There really isn’t anything to gain when you play the blame game. If you are able to convince your friends, or who ever is willing to listen, that it’s your parents that are to blame for the way you’ve turned out, what good would that do? If you blame your business failures or social life on someone or something else, because it wasn’t your fault, then how would that help you? Pointing blame of your personal or business problems on outside forces, will never be helpful to you.
There are studies and theories that support if you constantly assign your failures to forces outside of your control, it will offer temporarily relief for self esteem and motivation issues. For example, when someone says “Oh darn, the rain ruined the perfectly planned picnic,” and then add, “I’ll just have to plan for that the next time.” There is nothing wrong with the first statement blaming the rain, but there’s no point and it’s personally destructive adding the second point, because you can’t control the weather.
Lose The Blame
Focusing on external factors to what goes wrong in our lives can be damaging and contributes to us losing enthusiasm and motivation. Even if it is true that your friend accidentally made you late for a job interview, and as a result failed to get that job, there is no point to dwell on it. If you do so, then it’s like you are giving up.
Instead:
1. Learn from your mistakes, take notes and do things different the next time
2. Take more responsibility for your actions, take control of your actions
You being late for that interview was because your friend got in an accident, you would then just let it go. But if your friend is always constantly late for everything, you should and would take a note of that. You would tell yourself, “Next time, for something this important, I will get a ride with someone else,” or “I will plan to be at appointments thirty minutes early, as well as have some type of back up plan.”
It’s one thing when someone does something wrong, or if there’s a lightening storm that rains on your parade. It’s another thing, which is completely pointless, to constantly persist in blaming others, or blame outside factors which are completely out of your control for current situations in your life.
Don’t persist in constantly blaming someone else as your only response. If someone happens to steal all your money, then they obviously did you wrong. But rather ask yourself what you should be doing to be more careful the next time, or how you can make that money back, while keeping it more secure. Always keep your focus on what YOU can do, and not on what others have done to you.
Laying Blame When It’s Subtle
There can be a fine line between recognizing certain “problem factors” and letting it control your actions. If you know someone that gains weight easily, they are most likely aware of that and recognize it as fact. If that person is always repeating that they gain weight easy to themselves or to others, it can be a subtle way of them saying: “It’s my body type and metabolism that is to blame, so there’s nothing that I can do about it.”
You need to overcome this tendency, so you need to include what YOUR decisions are when talking about these outside factors. When you say, “Susan just depresses me,” then follow it up with “but I choose to spend a lot of time with her.” Or when you say “When I was young, because we moved around so much, my parents screwed up my social life,” but also add “that’s why I am working hard to stay at one place.” Have you yourself, or know someone who subtly blames the world and everyone else for their problems, but will never recognize that they are the root of their problems? How happy or successful are they?
Everyone at one time or another can think of countless ways and things that’s caused us problems in our lives. Who or what are they? The answer is, who cares? The real question is, What are we planning to do about it? Have you ever seen or known anyone that blames their way to success? It’s time to stop this blame game and be fully accountable.