Tag: blame

Appreciate or Change the Game Instead of Blaming It

“Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion. With these, you can handle anything.” ~Jack Kornfield

Imagine these three scenarios:

Scenario 1: You wake up in the middle of the night and your baby is crying. You feel annoyed that you have to wake up in the middle of your sleep.

Scenario 2: Your goal is to finish your first marathon, so you have to practice consistently. However, you don’t feel like exercising today. It’s raining and you’d like to watch television instead.

Scenario 3: You hate your job. You snap at your boss and you procrastinate on the work you are supposed to do.

What do these scenarios have in common? If you haven’t figured it out yet, then keep reading.

It’s About You, Not About Them

These three seemingly different scenarios have one thing in common: You are blaming the game even though you made a decision to play it.

In many of these situations, we jump in without really knowing what we are dealing with.

When we jump into situations with wrong expectations, it creates wrong attitudes. We expect things to follow a certain path, but the reality is different. And when the reality and our attitudes collide, it’s natural that we feel frustration.

For instance, a new world opened to me and my wife when we had our first baby. Although we had prepared for this a bit, the reality was completely different.

In the beginning, our son was constantly waking up in the middle of the night and his sleeping patterns were quite irregular. This led us as parents to be very tired in the beginning.

At the same time, we knew that this was part of the reality when you have a baby. Sure, it wasn’t nice to feel tired all day because of the lack of sleep in the night, but we also understood that the start could be challenging until things smoothed out.

You Are Not a Victim—Far from It!

All this inner resistance leads to a “victim” mentality. When you find yourself in a situation that you don’t like, you feel like you have been mistreated.

If you feel like this, then understand that you can change it by taking responsibility for your actions. (more…)

August 30, 2012
You Can Blame Others or Save Yourself

“You save yourself or remain unsaved.” ~Alice Sebold, Lucky

Last year was a year of great changes for me. I ended a three-and-a-half-year long toxic relationship, I started a new relationship (which fell apart six months later), I applied for a semester abroad, and started a full-time job while studying full-time, as well.

Honestly, I don’t know how I managed to survive this busy time, but I did, and in January 2012 I left for Stockholm.

It was the best six months of my life.

I met amazing people from all over the world and I found true friends among them. I was in places I always dreamed of being. I was studying at the one of the best universities in Europe. I traveled, explored, and had fun in my life again. I made my dream come true with my hard work and tenacity.

Even though everything seemed perfect, I felt that something was missing.

I struggled with my emotions and stress overload after six months of hard work to afford living abroad for the next six months. I also dealt with periods of depression.

I have been struggling with depression since I was thirteen. The worst period took place while I was in high school, when I thought about committing suicide. I got through this eventually with the help of my friends and a psychologist.

Currently my mood is stable, but I still experience heavy mood swings and depressive episodes that seem to appear “out of the blue.” That was the case with my semester abroad. One day I was happy with my life, and couple of days later I couldn’t find the strength to get up from the bed.

Maybe it was the stress, or the heavy Swedish winter with lack of daylight, or maybe it was something different. For two weeks in February I didn’t want to leave my room.

I tried to do so many things, to use my time abroad to its maximum so I would not have the feeling that I wasted my time there after I got back home. (more…)

August 8, 2012
How to Stop Being a Victim and Start Creating Your Life

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

“They” say things happen at the “right” time. For me hearing a presentation, live, by Jack Canfield, came at the perfect time.

I was in San Diego, the traveling babysitter for my precious 5-month old granddaughter, while my daughter attended a nutrition conference. It was an all around win-win situation—a new place to sightsee and of course spend quality (alone) time with baby Rachel and daughter Penina.

When I found out Jack Canfield was the final key speaker, I jumped at the chance to attend. And the topic certainly resonated with me—“getting from where you are to where you want to be.” Now how’s that for someone in transition working to carve out a new path!

There were a lot of takeaways, fabulous ideas to hold onto; so much so that I’ve been carrying around his book, The Success Principles, and studying it since I got home.

One thing that really speaks to me is this idea of taking 100% responsibility for one’s life.

As a society, we are so quick to assign blame and pull out all the excuses as to why something did or did not happen.

All the “He made me, she made me….” finger pointing. There’s a reason why “the dog ate it” became such a classic excuse.

We relinquish all power when we go there. Where are we in this? I know that by nature many of us are passive recipients of life and are at the mercy of what befalls us.

In my workshops with parents on teaching responsibility, many are stuck or love acting in their role as helicopter parents, swooping down to save, rescue, and do all for their kids—all under the guise of, “The more I do for my child, the better parent I am.”

And therefore what are we teaching our kids when they come in to class and tell the teacher, “My mom forgot to pack my lunch”?

Then there’s the parent who comes ranting to school, “Don’t suspend my little Stevie for calling Andy names and hitting him in the playground; his sister does that to him at home, it’s no big deal.”

We are facilitating the perpetuation of an entitled breed of human beings.

In my practice as a therapist, clients would talk for years about being stuck because of what their dysfunctional nuclear families did to them. “My mother did this, my father that…”

And then of course there’s me. What comes all too naturally for me is my quick ability to find fault with others, to pass judgment and criticize.

Who is to blame—why, my mother of course, queen of “judgmentalism.” I fight against these tendencies constantly. But they do rear their ugly head often enough. I guess it’s in my bloodstream. I’m aware of it; I work at it. I know where it comes from; therefore that explains it but it certainly does not excuse it.

This is my problem, my issue. What matters is how I handle it and work to respond differently—to catch myself while it’s doing its internal dance before it parts from my lips. (more…)

October 17, 2011
How to Stop Playing the Blame Game

“Whenever something negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it.” ~Eckhart Tolle

The most common conversation I have with other people includes the blame game.

The one where your job, your wife, your dog, your mother-in-law, your neighbor six doors down, the media, the government, the receptionist at your doctor’s office, or the dressmaker who measured you wrong is somehow responsible for the problems you’re having.

I too played the blame game.

I intentionally left a marriage that I was very unhappy in and then blamed him for everything. My finances, my unhappiness, my fluctuating weight, my broken-down car, and even my bad hair day were all entirely his fault.

It was then I had that an “aha” moment. I sat there thinking about the blame game wondering, “If games are supposed to be fun, then why is this one keeping me in such a bad place?”

Right then, I made the conscious decision—just like I had left my marriage—that I was going to leave this game behind, too.

I sat down, took a long deep breath, and thought about the ways I’d contributed to my own unhappiness. Once I came up with one way, countless others seemed to follow.

In that moment, I realized I was blatantly ignoring vital life lessons. It wasn’t just my ex’s fault; it was my fault, too.

I believe we are here to learn lessons. Once we learn a lesson we move on to the next one. However, if we fail to learn a lesson, we keep finding opportunities to learn it again and again. (more…)

January 18, 2011
Accepting Blame and Asking for Forgiveness

“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.” ~Kimberly Howard

As a kid I was quite often “långsur.” Långsur is a Swedish expression for being grumpy for a long time. Every time someone was mean to me, I sulked for hours, even days. This became quite tedious at times, especially since as soon as I became happy again, some new event triggered me to sulk again.

You get the picture.

I simply had such a hard time forgiving people.

It went the other way too. I found it hard to admit that something was my fault. At least out loud. Inside, I blamed myself, but I could not get the “I’m sorry” across my lips.

As I grew older, I realized no one liked Miss Grumpy and those long days of sulking had to be shortened a wee bit if I wanted to keep some friends, but to be honest, forgiving was still hard. Also, even though I was happy on the surface, many days I was still “långsur” on the inside.

Guess who suffered the most from this?

It was not until I had kids that I really got out of this extremely negative mindset.

All of a sudden, I didn’t have time to sulk. Diapers were to be changed, bottles heated; and sleep—that wonderful thing we all take for granted BK (before kids)—was to be enjoyed, or rather desperately grasped at when there was a moment.

Not only did I no longer have time to sulk, I also realized that for us parents to mentally survive, we had to be able to communicate quickly, honestly, and rationally. We had to make decisions without hesitations. We made mistakes all the time, but we survived them.

At this stage, a baby’s life depended on my behavior. It was not just me anymore.

It was at this time that I realized that you can actually get mad and stop being mad in matter of minutes, as long as you set your mind to it. It was up to me to decide how I wanted to feel inside.

And, if I did wrong toward another person, there was a liberating sensation in saying I’m sorry and moving on. No dwelling. (more…)

January 15, 2010