by Its really very easy to blame someone else for your failures, accidents and troubles. Our minds are programmed in this way by default. The blame game sabotages the relationships and stops your growth because it was not your fault. If there is a hot pan and you touch it accidentally then is it you who are responsible who touched it or is it someone else who left the pan hot ?
A man sitting in parked car in open parking lot is waiting for someone, suddenly he sees that a car is approaching directly at him with great speed, he shouts watch out multiple times but the car crashes into him head on. He keeps yelling louder and louder and then comes out of the car to find out that there was no one driving the car. He is even more upset. Now there is no one else to blame for this accident.
Life is very similar to this accident. Nature is unpredictable and you would keep getting such cars heading your way. Would you shout and yell at it or take action at right time to steer away from this trouble. The mind needs to be deliberately trained to take responsibility and action and stop blaming others.
No one wins the blame game. Once you stop taking action and start blaming others, your car would already be damaged. Sure you can get it fixed but it was a lot easier to act in first place. Simple rule I follow is: whatever can go wrong will go wrong hence there is no one to blame. If you understand this principle the life would be much simpler and you would not blame anyone. Shit happens and it’s ok.
Blame game also has an underline principle that other party needs to always follow all the rules and it has to be a perfect ideal world. When an accident happens we immediately refer the rule book of an ideal world and start to find the blame. We often hold others against morality and righteousness which even we may guilty of not following.
Looking outside is always easier than looking inside yourself. Further, we are programmed to do easier things whenever given a choice. In my opinion, instead of finding a scapegoat it’s always harder to look inside and share responsibility for the failure. Sadly, our first reaction is to play the speed game of who blames first.
Blaming would deny you the chance of self improvement. Blame game doesn’t allow us a chance to look inside and find the real reasons for failures. It works at surface and would never let us go deep and figure out the real cause. No constructive information is ever generated from this blame game.
Now how do you get out of it. I have the following principles:
- Mindfulness: You could be blaming someone consciously where you need to blame for your benefits like in a car accident or project failure or slippage. You could be playing blame game so often that now its your habit and sub-conscious mind does it for you automatically like it keeps you breathing. For the second case always be mindful of what you say or the way you react. The sub-conscious mind is trainable and with constant taming. I’ll have a very detailed article for this soon.
- Responsibility: Take responsibility for your choices whether to do or not do something, both are your choices. After every accident or failure think about the things you have learned and be responsible for them.
- Sympathize with others, the world is not perfect and is unpredictable hence the plans are going to fail. No one is perfect not even you.
- Look inside and resolve the root causes, stop putting bandaids. Sometimes deep surgery is needed and patches won’t help.
Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one is to blame. ~ Erica Jong
You don’t blame your shadow for the shape of your body. Don’t blame others for the shape of your experience. ~Gillian Duce
this one is really to the point which made me think , what will I do in situation like that. very well written .