Avoid blaming situations or other people for your own negative feelings about life. While other people may make mistakes, nothing outside you can control your thinking or your actions. If you blame something outside of yourself for your current state, you strip yourself of your power and turn yourself into a victim.

Rather than blaming, you should aim to see situations holistically. Realise that there are many events that contribute to every situation. If you can find your own contribution to a problem, you can shift your thinking to how you can improve the situation next time. When you blame one person it can be easy to exaggerate that person’s involvement in the situation and perpetuate a feeling of unfairness, which causes discontent and ruins relationships.

In the same way, blaming yourself for problems in your life is not taking responsibility. You have done the best you could throughout your life based on the limited knowledge you had at any particular time. You didn’t intentionally set out to cause pain for yourself, so there is no point in beating yourself up over anything. Now that you are learning how to improve yourself, you can perceive and behave differently next time.

For around 15 months during my early twenties, I felt depressed every day. At the time I was blaming my partner for not managing his anger, I was blaming the franchisors of the business I ran because I couldn’t keep up with the changes that were happening in the company, and I was blaming myself because I couldn’t ‘fix’ the problems in my life. Once I saw myself as a victim, it was much harder to take responsibility. There were days when I lay on the couch all day, too miserable to move. Meanwhile I was telling everyone that I was ‘really busy’ working from home.

Because I was stuck on blaming people, I took away my own power to do something about my problems. Taking responsibility for the situation I was in, rather than blaming, was the first step towards beating the blues.

These days, I refuse to blame anyone, including myself, when things don’t work out. Not only has it completely changed the emotions I feel every day, but my communication and rapport skills have improved significantly as a result.

Here’s something to try:
Draw a line down the centre of a piece of paper. On the left side write the names of every person or event that still invokes feelings of irritation, anger or hurt. On the right side, complete a number of sentences that begin with ‘I am responsible for this because…’ Make sure you write out a full sentence for each name or event on your list. Think carefully about each sentence, and as you write them down, forgive the person involved for their contribution.

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