Have you ever blamed someone else for your own behavior? Placing blame for unfavorable behavior is a natural outcome of being raised in a fear-based, right/wrong reality. How many times in your life have you heard someone say things like, “She made me do it!” “My parents wouldn’t let me ______ (fill in the blank).” “He told me to.” “It’s your fault that I _____ (fill in the blank).” “I tried to do it but she distracted me.” “My church says I have to ______ (fill in the blank). “He made me mess up.” “I was just following orders.”
Blaming someone else for an action that you took is the ultimate sign of victim mentality. It is a moment of complete abdication of any and all personal power. It is an attempt to hand your power over to another so that you can somehow separate yourself, distance yourself, disown the outcome of whatever the results of the action that you took. It falls under old, familiar, fear-based patterns of needing to deny, excuse, deflect, negate, ignore, avoid, hide from, pretend, run from, attempt to fix or otherwise escape from a problem.
Whenever there is a drama happening, chances are good that you’ll see someone blaming someone or something else for their own behavior – everything from a car accident to an act of murder is usually someone else’s fault.
Just in the past few months you’ve likely heard some great examples of this. There was a republican belligerently blaming a democrat for the republican’s own behavior during the recent US government shut-down. A pop star blaming his parents for his own drug use. A man angrily blaming a woman for causing him to hit her. And an act of nature being blamed for a nuclear disaster. Go figure. You could probably think of many more scenarios of placing blame in an attempt to excuse a certain outcome. Think about your own life. Where have you placed blame out onto someone or something else when you didn’t want to take responsibility for your own behavior? Be willing to look deeply at yourself.
Most people don’t want to accept responsibility because they believe that this would mean that they are somehow wrong or bad. That is why most people have strong defensive patterns in place to blame, deny, excuse, deflect, avoid, deflect, hide and so forth – because the bottom line is that our nature is Loving; consequently no one enjoys feeling bad about something they’ve done.
The good news is that there is no such thing as ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ from your soul’s perspective, so there is no fault or blame getting placed upon you at any time. It is natural and normal for you to want to experience feeling good about yourself – peace is, after all, your own essential Loving nature. The trick is to be able to take full 100% responsibility for your own behavior – even if you do not like it, it sucks, or it makes you uncomfortable – and continue to feel good about yourself at the same time. When you can begin to see your behavior as simply an opportunity for learning and growing, you will be able to accept yourself no matter how you act in any given moment.
Take your power back around your own behavior. Say, “I am 100% responsible for my own actions. No one can make me do anything I do not want to do.” Breathe that in.
Many Blessings of Joy and Vibrant Freedom
Action Step ~ let go of placing blame for your own behavior and take full responsibility for your actions. Declaration: “I am 100% responsible for my own actions. I am the one and only one who gets to decide how I behave in any given moment. If I find myself acting in a way I do not like, I have the ability to change my behavior.”
Additional Support: Listen to this 7-minute closed-eye process on taking responsibility for your own actions; please refrain from driving while listening.