Cultivating ‘Ownership of Mind’ in Business: Steering the Mind
Continuing our discussion on ‘Ownership of Mind‘ in the business context, we now delve into why this concept is crucial for our sense of self and how we interact with external influences.
Operating with Ownership of Mind isn’t merely about professional competence; it’s deeply intertwined with our personal identity. Consider how we build our sense of self. A prominent view suggests our identity is not fixed but is created through self-narratives – cognitive structures we use to interpret our histories and traits, shaping our intentions. Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. This self-creation is a relational process, an ongoing negotiation between how we see ourselves and how others interpret and recognize us.
This is where control over information becomes vital. Our mental privacy, understood as a psychological capacity, involves control over the flow of information about us. This control allows us to filter and selectively share personal information. This ability to regulate our interaction with others, managing both the information we project (our self-narrative) and the interpretations we receive, is fundamental to constructing our identity. It’s like managing a flexible boundary between the self and the non-self, helping us understand “where one begins and ends vis-a-vis others”.
Mind-reading neurotechnologies, by potentially bypassing this cognitive filtering process, highlight how external forces can threaten this fundamental aspect of mental privacy and, consequently, our identity formation. But even without advanced tech, the constant stream of information and opinions in the business world presents a similar challenge.
Photo by Abdullah Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Think about the idea of ownership itself.
Discussions about physical ownership versus subscription services highlight that attachment, or the feeling of possessing something, is fundamentally an internal state, not just a legal one. People can feel strong attachment and a sense of entitlement to things they don’t legally own, like streaming content. Similarly, in business, external pressures, corporate narratives, or industry trends can heavily influence our thinking. Without Ownership of Mind, we risk becoming overly attached to – or dictated by – external ideas, much like feeling beholden to subscription content, rather than truly owning our thoughts and positions.
This connects to philosophical concepts of agency and source-hood., two topics that will be addressed in subsequent posts. ‘Ownership of Mind’ implies a sense of being the source of one’s thoughts and decisions. It’s the feeling that I am the one generating this experience or thought, and I am the one undergoing this experience. This is distinct from feeling that our thoughts are merely products of external factors or irresistible internal forces.
While philosophical debates on free will and determinism are complex, the idea of being the source of our actions is central to many accounts of freedom and moral responsibility. Some philosophical models, like reasons–responsiveness or identification accounts (where we identify with certain motivations over others), attempt to explain how we can be the source of our actions even within a deterministic framework. They emphasize internal control, responsiveness to reasons, or alignment with our ‘true self’. Neuroscience also explores the origins of our decisions, though findings like the readiness potential observed before action onset are still debated.
For our purposes in business, ‘Ownership of Mind’ can be seen as the exercise of this internal agency and source-hood. It’s about ensuring our thoughts and positions arise from our own cognitive processes, informed by diverse, validated sources, rather than being simply absorbed or dictated by external pressures or unchecked internal biases like the self-serving attribution bias.
This internal ownership is what gives us the power to change. When we own our thoughts, feelings, and even judgments (recognizing what they reveal about us), we gain clarity and the ability to respond constructively to problems, whether they stem from internal factors (which we can change) or external ones (which we must navigate differently).
In conclusion, cultivating Ownership of Mind is an essential discipline in today’s information-rich and dynamic business world. It involves conscious effort to gather information, think objectively, take responsibility for one’s positions, and actively participate in the ongoing construction of one’s identity by managing how we interact with the world mentally and relationally. It empowers us to be the genuine source of our contributions, enabling effective navigation and greater impact.
In Part 3 of this series, we will look at what you have to ‘pay’ when you want to have ‘Ownership of Mind.’