When was the last time you washed and waxed your rental car?

There’s a story behind that.

This is your daily message from Chad number 1200 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. And this message is dedicated to Madyson Noelle Smith. You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.

Here’s the upgrade:

You may think you have to own something before taking responsibility, but upgraded thinking knows ownership is a mindset.

Here’s the story:

In 1978, General Bill Creech took command of the Air Force’s Tactical Air Command. He inherited a problem. Too many jets were sitting on the ground because of maintenance issues.

The maintenance system was built on specialists. Tom Peters and Nancy Austin described it this way: a technician might be responsible for “two square feet of the right wing of a hundred planes.” Everybody worked on every jet. Nobody was responsible for any one of them. And as Peters and Austin put it, “Only whole planes fly.”

So Creech changed it. Each jet got a dedicated crew chief. Crew chiefs weren’t new. What was new was this: the same chief, on the same jet, for the long haul. That plane was theirs. The plane and its mission became the customer. The crew chiefs took it personally. They went everywhere their jets went. Deployments. Inspections. The wash rack. And they rode their technicians hard.

When Creech came around to ask how they liked the new arrangement, a sergeant answered him with a question: “General, when’s the last time you washed a rental car?” Nobody washes a rental car. You fill it up, you drive it, you turn it in. Maybe a little dirtier than you found it. It’s not yours. Those crew chiefs didn’t own those jets. The government did. Not one of them held a title. They just decided the plane was theirs. And that was enough. Ownership is a mindset.

You’re driving a lot of rentals right now. A job you’re just passing through. A team you’d rather not get attached to. Rentals get used. Owned things get washed. The better story to tell yourself is, “I don’t need a title to treat it like it’s mine.” Just out of curiosity, what’s one thing you’ve been treating like a rental that you’d take better care of if you called it yours? Pick one thing today. Your desk. Your work. Your people. Stop renting it. Wash it.

Tell me a story of something you decided to own to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask them, “What’s something in your life you’ve been treating like a rental?”