8. Are You Playing the Blame Game?

heart. If you aren't ready to face how and why you use blame in your life, then I suggest perhaps you move on to another episode of this show, or choose a different podcast for today. If you're ready to learn how the blame game can affect your relationships at home and work, then stick around as we take a powerful look inside ourselves. Admittedly, today's show was a

hard show to research. If I'm going to continue to share my own journey, I'm going to have to peel back layers into my own life in an effort to help you perhaps grow and become a better person. And the truth is, this is a tough topic. It's a tough topic for anyone. But I truly believe when you're ready to dive into discovering why we blame others how we go about blaming others, why we blame ourselves, then I do believe we'll come out of it a much

better person. For the purpose of today's episode, I'd like us to focus on blame as a word blame is a word can be either a verb in which you assign responsibility for a fault or wrong. Or it can be a noun in which responsibility for a fault or wrong is something that is inward. So to me blame is both an external focus and also an internal focus. As we look at blame from an external source where we're going to blame somebody else, I'll share a

little story. When I was a child, when I was growing up, I've got a brother who's four years younger than I. And when we were little, I think my brother was maybe three or four. And so I was seven or eight. And we had just gotten our dog, Casey, who will be gold bass at home with a deep old howl that would get you going. But at one point, the dog is kind of whimpering, making some noise. And we're in the kitchen. And my mom said to my brother, well,

what happened to the dog? And my brother said, I didn't pinch him. And I laugh every time I think about that story, because it's a perfect example of blame and how we go about it. So here he is, the three or four year old brother doesn't necessarily know to say, I don't know, just admittedly said I did it without saying I did it by saying I didn't pinch him. But how does blame transpire? Once we get to be an adult? What does that look like? Or even as a teenager or a

teen or teen or tween? You know, we're in school, and we forget our homework. And we often come up with excuses for why it wasn't done. Perhaps it was you know, my parents didn't give me time my parents punished me I didn't have enough time. I left my book at home. For God, my book, whatever the case may be, there's plenty of reasons that people play the blame game, and often blame someone else for not being able to get a task done. But when misfortune comes your way, what's your very first

thought? Do you quickly go to figure out? Was it my fault? Was it somebody else's fault? Was it the situation that we were in that was to blame? Where do we start to sit down and really take responsibility for our actions? And that's a tough topic. It's really I think it's really difficult for, for most human beings at first blush to be like, you know what, I did it, I screwed up, I messed up, because it's hard to take responsibility that

way right out of the gate. And blame is quite an interesting concept. Because it does have two sides to it. There are some people who never take responsibility for their actions ever. They always find somebody else or something else to blame for what may or may have happened in their life. And then on the other side, you have people who always take responsibility and always blame themselves for what may have

happened to them. So for people who always blame somebody else, something goes wrong with dinner. It's because you assigned a task to somebody else, and they didn't complete it correctly. For somebody who always takes the blame, then they may be saying to themselves, I got distracted, it was on me I wasn't paying attention and the food burned. So why don't we use blame as a tool? On an article that I was reading in Psychology Today, that line five reasons why people typically use blame as a

tactic. They say blame is an excellent defense mechanism grew with that 100% will You can call it denial, displacement rejection. It's something to kind of preserve your self esteem, perhaps where you say, you know what, I made a mistake. But I don't want to admit I made a mistake. As soon as I had made a mistake, I admit that I'm a, I'm a human, and I do make mistakes. And that failure is part of the process. Blame is also a tool that gets used a

lot. When we're in attack mode, we get defensive, okay, step one, blame is an excellent defense mechanism. Step two, blame is a tool we use when we're under attack mode. So he's coming after us, they're blaming us for something, and then we deflect defer, or try and put it on someone else, or something else. I didn't have the information, no one told me. I didn't know what was going on. I wasn't informed. It wasn't me.

And what it comes down to is that it is so much easier to blame someone else than it is for us to accept responsibility for our own actions. And I think part of that as well, is that people, humans, they lie, everybody lies, it's pretty easy to kind of just fall into the blame game by by telling a fib, but by lying about what actually

took place. What I think, though, is that people don't realize the more that you play the blame game, the more you actually lose, the more your life becomes a falsity I think, and also, the less chance you have to grow, to grow as a person to become a better person, that the more that you blame others for actions that are things that you do, I think it lessens your place in this

world. I even saw that today recently at work, where we were having a discussion about how information is shared in our organization. And somebody asks that question, well, how is that possible? And I said, Well, we weren't able to complete the task, because no one told us that there was a change in this information. And here I am, in being transparent on this podcast, giving you an example from my life From today, to let you know that we all are all human, were human to a fault, if

you will. And I shared to let you know that this podcast is a reflection tool for me as well. As a leader and organization, I need to be able to admit when I'm wrong, admit when something isn't going right. So I started thinking about that a little bit today to say why did I have that answer? It shouldn't have been, we didn't get the information. I think reflectively the question should be, why aren't we proactively looking for that information, when we know these types of changes in data occur?

So that's the thought that I want to have for you right now is what is holding you back from making a change so that you are more proactive in your life about not placing blame on others. So you can take more responsibility for how you're going to attack blame in your life. How are you going to change that? What does that gonna look like? And we'll dive into a couple of steps that you can take to transform that in your lives in just a minute. So stick around.

Before we get into how we can go about stopping blaming our lives and then fix the blame game, I just want to remind us that, you know, oftentimes blame is associated with work life. But blame can also be a personal life as well. You may think of it as well, in organizations, there's projects to be done. There's things that need to take place. That's true in our in our home lives as well in our personal lives, and our interactions with people in

general. So even though I gave an example from my work life, and it was a broad one, I understand that. But I'm pretty certain that we all understand when we're playing the blame game we know when we're deflecting, we know when we're trying not to have our egos hurt, when we're working really hard not to feel shame about something that we did or didn't do, or said or didn't say, in the course of a day or actions

towards others. So the minute that you start to feel the blame or the shame of blame coming on, one of the first things you can do is actually just take a step back, like elevate yourself up from the situation and realize, alright, I got to dial down my emotions, I got to take those down a little bit. I have to get perspective on what's going on.

And once you do that, it's easier to de escalate what may take place, especially if you start to imagine the conversation that's going to take place with your partner with your boss with a colleague. You know when something has not gone right you know in advance. So put yourself in the situation, remove yourself and look down upon it and say, Alright, how is this gonna play out? What's the worst case

scenario here? If I were to accept responsibility right out the gate, and part of that is, is putting the issue into words like what took place, go ahead and find somebody talk to a friend outside of work, talk to a partner or spouse, if it is at work, a close friend, if it is dealing with somebody at home, somebody that you can trust to have a conversation around? How do I, how do I move forward in

this? How do I gain perspective, what allows me to make a good response here and own up to the actions that took place, and you're going to do this in an effort not to fix what transpired, you can't fix it, right. So if you had an issue where you did something wrong, or something at work didn't go right, you're not going to be able to fix that in the moment.

But you do have the ability to repair the relationship moving forward, you have the option to go ahead and unlocked a door to the feature that may allow you to have a better relationship with whomever the issue might be taking place. And I say that because typically, when you're going back and looking backwards in time, you're gonna start to lay blame, you're gonna say, Well, it wasn't my fault, or this took place, I might not have had all the information, I

acted too quickly. And instead, you're going to focus on what's coming up, like, what, what is the future here? If I take responsibility for my actions? So how do you know when the blame came as beginning? And what are the actions that take place? I think the first is finger pointing, we definitely know that we're gonna say something along the lines of well, I wasn't able to finish

this project. Because Peter didn't give me the information, the numbers, the facts, or figures, whatever it may be three days ago, when I needed them. The truth is, perhaps you forgot to approach Peter, or you should have approached Peter and asked for them, rather than taking the passive action of waiting until it was too late. And when you're not being proactive, and you're being passive, in that situation, the next step is denial, you're going to say, well, that's not

on me. It's not my fault that Peter didn't give me the information. And third is negativity, we're going to constantly try and find somebody else to be at fault for what took place. And we're fixated on that we're fixated on saying, No, it wasn't me, it's not on me. And this is true in our personal lives as well. It's just not at work. So in our personal lives, I'm not perfect, I get that. I have issues at home, just like everybody else.

But I think what works well, is that I am very quick to apologize, very quick to take ownership and say, You know what, I shouldn't have said that I shouldn't have done that. That's on me. That's on me to to be proactive about that. And it's not an easy thing to do, I get that. I've been married for going on 26 years. And it's taken a long time to realize that my actions are just as important as my reactions to situations, actually, my

reactions are more important. So the quicker that I can say that I'm sorry, that I can put things in place to move forward, that I think the better the relationship becomes, because there's a trust, there is a knowledge that, yes, we are going to make mistakes as a couple. But if we're quick to say, Sorry, to one another, then I think that repairs quickly. It allows for us to move forward in our relationship and understand that we're human and we do make mistakes. At work, it's a little

bit more difficult. Especially if we're trying to climb a ladder, or be really aggressive in our work towards becoming a better leader or trying to move forward. It's it's harder to take blame and say that Nope,

that's on me. I screwed up. But I'll tell you, those leaders who do those sorts of things are those people in the workplace that do those sorts of things, actually get more respect from their, from their colleagues, because their colleagues see them as somebody who's willing to say, you know what, I screwed up. And here's how I screwed up. And here's how I'm going to make

it better the next time. And I think it's all really people want to know, they want to know that you recognize that you do make mistakes, and that you're open and honest about trying to fix them and to move forward with the relationship at hand. So what steps can we take to kind of take responsibility for our lives to remove the blame game to remove the shame of not moving forward with being a better person around these situations? I think there's just a couple of steps that we can do

first is Apollo. eyes when you're wrong, and accept the fact that you're not always right. I think that's the harder part. Sometimes people see it's easier to apologize. But it's a two step process, you have to apologize. And you have to accept the fact that you are not always right. You're not always right to, you have to admit, when you've made a mistake, be the bigger person, be the one who goes forward and says, You know what I did screw

up. And in that process, you learn to forgive, and to let go, and so does the other person with whom you're working, whether that's your partner at home, your spouse, somebody at work, they learn to forgive and let go as well. When you're open and transparent. In that way, you have to be open to the ideas and opinions of others, you

can't be closed minded. Your viewpoint is not the only valid viewpoint, if you take information from all sides, and this is this is important anyway, it doesn't matter if you're at work or at home, you have to be open, that somebody else may have an opinion or idea that is different from yours, that actually could be better than yours. Next, think about trying to identify the things in your life that you're not happy about, and then do something to

change them. If you have something that's nagging at you, that's not working, that's keeping you from meeting your goals that is not sitting well with you, then identify those and do something about them. If you don't, that's when blame comes in even more. We're not making progress in our lives, we want to blame somebody else, when it's really on ourselves. I also think that it's important to practice saying, I am responsible for my actions, I am

responsible for my actions. And keep doing that until you start to believe that it's true. Because it is true until you admit that you're responsible for your actions, you will continue to play the blame game. I also think you have to, and this is everything that I'm about right, this is what this podcast is about is is positivity on fire is that you have to adopt a positive outlook on life, you have to be the glass is half full, as opposed to the glass is half empty kind

of person. And when you start to do that, I think the next step is you, you really start to recognize and embrace your own shortcomings. But more importantly, and you realize that you're not perfect, and that you can ask for help. I think that really set you up for success. I know recently, a couple of months ago, I was in a partnership with somebody trying to build a business. And because of COVID and issues that were happening along the way, I couldn't focus on the business

as much as I needed to. And I knew that was on me. But it took a little while for me to recognize that. And over the course of the conversation, I admitted to my partner in that relationship that I have trouble asking for help. I know that about myself. And when we were talking about ending the partnership at some point in time. And that's what my partner pointed to. They said, you and I

need to be partners. And in order to do that successfully, you have to say when you need help when you can't follow through with a task, because there are other factors in your life that are stopping you from doing that. Or they're holding you up for meeting them. And I've thought a lot about that over the last six months or so. And I realized now that that has been a part of my whole life is that I do have trouble asking

for help. I want to get things done, and I want to take care of them well, but sometimes life gets in the way. And when they do. I struggle with that concept. Now I've made progress with that over the last six months, because this person had the, you know, the courage to say to me, hey, Jay, listen, this isn't working out. And

here's why. And I think if more of us take the time to not blame somebody and just say this isn't working, I'm done, and be open and transparent about why something is not working, then I think the better we would all be. And I love the fact that they were open and honest with me. It says a lot about them as a person. And I think that openness now has allowed me to be better equipped to deal with any potential problems that I may have in the future around

this. And I'm not going to blame myself anymore, I'm actually going to reach out and ask for assistance when I need it. Or to ask a colleague to take on a task when I have too much on my plate. Because that's how teams work better together. And the

same is true at home. You can complete a task for your spouse or you can check something off the honey do list then let them know give them give them a heads up or give them information as to why this has been a different call task and if need be calling assistance for help. I think the most important part in all of us is you have to learn from your mistakes.

You have to identify where there were breakdowns and communication, where there may have been opportunities for growth where there may be opportunities for you to look inside yourself to say, here's how I can correct this behavior. Here's how I can get better at that. And here's how I can stop putting blame on others, and look inward into my own life into my own actions, and say this is how I'm going to be a better person moving forward.

And because this, this topic is such a weighty topic, I would love to further the conversation with you. If you go over to facebook.com slash positivity on fire, that's the show site on Facebook. I'd love to engage with you there. Come on over, let's have a conversation. And I'll put a post up that will be able to guide you around this topic with one of the articles that will be in the show notes

from today's episode. But I really think it's important in this topic in particular, it is such a hard one for us to have open and transparent conversations around him in order to become a better person, in our personal lives and in our professional lives. And in closing today, thank you for being here. I've saved every single time but your gift of time. listening to the show does mean the world to me. It's the greatest gift you can give. So

thank you. And always remember, be well be happy, be you and until the next time. May your quest for positivity begin today. If you like today's episode, please go to pod chaser.com search for positivity on fire and leave a five star rating and review. For more on my positivity quest. Follow me at positively underscore Jay on Instagram or Tiktok or engage with the show by visiting direct.me slash Jason Ramsden. Have an amazing day.