I decided not to wait a long time for the mercies of God; I simply took a broom in my hand, and started sweeping.
—A Russian Jew, aeronautical engineer, upon emigrating to Israel.
To entitle: Webster’s: to furnish with proper grounds for seeking or claiming something (example: “this ticket entitles Sally to a ride on the roller coaster”).
Modern (every day) definition: To feel as if one is righteously owed something, to deserve something; to have the right to expect or demand something—-to justify taking something.
In this era, our modern everyday meanings of being entitled have powerful connotations of being self-serving.
Maybe, it ain’t so empowering to be (or to feel), entitled,
Being entitled may not be a terrific opening for creativity, responsibility, action, or empowerment… or simply, a great life.
Contrast: “to be entitled” with “to be empowered.”
To empower: to inspire, to ignite, to evoke, to equip in another, their own ability, power, effectiveness and inspiration, to cause their own lives—-because they say so.
One can look at “to empower” as having 5 elements.
- To inspire.
- To engage.
- To equip.
- To authorize (where appropriate).
- To hold to account.
Great leaders, managers, coaches empower people. They don’t entitle people; they empower people.
Sometimes, governments, factions, clubs, and even families, while intending to empower people, merely entitle them to expect and demand what is “owed” to them.
Very different in design, intent, and impact—-this empowerment stuff vs. this entitlement stuff.
Consider: people who are empowered, who empower themselves, invest very little money, energy, and time concerned with their entitlements, i.e., waiting for something that is owed to them or that they “deserve” (vs. generating it and creating it). Creative people actually cause and create life—-often from nothing, fundamentally because they say so….that is their stand.
People who empower themselves.
They cause, generate, create their life as a gift, to give.
Imagine: you and I as really powerful and creative, as if we really and daily generated our lives from our word and our stand for what is possible (Consider: Muhammad Ali; Steve Jobs; Toni Morrison; Michael Dell; Nelson Mandela; Martin Luther King; Oprah Winfrey; Maya Angelou; Orville and Wilbur Wright). If that were the case, how much attention would we have on expecting or being “owed” or “deserving” or “demanding” some special privilege i.e., being entitled.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Consider that the earlier thrusts of democracy, especially in the 20th century, worked in real part by expanding the entitlements (and rights) of our citizens.
Entitlements, we note, can refer to more than just economic benefits. Our “Civil Rights” for instance—-of the 20th century, and earlier of the Bill of Rights itself—-are sometimes conflated with, seen as, reduced to, merely entitlements—-something “owed” to us as opposed to something “created” by us or earned by us. (A possible down payment to our current civil “rights”: the blood and treasure of the American Revolution and past sacrifices of all of our peoples)
Regarding economic programs, “entitlements” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Workfare are intended to support the least well off of our citizens.
Clearly, without these active safety nets, our society would move much more slowly and painfully than it does.
However, in our good intentions to provide social and economic safety nets, we may have failed to also transfer, generate, or “embed,” an essential mindset—-a mindset that needs to accompany all of these entitlements.
What mind set?
A mindset that enables each and all of our citizens to empower ourselves, to take initiative, to be bold, to be responsible, like we each have something to say, actually a lot to say, about how life goes, about how it turns out…no matter what the circumstances.
Note: Our rights and entitlements do not merely fall out of the sky from a just God onto us as a deserving people. No, all “rights” and “entitlements” are created….thought, imagined, said, written….constructed….and for the most part, have been fought for, “earned,” by people. They are invented by us, human beings, in a democracy; they are not owed to us from a democracy.
Given that our rights are invented, what if we were to develop alongside our entitlements and our rights in America—-a widespread mindset of a people who “get on with” life; who cause it; who generate it, and take life, work, relationships on as uniquely their challenge and their opportunity.
This creating it is distinct from waiting for, expecting, or demanding something “owed” or “deserved,” just because one is one kind of status or another, whether rich or poor, white or black, native, Asian, gay or straight, young or old, disable a fully able.
Empowerment may simply be a mind set—-a perception of the world—-a framework, or attitude or outlook regarding what we say…to ourselves…
Start with our “self-talk”…and our conversations with each other…that could allow us to take responsibility for our lives, to cause our lives, to “get on with” it, rather than merely “wait” for a life that is “owed” to us, or “deserved.”
An Everyday Test: Walk down a street, any street in the USA and ask yourself: “Do these busy people I am walking by look to be in really good shape (as human beings)?” “Do they strike me as empowered? As fully present and engaging?” Or, do they seem at best in ok shape….passable, predictable, routine, but mostly on “automatic” ? Are they merely busy getting somewhere ? Do they show up present to, available for, awake to what is happening with and around them at any given moment? Really look at each person as you walk by them—-if you dare to and it’s worth daring.
Are we truly an Empowered and Engaged People?
Ask: What is their state of being?
Do they seem enlivened, energized, open, receptive, engaging and engaged?
Or not?
Notice: Do these “strangers,” ever make real eye contact with you (ever?)….not merely to assess you or to have you (or them) move out of the way….but rather, make eye contact with you as if they might actually be interested in, curious about, y-o-u, this fellow human being ?
Do they, stranger to stranger, ever say hi, hello, or good morning?
Or not?
How do their bodies look to you?
Their expressions?
Their faces?
Their clothes?
Do they occur to you as empowered, enlivened, present?
My city is N.Y. City—-Gotham, the Big Apple—-and is quite the handful.
N.Y.C is known to bristle with energy, and “get on with it” attitudes and initiatives.
Yet, while people can be and occasionally are present, empowered, engaging, for the most part, I assert, we Americans are not fully empowering ourselves, nor engaging each other, day to day.
We are “strangers” to each other. As if we are aliens.
By contrast, when we are conscious, and fully awake, we are fully aware of where and who we are when we are there….we are “present.” Yet, many of us are merely and often “absent,” too distracted, rushed, pre-occupied, worried, to be “present,” or enlivened … to engage, let alone celebrate, another person or what is happening around them.
In other words, our society produces ….across gender, race, age and income….wide-ranging numbers of people who may not be empowered, nor empowering to themselves, and to the people they care about; who aren’t actually open or engaging; who aren’t really thinking critically (vs. merely having automatic, reactive thoughts); who may not be enlivened or enlivening—-our world is populated by substantial numbers of disempowered people.
How come?
Perhaps, in our rush for the industrial/technological prizes of advancement, comfort and producing more goodies, we haven’t examined, and confronted, let alone taken on, that Mind Sets frame, and even “cause” the world that we see, interpret, relate to. Literally, mind sets constitute a lens, a structure, that make perceptible the world we perceive. Mind sets determine what we can see of what’s “out there;” They do not merely reflect on or report “objectively” on, a world independent from our perceptions, a world “already out there.”
Yet: we seem to take mindsets for granted even though we can pick up on and are informed by the clues and cues of our everyday behaviors that suggest to each of us what mindsets someone is operating in. Yet, we do not effectively, consciously, intentionally account for our mindsets so as to be fully creative, awake, and fully effective with each other.
A mind set is like a mental map of the world, of your world, and of the world, that we carry in our heads. A composite model of our past experiences and the decisions we have made. A mindset is simply a way of looking at the world itself, a lens, or frame of reference that colors, shapes, and interprets all that we see.
A mind set is an internal conversation, our inner voice (sometimes called our thoughts and feelings). We listen to this internal conversation as the “truth”—-vs. —-simply a conversation, no matter how familiar or reliable to us it may be.
I include in mind sets people’s “assumptions” and “beliefs,” including the “prejudices” and “habits” that we often do not realize we have. Our mind sets, our internal mental maps, our filters, are most often transparent to us because as a lens, as a “mind set,” they are invisible to us. We don’t see our mindsets; we see through them, transparently, and thereby we don’t account for them. (See footnotes 1,2,5).
For the most part, our mind sets are transparent, unexamined, and therefore invisible to us, and therefore give us….
Trouble in Dodge City.
—Part II—
Yes, not recognizing and dealing with our mind sets can and do often lead to “Trouble in Dodge City.”
Consider one current, dominant mind set and what may underlie it. Often in America, we can and do observe an almost endless number of people “getting t-h-e-i-r-s”….getting and for many of us, having what we want, expect, demand.
our money,
our opportunity,
our good food (and our happy tummies)
our looking good,
our sex,
our recognition and stature,
our education—-
our clothes, cars, houses….
our fabulous vacations—-
All good, yes?
We do, after all, have a right to all these benefits/advantages, don’t we?—-we are in America—-the land of opportunity, of material goods and top line services. The economic equivalent of an entitled citizen is an entitled consumer.
What if the basic mind set of all entitlement attitudes for each and all of us—-poor and rich; white and black; gay and straight; man and woman; young and old … I want it, and I should have it, now!
What if you and I, notwithstanding our ever-deserving narratives, really, in fact, are owed nothing—-absolutely nothing—-nothing whatsoever—-by anyone?
By life?
By history, time or place?
What if life is simply a time and place at all levels of race, gender and our social/economic “rung on the ladder” for each of us, any one of us, to create, to generate, to originate, to invent, to discover, and to fulfill new possibilities, and new opportunities in life, small and large, profound and mundane? To generate ─
New relationships.
New ideas….including radical, breakthrough ideas….
New learnings.
New opportunities.
New experiences.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this shot at imagining, conceiving, and creating life newly, each and everyday in life, is the source of opportunity in life itself, from the hotel maid to the private equity guru.
When one tries on the view that life is simply a series of situations, one after another….calling for each of us to provide our own unique contributions….it becomes an opportunity for each of us to ask:
Ask: What is missing, what is needed and what is wanted in the world….in my world? And then to get in action and get with people to provide exactly that.
Maybe, just maybe, life then works.
Not to pine for, or long for, what we think we are owed, or deserving of, or entitled to, but rather, every day, to create new possibilities and new actions, now….and now….and now.
If life is about what we create newly, i.e., rather than merely about what we routinely have, or know, or do; what if life is about what we generate, originate, and develop that breaks new ground, what kind of life might that/does that, look like? For us-
What if we, each of us, were to confront our own mindsets of entitlement, of our own expectations and demands—poor and rich, Black, Native, Asian and white, gay and straight, young and old—-and begin to invent and discover for ourselves new mind sets, new frameworks, new lenses through which to see life….fresh lenses that put us at the heart of life, that have us be the authors of it, be the creators of it….then what is possible?
Consider: If all of us, each and every one of us…. were to become naturally responsible, generative, and nobody is “owed” anything, then what?
Perhaps on the deepest, spiritual, philosophical and most useful level—-nobody is in fact owed anything—-and so what there then is to do is: create, initiate and generate whatever is needed, wanted and missing in our own lives, the lives of friends and families, in our communities and in the larger world….(then, perhaps, just perhaps, there is no need to “wait for” or “hold out” for or “expect” a life “owed” or “deserved”).
Note: While this article does acknowledge and respect that people can and often do clearly make appropriate use of safety nets, incentives and support, it is also saying that the notion that we “should” be given things, or are owed or deserving of rights or entitlements whether rich or poor, black or white, man or woman, gay or straight….can actually have a negative impact if such “rights” are not also accompanied by a transformation in how we view ourselves, a shift in our mind sets, our outlook.
Consider we can train and develop ourselves to shift:
- From “waiting for” to causing.
- From deserving to creating.
- From expecting to generating.
- From wanting to, to, promising to.
How do we do that?
Like everything else we do—-we invent, discover and deliver new conversations, starting with and continuing with ourselves, our intended conversations. In this instance, conversations that empower people, not merely entitle people. When our everyday conversations—-from the mundane to the highly expert—-inspire, engage, and fully equip people, and people are empowered, then people simply don’t wait—-people at all levels actually do get up and go; they generate, they cause, they create and construct their lives as a matter of their word, as a matter of their stand, as a matter of what they see and they say is possible, important, urgent.
What if we human beings were widely committed to that kind of relationship: a relationship to all of life called “being empowered?” What if the price of being empowered includes being willing to honestly examine, and begin to break the grip of, our own sense of, our own attitudes of, our own demands for, entitlement….of being owed….as citizens, and as consumers….and we were to begin to examine, explore and develop fully empowering ourselves.
If I am truly empowered and empowering myself….maybe I don’t find myself “entitled”….
And, I can create what is missing in order to fulfilling my life.
Because I say so.
What if?
Next: How to empower human beings?
References and Resources:
1. A number of the ideas and some of the material that reflect on leadership and culture in this blog draw from the ideas and work of Werner Erhard.
For more of Werner Erhard’s work, see, Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological / Phenomenological Model course, authored by Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen, and Steve Zaffron. (Revised copy of July 15, 2019) http://ssrn.com/abstract=1263835
2. Carol Dwek, Mind Set
3. “Humanity As A Competitive Advantage,” Tony Schwartz, NY Times, 9/8/15.
4. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Dr. Angela Duckworth.
5. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline.
6. For life – coaching, see: https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/
7. For business leadership coaching, see: http://vsacoaching.com/
8. Promise Based Management HBR (Harvard Business Review), see: https://hbr.org/2007/04/promise-based-management-the-essence-of-execution
© Tony Smith
