I’m a big fan of the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. The message is simple and powerful—take responsibility for everything in your world. Everything. Don’t blame, don’t complain, don’t get upset. Own it.
It’s shaped how I lead, parent, and live.
This idea is life-changing. Yet, like all ideas, it can be taken too far.
One of the hardest lessons coaching has taught me is that, when working with decision-making adults, there is an edge to my ownership.
It’s the edge where my responsibility ends and their free will begins.
Learning to recognize that edge changed everything. It freed me. More importantly, it helped me stay in this work without burning out.
Because before I learned that boundary, I was carrying more than my share— the weight of someone else’s inaction, their disappointment, their excuses.
I created a name for that pattern: Borrowed Burden Syndrome.
Borrowed Burden Syndrome is the unconscious habit of carrying emotional weight, expectations, or responsibility that don’t belong to you. The pain comes from trying to take responsibility for adults who won’t take responsibility for themselves.
For those of us wired toward people-pleasing, it’s easy to fall into this trap. We want people to win.
We give them the tools. We share the frameworks. We map out the path. But sometimes, things get lost between intention and execution.
Our job as coaches is to create awareness when the wires between those two get crossed. And there’s one question that has helped me more than any other to create that awareness:
Do your willings equal your wants?
Every want comes with a set of behaviors a person must be willing to live to achieve it. If they want six-pack abs, they must be willing to sleep, train, and eat accordingly. If they want a thriving marriage, they must be willing to put the phone down, be present, and have hard conversations. If they want a successful business, they must be willing to take action, hold others accountable, and lead.
The most powerful thing we can do as leaders is help people see that misalignment. Hold up a mirror. Show them the path. Then respect their free will to walk it.
That’s how we stay out of Borrowed Burden Syndrome. Because when you cross the edge—when you take more ownership than the person you’re coaching—it doesn’t help them. It just hurts you.
And it can hurt others, too. Because when you’re burned out by the ones who won’t change, you start to lose heart for the ones who will.
Here’s the reminder I come back to again and again: Don’t hurt the ones you can help by focusing on the ones you can’t.
Let that be the line you never cross.
Live Freed,
Jordan
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