written by Coach JoyGenea and Claude AI
You are scrolling. A reel, a post, a short video says something, and your whole body goes “oh my gosh, that might be me.”
That moment is real, and it matters. Thanks to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and the rest of it, people are naming more of their emotions, behaviors, and experiences than ever before. You just pulled something out of your blind spot and into your knowing. I see this as one of the greatest gifts of social media. It helps us find our people and realize we are not alone in our traits. Part 1 of this series was about exactly that, the relief and the power of finally having the right word for what you are dealing with.
Here is the problem I keep seeing. You are so flooded with information that you collect the aha and stop. You get the hit, you feel understood for an afternoon, and then you scroll on to the next one. Life does not change, and you wonder why. I work in personal development. Growth does not live in the aha. It lives in what you do with it.
So if you are going to spend the time to scroll, make the most of the moment. This is Part 3, the last in the series. If you have not read Part 1, Why It Matters To Get Something Defined and Named Right, and Part 2, Naming Is Not Doing, start there. This one is about the hardest and most valuable step. Taking ownership.
OWNERSHIP IS NOT SELF-BLAME.
Before you had the word, you probably did what most of my clients did. You blamed yourself. You were mean to yourself. You felt different, you felt judged, and somewhere along the way you decided the problem was just you. That self-attack is the real damage, and it can go on for years.
So when the name finally shows up, there are two easy exits, and both of them are traps. One is to turn the name into fresh evidence against yourself, more proof that something is wrong with you. The other is to point it outward and make the whole outcome someone else’s fault.
Ownership is the third road, and it is the one that takes courage. It sounds like this. I am part of this outcome. What do I want to do about it? What can I actually do about it? And then I do what I can. Some things cannot be changed, and that is real. But even then, I can own it when one of my traits lands on someone in a way I never intended, because now I have the awareness to see it and to name it. Not with a whip. With grace, with kindness, and with honesty about what is actually mine.
HERE IS WHAT THIS LOOKED LIKE IN MY KITCHEN.
I like to communicate in simple terms. I talk fast, and most of the time I just want the thing done. My partner is very literal. So my lack of detail gave us mixed results, and nowhere more than in the kitchen.
For a while, I got really frustrated. And frustrated was convenient, because frustrated let me make the results all his fault.
Then I read an article about a couple who were very literal with each other, what they changed, and how it improved their marriage. Boom. What had been happening between us suddenly had a name and a definition. I had pulled it out of the blind spot.
Twenty years ago I would have stopped right there, pleased with the name, and told everyone about it at dinner. Instead, I took ownership that I was part of the outcome. I talked with him about it. And then we practiced. It took a couple of years of cooking together to get good at it.
When I am at my best now, I slow down. I talk through the task before we start. I have him tell the process back to me so I know we are on the same page. We get some great laughs out of it, too. It is funny as heck how wrong we can read each other sometimes. We are kinder to each other and honestly happier people because of it. And here is my favorite part. I have started to notice I do not even think about it anymore. It went from a thing I had to work at to just how we cook.
That is what ownership does when you let it run all the way through. Naming pulled the pattern into the light. Ownership is what changed the marriage.
FIVE QUESTIONS FOR YOUR NEXT AHA.
So the next time you are scrolling and something makes you stop and think, that might be me, do not just collect it. Run it through these five questions and turn the aha into movement.
- What makes me think that? Get specific about what actually landed, not just the feeling.
- What could be the value of knowing more? Name what changes for you if this turns out to be true.
- Where can I go next to learn more that is reliable data? A reel is a doorway, not a source. Go find solid ground.
- How is this improving my life, and how is it impeding my life? Both columns, honestly. This is where ownership starts.
- What actions am I going to take now that I know this? Pick one. Small and specific beats big and vague.
HOW TO TAKE ACTION AND MAKE IT STICK.
Question five is where the real work starts, and it is also where most people quit. Not because they fail. Because the first attempt is clumsy, it does not feel like a win, and they decide it did not take. One try is not a pattern. It is data.
Willpower is the wrong tool for an unconventional brain, and it is the wrong tool for keeping a change alive. Willpower runs out. Your operating system does not. Go back to my time blindness from Part 2. Asking what time we need to leave instead of what time the event starts only works because I do it every single time now, not just the day I discovered it. It stopped being a clever trick and became just how I leave the house. Automatic.
The verbal processor I told you about is still practicing listening without composing the next sentence, months in. Not because they aren’t trying, they are one of the sharpest people I know. Because a change is not a finish line you cross once. You keep choosing it until choosing it stops taking effort.
And expect a stretch where it feels boring. Boring is not the change wearing off. Boring is the change holding, moving from something you have to remember into something you just are.
So when you pick your one action from question five, set it up to survive real life:
- Start smaller than feels worthy. Set a timer, five minutes. On a hard day, five minutes you actually do beats thirty you skip.
- Repeat it on the ordinary days, not just the motivated ones.
- Build it into your people and your space so it does not run on willpower. Ask the people close to you for grace. Change the question you ask, the way I did.
- Expect the first few tries to be clumsy. That is data, not failure.
- Keep going past the point it stops feeling exciting. That is exactly where it becomes yours.
NAME IT. DO IT. OWN IT.
That is the series in three verbs. Naming pulls the pattern out of your blind spot. Doing gets you moving. Owning it, your behavior, your outcomes, and your impact on the people around you, is what finally gives you results that hold, and relationships that get kinder instead of more frustrated.
So here is your question. Think of the last thing you scrolled past that made you stop and go, that might be me. Run it through the five questions. Pick your one action. Then do it again next week, even after the first try is clumsy and the shine wears off. That is where your life actually changes.
JoyGenea Schumer
Personal Development Expert To The Unconventional Leaders
Video transcription:
So you’re scrolling. Oh, I know, how did you find me? You were scrolling and you came across this. Thanks. Hi, and welcome. And a reel stops you cold, right? Like you’re going along and you’re like, “Oh! Oh, that right there.” Something in your chest just, it just stops and you go, “Oh my gosh, that might be me,” right?
It happens to me from time to time. I hear it all the time from clients, “Oh my gosh, you know, could this be me?” And they, we, oh, we get on these segue conversations all about what they’ve found, identified or recognized might be part of their trait sequence. Maybe we haven’t talked about it yet, or it just hasn’t come up, but it’s what…
It’s one of the better parts of social media that I’m finding, is that further education about traits, the ability to laugh about it, to connect with other people about it, huge bonus. I really enjoy it. This is part three. So I had… This is a three-part series. We end at this one, but this is part three about the conversation we’re having about naming.
So that scrolling thing where you go, “Oh my gosh,” that’s the aha moment. That’s where something that was in your blind spot, you might have had an awareness, but it didn’t have a name, and all of a sudden somebody’s like, “It’s a thing” and, “Oh my gosh,” like time bl- that’s how I felt when I heard about time blindness, and I had researched it and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I got this thing for sure.”
Then after the aha and after the data research comes the most important part, which is ownership and action, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. I’ve been talking about action in part two, knowing that- Action quite often can be clumsy and frustrating, and often we try something once and we make up a story that becomes a truth, which becomes a thing that stops us, that we are like, “Oh, you know, I didn’t really like that, so, I’m not gonna do that again.”
That, that is so not the gamified way of living life and doing things. That’s what I’ve really learned by hanging out with all of these gamification experts. That’s not failure. That first attempt that feels clunky, that’s just data. That’s just, “Oh, well, this kinda felt clunky. Next time I need to do it like this.
What am I gonna change? What little thing should I tweak and see if it doesn’t feel clunky?” And what happens when you come from that kind of framework and that thought process, it stops things that need or you choose to shift, not need to shift per se, might be healthy for your life, but that you want to shift, that you’re able to see as data and as process and as shift.
You get to keep the excitement in the learning. You get to keep the engagement to the point that it becomes boring and routine and just a part of who you are and how you do things. And that, that’s the value of the aha moment. That’s the value of doom scrolling is when you can s- take something from a, “Oh, my gosh, I think this is me,” to, “You know what?
Yeah, I definitely have some time blindness. That kinda gets all over people. Oh, wait, that also gets all over me. That’s cost me some jobs. That’s cost me some relationships. I maybe don’t love that. How could I possibly shift that now that I know, now that I know? Now that it’s not in a blind spot and out of my view, it’s in my view, which means I can possibly do some things about it.
I’m not gonna not have time blindness. That’s in my DNA. Gonna probably have that all my life. I can put training wheels on it, though. I can adjust and maneuver my life a little differently now that that’s not in my blind spot, and now that I’m aware of it. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. And those are the types of conversations that I think are so important in taking something out of that aha and putting it into, “Okay, I learned a bunch of things, and now, now what am I gonna do?”
‘Cause there’s a trap that happens, and I watch people fall into it, where they have the aha moment, and then this one I find really interesting. They go around telling peop- They’re like, “Oh my gosh.” This would be an example. “Oh my gosh, I have time blindness,” and not inviting other people to talk about how that might have played out for them.
Like I have a really good friend who, who for her, being early is on time. So when we have meetings and I’m consistently five to 10 minutes late, she took that personally, and it was h- hard and challenging. And when we finally had the opportunity to talk about it, she was able to tell me that’s how it was experienced, and I recognized and was able to own, “That was never my intention.
I’m sorry it’s coming across that way. It’s not personal. I’ll c- Please allow me to continue to work on that.” And I do. I continue to work on that. Do I win most of the time? No. Actually, sh- if she’s watching this, she knows. I don’t win most of the time. I do win every once in a while, and that feels really good, and I hang onto that win, and next time I work on doing it better.
But I don’t fall all over myself when I get there. “Oh my God.” I don’t make up excuses for why it’s… No, I just own it. “Yeah, my genetics got in the way on this one, and that means they got on you. Sorry about that.” And she gets it now. Conversations, communication. When you pull things out of those blind spots, we can do that.
We can have those conversations Ownership also doesn’t have to look like, “This is all my fault. Oh, my gosh, you know, that happened and I have time blindness and it’s all my fault.” It’s not all my fault most of the time. But if there’s a spelling error in an email, yeah, that’s my fault. I was the one sending out that email.
That’s my ownership. And when you get more comfortable with the things you cannot change, I can work really hard, I can use all the software, all the tools, most of my emails still go out with a typo and some grammar issues. I don’t love that. I’m also not gonna stop everything I’m doing to put two hours into sending out an email to most people.
That’s not realistic. So if you’re gonna hang in my sphere and hang out with me, you’re gonna get emails with typos, and that’s not intentional. And I’m aware that’s what’s happening, and if we need to talk about it, absolutely. We c- I’m all for having conversations. But I also know there’s not much more I can do to not make that happen that doesn’t completely derail a whole bunch of other parts of my life, and I’m not willing to sacrifice all that just so that something’s spelled properly.
That’s just not how it is. In my… In parts one and part two, I talked about some of the time blindness. I also talked about a client that was working on understanding that they were a high verbal processor. And in meetings and so forth, they were consistently sitting there not listening to people and just waiting for their chance to talk so they could process.
And we were creating new systems for them to be more present in the meetings, to hear the other data people were adding, and to have their ideas still there, but now expanding. And they’re working on that. Again, not a try fail. They are trying, learning, adjusting. It’s becoming easier and easier. In my article, I share a story about my husband and I, ’cause it’s a safe story that I can share, and how- He’s very literal, and I often in my communication can be very literal.
So the two of us attempting to cook at times can be humorous beyond words. I’m very visual, so I’m gonna point at something and say, “It’s in that cabinet.” He’s gonna be like, “Okay, exactly where? Is it on the left side, the right side? Is it in the middle? What does it…” You know? Like, “What exactly am I looking for?”
He… It’s not gonna jump out at him because I’m so spatially aware, I remember exactly where it is, what shelf, location, all of that. So we’ve learned, once I understood that, I read, I actually read an article about ADHD in couples and realized for me in particular that I was coming to these conversations hearing him very literally and vice versa, and so we were struggling, and I was enjoying blaming him for that because it was in my blind spot.
And once I read that article, I was like, “Oh, I have a role in this. I could communicate better. It would actually make me a better leader. I would like to practice.” And so we had some conversations about it, and now we actually enjoy cooking, and those little slip-ups that happen in our l- literalness, we laugh about.
We’re like, “Oh, I really thought you meant this.” “No, I meant that.” And we’re like, “Okay, that’s how we wound up there. Got it.” Easy to fix. Not a big deal. S- We had to work at it for a while. I can tell you it’s been two years of working on it, and now it’s just habit. That’s the ownership aspect of it. It’s so freeing.
That’s why I’m inviting you and enrolling you in it. It is so freeing when you’re like, “Oh that’s mine.” What I really wanna encourage for you is that as you’re doom scrolling, as you’re having aha moments, there are five quick and easy questions I want you to ask after you have that aha moment, and they’re really simple.
Is what exactly was that f- like, why did that hit you? Why did you go, “Oh, I think that’s me”? What’s the deeper part of that? And then the next question to ask is where can I go find some reliable data to actually investigate this a little bit more and understand it better? And it’s good data, not the junk data, the good data.
What’s the value in knowing more about this? Possibly you might look at it and say, “This isn’t really interfering with my life a lot. This isn’t really making m- enhancing my life. I just need to stop beating myself up about it.” So there’s the win. I understand that now. I’m good to go. Or it might be, wow, like with time blindness, I would…
I wanna understand that. I wanna understand to the point of, you know, genetically where is that? How did they find that? What can I do about it? What do they understand about that? I went deep and then, you know, extracted myself from that and said, “Okay, now I gotta own some parts of this.” Number three…
Number four actually is how is this improving my life? We talked about it. And how is it impeding my life? That’s a two-column type of thing that helps you in your ownership and understanding how much time and energy should you put into this. And by the way, impeding your life is when it’s getting all, all over other people and harming them.
That’s when those conversations need to be had. And then number five, my favorite, part three, that’s what this is about, is what actions am I going to take now that I know this? Pick one, make it small, make it specific. Thank you for hanging out with me this long. Don’t make it too big. Don’t make it vague.
Small, specific, use timers. Every day just work at it, right? What’s failing about this? What’s not going well? Use your data. And that is personal growth and development. That is where you change your life and change your world in big ways, and that’s what I want for you so much. That’s why you’re here.
That’s why you’re hanging out. You’re like, “Wow, I’m a different thinker. I’m a bit unconventional. What do I do with this some of the time?” Well, stop blaming yourself and start growing yourself is what I’m gonna tell you. I’m JoyGenea, unconventional leadership coach, international neurodiversity coach, and a champion for you having the most amazing life possible. Bye now.