Release Blame and Choose Responsibility

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 assess risk when you parked, did you secure your valuables reasonably?  Even if you are not the primary cause, be open to learn and alter the circumstance in the future when appropriate.

In some cases, abusive people or terribly unfortunate 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 it.  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  factor that makes this blame complex so prevalent in human thought.  Our self-esteem and happiness are temporarily raised by attributing negative outcomes to others or external causes. By contrast, our power to take action and change our circumstances and life is fully 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 has a dramatic positive effect on your life.  There are several challenges 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.

The brain stimulation here sessions are helping you address this from the foundation up.  As you give conscious attention to release blame, the results are amazing and synergistic.  You will see many new choices, options, and lessons in your life.

This is not so much a hard pattern to change, as it is a hard pattern to catch and accept.  Even catching yourself a few times can have dramatic effects on your life.