THE BLAME GAME: CAUSES, EFFECTS, AND HOW TO STOP

Playing the blame game will never work for anyone. Several types of research show that people who play the blame game lose status and learn less when compared to those who accept their mistakes and take action. Life isn’t a bed of roses. We make mistakes, things go wrong, bad things happen, and life may not go the way we plan. This doesn’t mean you should find somebody or a situation to blame for your problems. So many things happen to us that are caused by a mix of our actions and those of the people around us. You can’t avoid making mistakes in life. We are supposed to learn from our mistakes.

Why do we tend to blame others?

Why do we blame other people for the bad things that happen to us? Why do we prefer the blame game over taking responsibility for our mistakes?

Blaming others is easier than taking responsibility: People tend to run away from accepting accountability. Blaming others’ is just easier than facing the ugly truth about ourselves so you’d rather hide from it than face it. Trauma is painful but apparently healing which requires you to come face to face with your dark realities is more painful. Other times we would rather blame than be blamed. This is why we avoid taking ownership of our mistakes. We would rather blame someone else to protect our own self-esteem and reputation, still living in a falsehood. 

We like playing the victim: Most people have a victim mentality. We tend to play the victim when something goes wrong. We make others feel that they are the cause of the unfortunate event also in an attempt to avoid taking accountability or responsibility for the outcome of our own lives. 

We expect life to be a bed of roses: Life is full of ups and downs, and we should accept this fact. However, people have a distorted idea of fairness, which makes them unable to accept any unpleasant situation.

How does playing the blame game affect us?

Whether we want to accept this or not, playing the blame game has negative effects on our lives. These are what can happen to you if you do not stop playing the blame game and start taking control of your life:

Your life remains stagnant: Our mistakes are our greatest teachers because we learn from them and in turn we grow from them. They are the reason for our evolution of thought processes and behavior. When we learn, we evolve into a better version of ourselves. Blaming others does not help us move forward but rather helps us remain stagnant and dwelling in ignorance.

We become victims: Playing the blame game can turn us into “victims” forever. You can become someone who lacks the courage to own up to their mistakes. We become victims in our heads. We become sad and angry, and we have low self-esteem. We begin living in a matrix of false perception that we don’t have the ability to change our circumstances. 

We do not find solutions: If we keep blaming others for our mistakes we fail to find solutions to our problems. Hence, we end up in a never ending run on the hamster wheel in perpetual karmic cycles. 

Stop blaming others and start taking responsibility. Life happens, but how you respond to the bad situation is what matters the most. Opportunities come every day, you wouldn’t want them to pass you by due to your inability to see them because you’ve blinded yourself for so long by giving away your power to make a change to situations or people outside of yourself. You cannot blame other people or temporary circumstances for the way your life unfolds. You have the power to make conscious decisions and make the effort everyday to change what you don’t like about your living situation, career path, and relationships. Take the wheel and steer the direction of your life. You are the creator of your reality!