My youngest daughter loves to blame everyone else for something that didn’t go her way. “It’s your fault, mommy”, she tells me.
As parents, we believe she will grow out of it until… at some level we realize we all still like to assign blame. When we are truly unhappy at work, we blame our boss, or their boss. When we work too much, we blame anyone putting the pressure on us to over-deliver. When we can’t find a job, we blame the lack of job opportunities, maybe we blame our economy. Some blame a political party for the country’s problems.
Blaming is so much easier than confronting the real truth. Most likely, my daughter just wants to find a reason to feel better when she blames me. For the adults out there, it’s probably denial peppered with copious amounts of tribal beliefs that the common enemy is a bad human being or bad political party or just money in general.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it: Stop blaming anyone and everyone, including yourself. It’s important to own your sh*t, but don’t fault yourself to the point of self-extinction. What’s essential is that we identify our tendencies to blame others and then dig in to the layers of truth to find the things we can potentially adjust, control and change on our own.
Be kind. Be safe. Be appropriate. Now go!
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