Welive in a society where we lack responsibility for many of our actions.
The go to response is — Blame someone.
You reached late to work — well the car in front of mine was going slow.
You cheat on your partner — well they weren’t giving me sex every day! And so, the list continues.
We have now unfortunately embraced a culture of blame.
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Self-awareness and self-responsibility seem to have left and so we blame, and we blame, and we blame.
After all, this is the way to feel good about all the messed-up things, we can displace responsibility on others with.
Someday and at some point, to really make progress you must own up and well take responsibility for things. Accepting self-responsibility is not about blaming yourself, it is owning up and taking responsibility for yourself and your actions.
While on many occasions things may have happened, if we looked carefully enough, we would see there was either some action or inaction on your part that would have led to the undesired outcome that you now blame someone else for!
It is hard to accept responsibility when things go wrong.
It is a tough pill to swallow, but somewhere along if you wish to create a better future for you. The need to blame others must shift to accepting self-responsibility, learning from the mistakes, and doing better in the future.
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I blamed everything and everyone when I got divorced.
Finally, after years of embracing and succumbing myself to the victim role. I got up and decided to own what I did in the process.
Now in no way am I suggesting all what we receive we deserve or walked into knowingly, but sometimes there are signs we avoid and go full head on into situations that can be at times not just difficult and painful, but even dangerous.
In reflecting, I recognized there were signs I had ignored in the haste to be married and promised myself to do better, be more aware and open to see and look for unhealthy aspects on my part and that of a future potential partner.
By taking this simple act of self-responsibility it freed me of the victim mindset that I had cradled for many years.
It also led to me attracting in my space, persons who owned and took responsibility for their actions and the consequences of it.
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Life still hurts at times.
However, rather than looking for someone to blame. I learn the lessons and move forward with greater wisdom than before.
To build a future that is happier and healthier move past blame to belief that you can create that life by learning, wisdom, self-responsibility.
Mistakes will happen, pain will occur, but consider who really benefits from the blame.
If you consider carefully, you will realize it is no one, at least not in a productive way.
Sure, it offers feel good moments and lulling yourself into a false sense of reality.
However, the moment you decided to step up to get more out of life, it will mean moving from blame to belief and creating the future you want by charting a course of self-responsibility.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Shane Rounce on Unsplash