Just as “certainty” can seriously undermine our transformation, a “blaming” mindset can covertly keep us stuck.
Normal people don’t walk around saying “I blame others for most bad outcomes and don’t take personal responsibility.” It is amazing how few people acknowledge this common pattern, yet how widely it is expressed in everyday life. I’m not here to criticize people for this self deception, but rather help expose the pattern so you can release it and grow. This is a common part of the human machine we can grow beyond, but only with the fortitude to look past our comfort zone.
What do I mean by “blame?” I mean attributing the cause of events, circumstances, and even your own actions and thoughts, as originating outside yourself. Sometimes this involves specifically communicating that others are at fault, but mostly it is an insidious internal habit. The habit creates external causes for your life, particularly the aspects you don’t like. This forms the basis of a — dramatic pause — a victim mindset. In stronger forms, I believe this blame habit is the root of many clear victimization perspectives, wherein people attribute much of their life to other people, the system, the unfair world, the evil human parents, and so on. As with the blame habit, no one thinks they have a victim mindset. Both are subtle infections that undermine our lives from the inside out, rather than appear in our internal awareness.
Sometimes it is reasonable to blame others. You’re eating in a restaurant and someone crashes into your legally parked car. A burglar breaks into a locked building and steals something. Even in these cases, beware of subtle hiding of your participation and power — did you park properly, did you secure your valuables reasonably? Even if you are not the cause, be open to learn and alter the circumstance in the future when appropriate.
In some cases, abusive people or terribly unfortunately circumstances do enter people’s lives. Although we need to get beyond those situations (seek professional help for those), they are not the subject of this post. I am describing a pattern of “others caused it” or “something else caused it” that permeates many lives and seems to infect most others to some extent.
This blaming personality pattern is very resilient and resists exposure and change. The words and thoughts will be slippery, the internal response will be evasive. From the inside, it won’t seem like unduly affixing blame, it won’t seem like giving up responsibility or personal power. We can, however, rise beyond the automated thoughts and see this in our own lives. We can gradually release it and take more control of our lives.
Why release this blaming pattern, which is much broader than specifically blaming people? When we blame others, we tell our selves that we are not the cause, that we didn’t make it happen, that we didn’t influence the outcome. All cool sounding stuff when we don’t like the outcome. Well, more importantly, we’ve told our selves that we have minimal control over the situation or the outcome. As we attribute blame or causation to avoid responsibility, we simultaneously relinquish our power in the matter. I should write it again, but that looks silly in print — so please read it a few times and pretend I repeated myself. If you are sure it doesn’t apply at all to you, read it a few more times for emphasis.
So here is the trap, and a plausible factor in making this blame complex so prevalent in human thought. Our self esteem and happiness is likely raised by attributing negative outcomes to others, at least temporarily (read Seligman’s Learned Optimism for more on this). However, our power to change our own life and take responsibility to act and change the circumstance is far more rooted in taking personal responsibility. Whether the circumstance you desire is a modern life successful in ways you choose or to live a peaceful reclusive life in a remote village, you are far more likely to create a chosen circumstance if you “own” where you are today.
This blame complex can range from subtle distortions to an obvious victim perspective. Shifting toward responsibility can have a dramatic positive effect in your life. There are several challenges we need to tackle:
- Dig deeply and honestly to find where this pattern expresses itself. It hides deep in our rationality and conceals itself beneath our thoughts, with many contortions and clever twists. The blame complex is wired so deeply that it isn’t so much a thought or word pattern, as it is a pattern in how we choose our thoughts. This modulation of our thoughts, in this and other such patterns, is often very subtle and hard to catch.
- Don’t beat up on yourself once you recognize this. Always be gentle in thoughts about yourself. Don’t look for the pattern in others. Accept that you are human, like everyone else, and accept yourself with a commitment to grow. Begin catching likely occurrences and consciously exploring other more empowering explanations. Particularly, look for alternative explanations that leave openings for you to quickly learn and assimilate new constructive ways to think and act in life.
- Don’t be obsessive about not blaming others. Once you see this pattern in yourself, and begin tipping the scales, gradual practice will weaken the pattern and awaken your ability to choose responsibility and take action. There is no point in trying to push this fast or revisiting your life experiences, once you’ve clearly caught the pattern. It may be weaker or stronger than average, but I assure you it is there, as it is part of the human makeup. The good news is we can move much of the power back to ourselves.
I suggest you find a few occurrences, preferably in the last five to ten years, where you realize you blamed others and gave up your personal power and responsibility. These don’t have to be dramatic life altering events, just enough to illuminate the pattern to your self. For the instances you choose, accept another way of thinking and consider actions you may still be able to take. This is not so much a hard pattern to change, as it is a hard pattern to catch and accept. These first few steps are very important.
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I find these words are very true. Human nature is to want to shift blame away from ourself. My grandmother used to say every time you point your finger you have three pointing at you and literaly if you look at your hand while pointing your index finger there are in fact three pointing at yourself. The fact that we are disempowering ourselves by doing that never occured to me and I can see how doing this over and over would reliquish your own personal power through constantly suggesting to yourself that you were powerless. Thank you for this enlightenment.