How and Why to Stop Blaming Others and Start Living the Life You Want

[Barb Nangle]

Photo Credit: Blameave Calvar

If other people are to blame for everything that's wrong in your life, you’re screwed! That would mean you have no options. I don’t believe that. When we realize that others are not to blame for the difficulties of our lives, we can take responsibility for making changes in our lives.

This doesn't mean nobody ever did anything to you that was harmful. It means that if you focus entirely on what other people or society did to you, you’re never going to try to make any changes because you’re acting like you don't have options. Staying in blame is like acting as if your fate has been sealed. But you actually DO have options. 

Here are a couple of famous examples from people in history who were horribly harmed, yet chose not to blame but instead to focus on what they COULD do. 

Nelson Mandela 

He was in prison for 27 years of hard labor, tortured, and treated horribly. He could have spent all that time in resentment and blame toward his captors, yet he chose to see his them as human. And he chose to use all that energy he would have been expending in blame and resentment toward his efforts to develop himself spiritually. He went on to become the first elected president of South Africa from 1994-99.

Victor Frankl 

He was imprisoned during the holocaust of WWII in four different concentration camps. He later wrote one of the top 10 most influential books in America Man’s Search for Meaning. It was based on the psychological theory he developed before being imprisoned which he put into practice during his imprisonment. His theory is based on the belief that life holds meaning regardless of one’s circumstances. He chose to MAKE meaning of his circumstances by caring for others while he was there.

Mandela and Frankl lived through some of the most horrendous situations humans can endure and they came out of those situations without blaming others. They decided to make choices about what to do with their lives. If they can do that, it’s also possible for you.

Even if other people did cause something and are to blame, it's not helping you to focus on blaming them. Nothing is changing by you focusing on blaming them. In fact, it’s probably paralyzing you and keeping you stuck where you are. 

When you stop blaming other people you can start looking for ways that you can make a difference. That is when everything will change. 

If your life sucks and you want it to change

When you blame others you’re not focused on yourself and what you can do in the here and now to help yourself. If your life sucks and you want it to change, you’ll have to stop focusing on blaming others so you can actually do something to change your circumstances.

It may feel unjust to stop blaming others, and maybe it is. But if you want your life to be different, you’ll need to set aside your anger at the injustice and prioritize taking control of your life. 

The Serenity Prayer is a good reminder here because it's an important key to how to have a good life. It articulates one of the central tasks of life: 

To understand the difference between the things we can and cannot change

When we discern the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can and cannot change, we can put our energy in the areas where we CAN make change. Most of us with unmanageable lives are focused entirely on things we can’t change. This leaves us with no energy or incentive to change what we CAN. We’re so drained by not being able to affect things that are out of our control that we’ve got nothing left to make changes where we do have control.

Once you understand what you can control and you put your focus on that, then it’s a matter of getting the courage to change the things you can. But you're never going to change anything if all you do is focus on blaming other people, what they did to you, and how unjust it was. When you blame them for not having accomplished the things you want to accomplish, you’re stuck. You’ll have to come out of blame so you can decide “I'm going to do something about this.”

Nothing can change what happened in the past, but you CAN change what will happen if you keep the focus on yourself.

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