Stop Outsourcing Your Power and Start Taking Radical Responsibility

There’s a moment in every leader’s journey when they realize something uncomfortable:
they’ve been outsourcing their power without even noticing it.

Not their job titles. Not their decisions on paper. Their inner authority — the quiet, steady voice inside that knows what’s true, aligned, and right for them.

It happens slowly. A little at a time. We lean on people we trust. We follow the guidance of mentors and experts. We defer to family expectations or workplace norms. We prioritize “what should be done” over what feels honest and grounded. And then one day, you wake up and realize you’re living a life shaped more by other people’s beliefs than your own.

I know this because I’ve lived it.

The Silent Habit of Outsourcing Your Life

For most of my early adulthood and corporate life, I was a champion at outsourcing my beliefs!

I adopted my mom’s preferences, her worldview, her expectations of what a “good life” looked like — not because she demanded it, but because I hadn’t learned to slow down and ask myself what I believed.

Then came the experts I admired at work — some brilliant, some simply confident. I absorbed their opinions as truth. I trusted their guidance over my own instincts. I let their voices shape my choices.

And I handed that same power to the companies I worked for. Their expectations of who I am became my compass. Their priorities became my own. Their pace dictated my days, my dreams, and my bandwidth.

None of this was forced. This is what happens when you don’t allow time to think for yourself.

Critical Thinking Is a Self-Leadership Skill

One of the greatest gifts of coaching is that it forced me to slow down long enough to think.
Not react. Not follow. Not comply.
Think.

Critical thinking isn’t cynicism. It’s not rebellion. I believe it’s a requirement in life, an obligation for having a life. It’s the willingness to research, evaluate, consider multiple angles — and then decide what you think.

It’s owning your opinion. Owning your desires. Owning your choices. Owning the impact of those choices. That’s radical responsibility. Not perfection, not control. Ownership. And in leadership, ownership is everything.

Putting Myself Back in the Equation

Even now, after years of coaching and building my own leadership practices, this lesson circles back to remind me: You are the expert of your life.

Recently, I was working with someone I deeply respect — someone brilliant and deeply experienced in a part of my business where I’ve been learning. Naturally, I valued their guidance. I trusted their input. But without realizing it, I slipped into an old habit: blindly implementing everything they said. It was subtle… until it wasn’t. Some of their ideas were aligned. Some weren’t. And the parts that weren’t aligned were never going to work — because I wasn’t in the decision. When you remove yourself from the equation, alignment disappears.
And without alignment, even the “best” strategy falters.

So now, I lead with an AND practice:

“What does this expert recommend?” AND
“What do I think and feel about that?”

It’s never about rejecting expertise. It’s about pairing it with your own inner authority. That one simple AND creates a shift to radical responsibility for my decisions.

Why Radical Responsibility Is the Highest Form of Freedom

People often think freedom comes from fewer rules or fewer commitments. But real freedom — sustainable, grounded freedom — comes from something else:

When you take responsibility for your own life, you stop negotiating your power.

You stop waiting for permission. You stop outsourcing decisions to people who don’t live with the consequences. You stop abandoning yourself in the name of being agreeable, efficient, or “good.”

Responsibility creates clarity. Clarity creates alignment. Alignment creates momentum.

This is why self-leadership always begins with you.
Not your mentors.
Not your team.
Not your company.
Not your family.
You.

Self-Leadership Question to Sit With

Here are the reflections I keep returning to:

Where am I not taking radical responsibility for my own life? Where am I outsourcing decisions that are mine to make?

Sit with that. Not just mentally but energetically. Because the moment you put yourself back in the equation, your life shifts. Your leadership shifts. Your confidence, clarity, and capacity shift.

You don’t need to be the loudest expert in the room. You need to become the expert of your life and lead from there.

If you value this kind of new world leadership, join me in the Deep Anchor Collective, a group-coaching program and community of leaders who value the impact of leadership and welcome radical responsibility in their lives.