some states, however, have passed their own laws to strengthen wetlands protections. For decades, environmental interests and left-leaning policymakers have fought right-leaning industry and agricultural interests in federal court over the Clean Water Act’s power. At the center of those cases is the definition of just five words in the law, waters of the United States, which determines its reach. In Sackett, the conservative majority sided with those industry and agricultural interests that sought more flexibility to dig or fill wetlands, finding that federal regulators had long wielded too much authority. Environmental groups have sharply criticized Sackett, saying it will mean more polluted and filled-in wetlands, which is expected to hit the arid southwest especially hard. Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, called the Sackett decision industry’s white whale that achieved weakened environmental protections after years of work. He said the effort is especially concerning now that the EPA is facing drastic cuts, reducing its capacity to enforce the rules. Despite the fact that they finally got that decision after all those years, they are still not resting on their laurels, he said. They are going to continue to find ways to change the Clean Water Act to weaken public safeguards. Wetlands filter pollutants, reduce flooding, serve as important habitat and are worth protecting, Gonzalez said. Sackett was brought by an Idaho couple who wanted to build a house near Priest Lake in the state’s panhandle. Chantell and Michael Sackett objected when federal officials identified a soggy part of their land as a wetland, which meant they had to get a permit before they filled it with rocks and soil. Justice Samuel Alitos majority opinion said federally protected wetlands must be directly adjacent to a relatively permanent waterway connected to traditionally interstate navigable waters such as a river or ocean. That viewpoint was similar to a 2006 opinion by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. They also must have a continuous surface connection with that water, making it difficult to determine where the water ends and the wetlands begins, Alito said. That departed from a 2006 Supreme Court opinion that had established the longtime standard for evaluating which waters were protected. In that case, then-Justice Anthony Kennedy described covered wetlands as having a significant nexus to larger bodies of water. Opponents have long objected that the standards were too vague and unpredictable. American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall spoke during Zeldin’s announcement, saying farmers wanted a simple rule. I’m a farmer and I need a rule that’s on one page, that is sitting on the dash of my truck right next to my devotional book, and if I have a question about a ravine on my farm, I can pick that one page up, read it, and interpret it myself,” Duvall said. The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment Michael Phillis, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
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