Come on down as you’re the next contestant on the blame game.
Although the blame game has no winners, it is a game that we often participate in when things don’t go our way, as we blame someone or something else for their part  in creating an outcome.

The blame game occurs when we allow for excuses to deviate us from our plans.  As a result, we don’t execute as weIl as we thought we would and feel that placing the responsibility for ourselves in someone else’s hands can protect us from the outcome.  The blame game has the opportunity to be played in all aspects of our lives and regardless if we are at school, work, or spending social time with friends, the moment we decide to give something else the credit for our actions we begin to play the blame game.

When you think about it blame is constructed in a similar manor as  a compliment, but with an adverse outcome.

A compliment that you give typically talks about your ability to succeed against the circumstances and achieve your goal, whereas blame talks about the reason why you didn’t achieve a goal.  When you do something well and have reached success you typically feel better about yourself, and the actions that you displayed.  You win the game because you lead your team in scoring, this is easy to follow and is a form of positive acceptance.  In the same way a blaming approach says you lost you the game because everyone else on the team didn’t carry their own weight, and you had to score all the points which is a form of negative acceptance.

We can all find something to blame for a situation in our lives.  Below are a list of some of the things I used to love to blame as I believed they were the reason I couldn’t achieve the desired results.

I used to blame my:  height, weight, gender, income, religion, occupation, vaccination, marital status, family, employer, race, neighbors, friends, relatives, pets, accountant, gardner, lawyer, contractor, age, vision, comfortability, health, car, degree, diet, bank, computer, sorority, friends, and the boogie…and blaming these things never helped me improve.  You can place blame anywhere, however the only person to blame to begin to create sustainable change for your life is you.

Sometimes it is appropriate to assess blame, as there will be situations that truly are out of our control that we must critique to understand what we could’ve done differently to improve.   Once you are able to take ownership of your own actions, you realize that you don’t have to blame anyone but yourself for both your successes and your failures.  You are the most important person in your reality, and whatever outcomes you receive in your life have to be in someway a result of your actions.

Complete ownership of our actions, and the results the we create can really be condensed into the word acceptance.  Acceptance is your ability to relate to the situations that are present in your life, and to deal with them from an honest perspective.  Without acceptance it is difficult to to understand your part in creating outcomes, and therefore you are powerless to create change because you believe that your actions are secondary other peoples opinions, critisisms, and definitions of you.

Acceptance is found through loving yourself, being pleased with the person that you are, and being pleased with the person that you are working to become.  Once you truly begin to accept who you are you will be able to decipher when things complement your personal agenda, or when things are being forced upon you by outside influences.

Below are four benefits of placing the blame on yourself so that you can work to become better with your own actions and results.

1. Honesty – honesty is a virtue, and once you are honest with yourself you are better equipped to deal with criticism and you will have a perspective that takes it all as a positive for your improvement
2. Growth – you will learn to prioritize and manage certain tasks yourself which will naturally produce more mature thinking and the ability to see situations entirely without being overwhelmed with the parts.
3. Independence – once you begin to rely on yourself you will live to a different standard as you become more conscious of your actions and how to control your reality.
4. Strength – your strength is divisible by whatever you will it to and can only be build up through challenge and experience.  When you begin to accept and develop yourself as the centerpiece for all that surrounds you, you will become stronger and confident in who you are and what you can control.

start putting more responsibility on yourself, and you will begin to receive more reward in return.

make the rest of your life the best of your life