How stop blame getting in the way.

I came across this short video of Brene Brown talking about blame.

In summary, asking “who’s fault is it?” gives us a semblance of control. But Brene Brown tells us that research shows that blame is

“the discharging of discomfort and pain”

and that it has an

“inverse relationship with accountability”.

So the more you blame, the less accountability you have.

While Brene Brown goes on to talk about the impact this has on relationships, I want to focus on the accountability we have with ourselves and the impact this has on achieving our goals.

January was a busy month for me and there were some things that didn’t get done.

The facts are, an emergency came up, I spent time on dealing with that and lost sight of one of my goals.

An internal chatter started which can be summarised as

“you’re behind because of that emergency”.

Conscious of not blaming others I told myself that I couldn’t blame X for the emergency and the the chatter stealthily changed to

“well, you took your eye off the ball, you should have rearranged stuff, you messed up……”

Eek, perhaps I’m a blamer too!

Blaming myself was sucking the energy out of me and took my focus away from my goal.

So how do you get out of this? There are 3 steps to stop blame getting in the way:

Step 1          Put aside judgement and just look at the facts

Step 2         Forgive yourself

Wow, this is a tough one. But try it. It does wonders for your soul and creativity.

Step 3        Get back on track. 

• What is my goal?
• What resources do I have now (time, money, materials etc)
• Get creative: go wild with “What can I do in this time?” Necessity is the mother of invention, right?
• Go do it!

 

Featured inmage photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels