The Alternative to Playing the Blame Game

When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy. Dalai Lama

In today’s meditation, I have included a short video by Dr. Brene Brown. I encourage you to watch this 3 minute video, which invites us to reconsider our propensity to blame others. Clearly, there are cases in which a person is blameworthy and guilty of a crime, and in these situations acknowledging blame and responsibility does not constitute playing the blame game. But there are many other times in life, when we find ourselves on the blame game bandwagon. One example of playing the blame game is a college student who fails an exam, and then becomes angry toward the teacher and posts bad reviews online about their professor. Another example, might be a boss who disciplines an employee for being late to work, and then the boss is labeled a bad boss, and can never do anything right again, in the eyes of the employee. The student and the employee in these situations are playing the blame game with their professor and boss.

Can you think of examples in your personal life when you have blamed someone or when someone has blamed you?
How does it feel to be blamed?
Are you a blame-gamer?
Do you look for someone else to blame when things have gone wrong?
Do you tend to demonize the person you have identified as the culprit?
Do you talk badly about the person you are blaming to their face or behind their back?
Do you yell at the person you are blaming or alternatively use the silent treatment and/or angry glances towards them?
Do you fail to look at your role in the situation and take some personal responsibility?
When something bad happens can you talk to the person who has upset you in a non-blaming way?
If you tend to be a blame-gamer, what should you do differently to find peace and joy?

In the video I have attached to today’s meditation, Brene Brown invites us to consider why we blame others. When something bad happens our tendency is to find someone else to blame because this gives us a false sense of control. Brown’s research has discovered that when we blame others it is our way of letting out our own “discomfort and pain.” Brown informs us that blaming is very debilitating for relationships. She reminds us that the alternative to blaming is accountability. Accountability means that instead of staying angry with someone for something that happened, we can talk to them about our feelings and how we experienced whatever may have happened in the workplace, at home, or with a friend from a non-blaming position.

Another layer to the problem of blame is that when we blame others we are only seeing something from our own angle, instead of having the emotional maturity to look at a situation from the perspective of both parties. When we blame others, we demonize and vilify them, and this is something I am concerned that is happening more often in our culture. I went on a walk with a friend this week and we discussed the greater level of reactivity we have noticed in the world. As my friend and I talked, we agreed we attribute this problem, to the shouting, blaming, and defaming that have become so common in our political landscape. What happens at the top seems to filter down and affect our nation, communities, workplaces, families, and relationships. Have you noticed how the tendency to blame others has become more pervasive in our world?

The Dalai Lama reminds us when we have a victim mentality that convinces us everything is always someone else’s fault, we will suffer a lot, but when we start choosing personal accountability, we will find peace and joy. It is so liberating to move from the blame-game to personal responsibility. Can we make this move away from blaming and towards the more vulnerable place of accountability, that allows us to empathetically see a situation from not just our outlook, but from someone else’s perspective?

May we find peace and joy instead of the blame game,

Christy