10. Know Your Owners and Victims

Those who follow the part of themselves that is great will become great. Those that follow the part that is small will become small.

—Mencius

The people you motivate will tend to divide themselves into two categories: owners and victims.

This distinction comes from Steve’s Reinventing Yourself, which revealed in detail how owners are people who take full responsibility for their happiness, and victims are always lost in their unfortunate stories. Victims blame others, blame circumstance, and are hard to deal with. Owners own their own morale. They own their response to any situation.

At a seminar, a company CEO named Marcus approached Steve at the break:

“I have a lot of victims working for me,” Marcus said.

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