It Isn't Necessary to Blame Anyone

• My mother wasn't affectionate, so now I have trouble with my relationships
• My teacher didn't recognize that I was creative, so I never had the chance to develop my art
• I was never given the opportunity to travel, so I don't have the advantages that others who traveled when they were young, do
• He was talking on his mobile so that is why he crashed into my car
• My husband always wanted to watch football on Sundays with his buddies, so I had to find someone who would pay more attention to me
• I didn't get a scholarship to an Ivy League university because my high school counselor didn't help me enough

Recognize any of the above? Sound familiar?

All of it could be true. All of it can happen. A lot of it really does happen, and of course it has consequences.

But ... if you choose to blame someone - anyone - for why you are not where you would like to be in whatever it is you would like in your life, you are abdicating responsibility for your life. And if you abdicate responsibility for your life, you have no control over your life.

So let's look at that more carefully. You have control over your life if and when you choose how you react to events, and if and when you choose what you can do about things that have happened in the past.

Clearly, you have no control:

• over other people's actions
• over other people's feelings
• over other people's reactions
• over other people's words
• over how you were raised
• over anything at all that is external to yourself

But you do have - if you choose - control over all of your own actions, feelings, reactions, words, etc. And so you can rid yourself of the poison that is blame, and by taking responsiblity for how you feel, react, act, and speak, you take control in a way that gives you enormous freedom.

See also Grow in Richness, Stop the Blaming