The Blame Game Anchors You in Failure

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Life has a way of going wrong. Our natural inclination is to blame someone or some thing when life doesn’t go our way. We blame our parents, our spouse, Wall Street, the rich, politicians, the economy, our boss, our company or our circumstances. This knee jerk reaction helps protect your fragile ego by taking individual responsibility for your actions out of the equation. Blame is anchored in negativity and negativity is the default mode for most everyone.

If you were to spend just one day listening to the words that come out of the mouths of others, or listen to your own internal self-talk, you would fill an entire page with blame-ridden excuses. Try it. Spend one day writing down every excuse you hear from others or from your own internal self-talk. It’s worth the exercise. It will open up your eyes. 

Even for the most successful people, things rarely go right. But what separates the successful from the rest of the world is that they refuse to play the blame game. They make a habit of owning their failures and mistakes. It’s not easy to do this, however. Refusing to play the blame game is a habit that must be forged over time. Changing this habit first requires awareness. You must turn your channel and tune yourself in to this negative way of responding to life’s lack of cooperation. Once you do this you will become aware at just how pervasive blame is. Don’t play the blame game. It will only anchor you in poverty and perpetuate your negative mindset. Instead, replace every excuse with the phrase: “I am responsible”. This stops blame in its tracks and empowers you to take future action that will prevent future negative outcomes and will help put you on the path towards success.

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Thomas C. Corley About Thomas C. Corley

Tom Corley is a bestselling author, speaker, and media contributor for Business Insider, CNBC and a few other national media outlets.

His Rich Habits research has been read, viewed or heard by over 50 million people in 25 countries around the world.

Besides being an author, Tom is also a CPA, CFP, holds a master’s degree in taxation and is President of Cerefice and Company, a CPA firm in New Jersey.
 
Phone Number: 732-382-3800 Ext. 103.
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Comments

  1. Vanessa S. Lewis says:

    Hi Thomas, I think shifting accountability also prevents us from growing and learning the lessons from failure. Even from your own personal story, (I first heard on an interview on Success magazine audio CD), failure teaches us the “how” to get back up, benefits of being resilient and everything else that self-made millionaires –or just highly actualized people–know.
    Thanks as always for your daily wisdom in our inboxes! Thought I’d finally take a moment to comment. Vanessa

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