Pogo's Maxim

In 1813, after winning the Battle of Lake Erie, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry sent a famous dispatch: "We have met the enemy and they are ours."

More than a century later, cartoonist Walt Kelly turned that line inside out. Kelly drew Pogo, a wise little possum living in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp. Beneath the funny animals, Kelly was usually saying something insightful about people. In the early 1970s, he drew Pogo standing in his beloved swamp, now buried in trash. Pogo looks around and delivers the line that outlived the strip:

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Nobody invaded the swamp. The damage came from the folks who lived there, one careless choice at a time.

That's uncomfortably true about growth. When we don't become who we want to be, we look outward for the reason: the market, the boss, the schedule. But most often, the enemy is the one in the mirror. The ego that won't ask for help. The habits on autopilot. The work ethic that shows up strong Monday and quietly leaves by Thursday. The thinking that keeps telling us the same old story.

And that enemy doesn't feel like an enemy. It feels like common sense. It feels like protection.

A path that seems right. The danger isn't the path we know is wrong. It's the one that feels safe and familiar, and slowly takes us somewhere we never meant to go.

In their book "Immunity to Change", Harvard researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey explain why motivated people so often fail to change. It isn't a lack of willpower. Rather, that we have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.

Picture a leader who sincerely wants to delegate more. Yet every week they jump in, fix the problem themselves, and stay late doing work someone else could learn. Kegan and Lahey would say: don't just scold the behavior. Ask what it's protecting. Underneath may be a hidden commitment, "I need to be needed," resting on a big assumption: "If I'm not the one solving it, I'm not valuable."

That's the brake. Until we examine the belief, it wins every time, because it doesn't feel like a bad habit. It feels like survival. Belief systems are so strong, we simply can not operate against them.

That's why resolutions fade. We attack the behavior and leave the belief untouched. Sometimes fear keeps us doing what protects us: overworking, controlling, staying quiet, not making a call that could end in no.

Sometimes a belief keeps us from doing what would change us and improve the team or family: the hard conversation, the honest feedback, the risk of looking bad while trying something new.

Real change starts with honest questions. What am I afraid would happen if I changed? What belief is this behavior protecting? Is it actually true?

Many of our big assumptions are really questions of worth: Am I enough? Am I valuable if I'm not in control? God has already answered those. Our worth was settled at the cross, not at the closing table or the quarterly review. When that truth runs deeper than the fear, the foot can finally come off the brake.

Pogo was right. We have met the enemy. But the enemy in the mirror doesn't get the last word.

Bonus Exercise:

If you want to go deeper; grab a sheet of paper and make four columns:

1. My goal: the one change that matters most.

2. What I do instead: the behaviors working against it.

3. My hidden worry: what I fear would happen if I did the opposite.

4. My big assumption: the belief that makes that fear feel true.

Then find one small, safe way to test that assumption this week.