105: Why Waste Your Time and Your Life Placing Blame? (Do This Instead)

What's to blame or who's to blame?

The deeper question is: does it matter?

Blame-placing has no productive outcome.

Perhaps you're tempted to think, Yeah, but...

The problem is how often we yeah, but... our way through life and lay blame at the feet of the people, problems, or circumstances that surround us without stopping to see where our responsibility rests.

I know...I know...I've jumped right into your feels with this but there's too much good living to be done without riding the blame-train.

Why waste the best years of your life placing blame when you could decide that your problems are yours to solve?

I "blame" (wink...wink) psychologist Albert Ellis for that insightful question.

He said,

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own."1

Freedom from blame-placing has much to do with why I chose "agency" as my word for the year and also wrote about it.

Agency is your ability to take purposeful and intentional action for shaping your life and circumstances.

Having agency, in essence, frees you from the need to place blame and instead it empowers you to be proactive when dealing with another's choices.

Life happens - "stuff" hits the fan!

• You can take action.
• You can figure out solutions.
• You can fail and try again.

Stay in your lane and keep going

At times, freeway driving frustrates me (ask my wife).

My frustration intensifies when drivers change lanes without signaling or doing any of a number of dumb things I feel responsible for correcting.

Although, awareness is a more important response if I want to avoid an accident.

I can choose heightened awareness, stay in my lane, and keep driving, or I can blame other driver's and drive aggressively like it's my job to correct their bad driving.

Another's choice, however reckless it may be, is their choice.

I'm not behind the wheel of their life and neither are they behind mine.

The same applies to you, however frustrating your drives or your life circumstances are due to someone else's choices.

Stay in your lane.

Keep your eyes on the road in front of...you.

Maintain forward momentum regardless of what others do (or don't do) - that's on them.

You do you!

Solve what's yours to solve

How often do you awaken and feel the weight of the world on your shoulders?

Before you begin to feel the daily weight, how much of that burden is yours to carry or you think is your responsibility to carry?

I suspect that your load feels lighter having considered the second question.

Much of the weight you carry could be problems you aren't meant to solve.

I've written about the circle of concern vs. the circle of influence.

There are circumstances within your scope of influence and there circumstances that, while affecting you, give you no leverage for influence, they're concerns.

Know the difference between what you can't control and what you can influence, and release yourself from the need to place blame.

Your influence enlarges around your capacity to solve the problems you create instead of trying to solve someone else's by placing blame.

Blame thrives in an environment where problems are talked about more than they are solved.

Solutions flow towards the person who is self-aware enough to know what problems are theirs and those that aren't - be that person.

See failure as an opportunity

Failure is an experience not a person.

Your failure-mindset makes a difference when you're tempted to place blame.

Failures are personal.

Turning failure into opportunity happens when you stop blaming the person or the circumstance that failed you and you start learning and growing from the experience.

Worrying that your failures will become someone else's fodder for blame will keep you from trying and experiencing new things.

Anticipated blame blinds you to new opportunity.

Take full ownership of your life, your wins and your failures.

Your failures might become a blame-target but if you've assumed responsibility in advance, why worry?

What matters isn't who are what's to blame, what matters is who will take responsibility for what's next

• Take action
• Seek solutions
• Fail and try again

Next week starts the holiday season (officially, unless you're one who ramped up the day after Halloween - you know who you are).

Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

I'll return with another issue the following week.

Press on...

Eddie

Sources:

1 - https://medium.com/personal-growth/this-is-why-people-waste-their-prime-years-51ae5356333c