WHEN DID WE STOP OWNING OUR PART?

Hi, it’s Maria!

I've been thinking about something a lot lately. It feels like somewhere along the

way, we've become really good at explaining ourselves. We're late because traffic

was bad. We didn't work out because work was busy. We haven't called someone

back because life got in the way. We missed the deadline because we had too much on our plate.

And before I go any further, I want to say something that's important.

Sometimes those things are true. Life is unpredictable. People get sick. Families

need us. Plans fall apart. Things happen that are completely outside of our control, and pretending otherwise would be naive.

That's not what I'm talking about. What I've started noticing is how often the conversation ends there. The explanation becomes the conclusion. We spend so much time talking about what happened that we never stop to ask the next question.

What part of this belongs to me? I've always had a hard time understanding a victim mentality. Not because I think life is fair, because it isn't. Not because I think people don't face real challenges, because they absolutely do. I've just never been taught to respond to disappointment by looking for someone else to blame.

I think a lot of that goes back to growing up in competitive dance. Every year we auditioned for our routines. There were dances everyone wanted to make, and every year there were dancers who didn't get the placements they were hoping for. I was one of them more than once. Looking back, what I'm most grateful for isn't that I eventually made the dances I wanted. It's how my parents responded when I didn't. They never called my dance teachers to question the decisions. They never told me I deserved a spot simply because I wanted one. They never encouraged me to quit because things hadn't gone my way. Instead, they taught me to ask a much more valuable question.

"What do you need to improve before next year's auditions?"

That question changed everything. It forced me to stop seeing disappointment as proof that something was unfair and start seeing it as feedback. If I wanted a different outcome, I had to become a better dancer. I had to work harder. I had to be honest about where I fell short. Most importantly, I had to take responsibility for the parts that actually

belonged to me.

Looking back, I don't think my parents were teaching me how to dance. I think

they were teaching me accountability. Somewhere along the way, accountability became a negative word. People hear it and immediately think blame, guilt, or criticism. I've never seen it that way. To me, accountability has always been incredibly freeing because the moment I own my part, I also own my ability to change it.

If every setback is someone else's fault, then every solution has to come from

someone else too. That's not a very empowering way to live. I've thought about those dance auditions a lot over the years because I don't think they were really about dance. They shaped the way I approach almost everything.

When something doesn't go the way I hoped in my business, there are usually a

dozen reasons I could point to. Construction delays. Staffing changes.

Unexpected expenses. Timelines shifting. Some of those things are genuinely

outside of my control.

But eventually I still have to sit down with myself and ask, have done differently?"

"Okay...what could ICould I have communicated more clearly? Made the decision sooner? Prepared better? Handled the conversation differently?

The answer isn't always comfortable.

But it's always useful.

One of the things I love most about teaching is that it reminds me of this every single day. As an instructor, I can coach you. I can encourage you. I can correct your form. I can remind you to breathe when class gets hard. But I can't do the work for you.

At some point, every person on a mat or X-Former has to decide what they're going to do with the information they've been given. That's true in class, and I think it's true everywhere else.

The people I admire most aren't the ones who never make mistakes. They're the

ones who own them quickly. They don't spend all of their energy explaining why something happened. They spend it figuring out what happens next. I've found that to be a much more peaceful way to live. Not because life gets easier...it doesn't, but because every time I ask myself, "What part of this belongs to me?" I remind myself that I still have influence over where the story goes from here.

Maybe accountability isn't about being harder on ourselves.

Maybe it's about believing we're capable of changing our circumstances instead

of waiting for someone else to do it for us.

Because while we don't get to choose everything that happens in our lives... We always get to choose what we do next.

From my core to yours,

Maria Stege

Founder & CEO, BARE Pilates Studio

…and that’s The Naked Truth