Posted on January 11th, 2023.

One of the major traits of our culture is blame.

We see it in the political arena, each party blaming the other for all the country’s ills and decisions. We even see it in religious and spiritual organizations, with blame falling on God, disciples, and even the teachers and gurus we follow.

In corporations and organizations which have less than a healthy culture, the game is to blame and to avoid being blamed. Very few take responsibility.

Responsibility is often used as a euphemism for blame.

The Real Price of Blame

The real price of blame — in your own psyche — is that whoever you blame has your power.

They can’t use your power, but neither can you.

So if you blame your parent, that parent has your power. The same is true with your spouse, children, supervisor, employees, government, etc.

Raise Your Level of Performance

If you want to perform at a higher level, blame has to go.

People commonly feel they have to pay a price for success through things like:

working harder
working longer hours
sacrificing more time with their families
paying their dues
putting up with crappy, low level jobs

The truth is there are much more important prices to pay for success — and giving up blame is at the top of the list.

Retrieve Your Power

If you want your power back, you will have to retrieve it from the person you are blaming. In order to do this, as the first step, you will have to stop blaming them.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t recognize the negative impact they had or are having in your life, but you will also recognize that taking ownership of the blame and its subsequent impact will empower you, because then — and only then — will you have the power to change yourself.

Remember:

You can’t change them, you can only change yourself.

Only you can only use your own power. They can’t.

You need your power. They don’t.

About Blaming Yourself

There are those who love to blame themselves for either everything that happens in their life or even just on specific occasions.

If you have to blame someone, blaming yourself is one step up from blaming others, because at least you have retained your power.

However, from a psychological and spiritual standpoint, it is not ultimately useful even to blame yourself.

The Price of Blame in Organizations

In organizations, corporations, and government agencies where blame and avoiding blame runs rampant, the price we pay is in diminished creativity, innovation, and responsibility.

If there is no space in an organization to make mistakes without penalty, these valuable assets and resources suffer, and not only does a company’s culture and customer service suffer, so does the bottom line.

Give Up Blame to Outperform Yourself

In order to truly transform your success rate — and the success rate of your company — giving up or relinquishing blame as a habit is an essential first step.

Beyond that, the next steps to fully retrieve your power include:

fleshing out and truly understanding the impact of the other person’s behavior,
processing the impact through healing, reprogramming basic assumptions,
re-examining your own values, beliefs, and sensibilities, releasing any associated emotions such as outrage, pain, or anger,
using experiential techniques to reclaim your energy and your power from the other person(s) involved, and,
finally owning your own power in a more whole way.

This is part of the work I do with my corporate and private clients through my work with The Pause Method®.

By giving up blame, you can move from being reactive to proactive, which ultimately allows you to truly respond to your life in a powerful way and to outperform yourself.

Work With Me

I offer experiential techniques, The Pause Method®, Pause Therapy®, training, coaching, and corporate facilitation to help my clients retrieve their power and do the precise inner work that results in the most effective personal development available — a path to truly outperform yourself. Find out more about working with me here.

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