00:00 

Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 20, "Blame and Responsibility." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Well hey there, good morning. It's morning for me when I'm recording this. So I'm just going to say good morning. Because I think it's great and it's a beautiful spring day for me outside. It's sunny, we were some storming yesterday, but today it is gorgeous and sunny and I can hear birds outside the window and the daffodils and the tulips are up and I just love spring. Spring is my favorite time of year because I just am not a huge fan of being cold in the winter. And so when spring comes and winter's over, I'm just about as happy as you can be. I just love this time of year. So happy spring and good morning to you. 

00:58 

So today we are going to be talking about blame and responsibility. Kind of a big topic, but such an important topic for us because if we're in blame mode, we are just not growing and we're not moving forward the way that we need to. So question, are you a blamer? I think all of us to some degree are a blamer. All of us fall into the trap of blaming other people for things going on. I remember a few weeks ago...I have a friend that I exercise with in the mornings and we go to the church and we're able to use the DVD player for yoga on some days and we pulled it out and I was trying to get things going. And a lot of times people when they use the TV and the DVD players there they don't return things how they need to be and keep things plugged in and I started to use it and I was like, what? Why do people do this all the time? They just don't return it back how they need to and then I realized that I hadn't even plugged in the TV yet. 

01:56 

So it's just so quick and it's so huge human nature to just automatically start blaming other people for things that are going wrong rather than looking at ourselves and seeing what's happening. So the thing is though, we don't usually blame other people for really great things that are going on. For example, I'm really happy to be the one responsible for getting that promotion at work, but if I don't get the promotion, I can quickly and easily put the blame on somebody else, you know, that somebody else sabotaged me or whatever else, right? It's really easy to start pointing fingers. 

02:29 

And we have become a society of blamers, and that is such a disempowering place to be. We become a victimized society because everything is always someone else's fault. So to blame somebody else means that we assign the responsibility of what's happening to somebody else. In essence, we are giving control to somebody else. And when we do that in our lives, we're giving control of our lives over to somebody else. And when we put it that way, it stings a little bit, doesn't it? 

03:01 

But let's look at how it turns out that way that we put other people in control. First of all, Brene Brown, you know she's one of my favorites. She talks about blame by saying that we blame other people to discharge the uncomfortable feelings that we're feeling. We don't want to feel those feelings or own them. And this is something that our society really struggles with, is this feeling that if I'm not happy all the time, something's wrong. And we have a really tough time sitting in these uncomfortable places of discomfort, right? That I did something wrong, and that's an uncomfortable place to be. And so we try and immediately discharge those feelings by blaming other people. And I love how she shares that idea. 

03:48 

And oftentimes we even start blaming other people before we even consider that we're responsible, as I did when I didn't even plug in the TV. It was immediate for me to start blaming other people for not setting the television back up the way that and having the cords all plugged in the way they need to be. It was immediate for me to start doing that before I realized that, oh wait, I didn't even have the TV plugged in, right? Because we're making somebody else responsible for how I feel when I blame. And the thing is, when I put somebody else in, give someone else responsibility for how I feel, then I also have to depend on them for getting me out of that back feeling and into the good. 

04:30 

And that's when I become the victim, because I have no power over how I got there or how to get out. I've made my emotions somebody else's responsibility and do I really wanna do that? So say my ex-husband, my mother-in-law who is, is very sweet by the way, this is just an example, or my sister, or my brother, or my kids, whatever, do I really want them to be in charge of how I'm feeling and how my life is turning out because other people are so bad at making us feel good. They don't do what we want them to do and it's frustrating and annoying and they don't have the same perspective that we have and so they don't have us at the forefront of their mind most of the time. 

05:19 

Other people are so bad at making us feel good, right? And they don't protect our emotions the same way that we would. When I allow that difficult exchange with someone, regardless of who it is, to dictate how I feel, I've chosen very often the people I trust the least to be responsible for my emotions. People I don't respect or trust are given permission to be in charge of how I feel. And this is what I'm doing when I'm blaming other people. I'm assigning the responsibility of my feelings, my actions, and the results of my life to somebody else. 

05:59 

And it's often someone who has no business being in my life that much. Are they responsible for my emotions? Absolutely not. I am. No one but me is responsible for how I feel. They can be responsible for their actions, but not the feelings that I have in response to those actions. And this is so important because I want to keep my power in myself and not victimize myself further by giving them my emotions. So they may have hurt me with their actions and they're responsible for that, but creating an emotional story about it and giving them that power makes it worse when I say that I am hurt by their actions, that they hurt me, I've given up control. But when I realize that it's my thoughts about my actions that create that feeling of hurt, then I start taking back more control. 

07:00 

So one area that always brings up with this is abuse. Now, abuse is horrible, but we make it worse by what we think about it. And this is the most painful part, especially sexual abuse, what we make it mean about our self-worth, about our worthiness or our shame and us being damaged goods. But this type of thinking is actually more destructive than the abuse itself. We give the perpetrator so much more power than they deserve. So even though the abuse can be something that happened years and years ago, it is something that still can victimize us today because we give away the responsibility for our emotions to this person who cannot be trusted in the first place. That moment of abuse may have lasted just a moment. Maybe it was something long-term, but we take that moment of abuse and live it for years because we continue to give that person power over us not just for the time the abuse was occurring but for years and years. 

08:14 

Alright, blaming someone gives them power and holding them responsibility for their actions is different than giving them responsibility for our feelings. They are responsible for what they did. They're responsible for the abuse. No doubt about it but they are not responsible for how I feel now. And the thing is this is good news. It's not like I can imagine people out there saying "but that's not right, that's not fair." Well, but it's good news, it's great news actually, that they don't have control over how I feel now. Yes, they're responsible for their behaviors and the things that they did, but I am responsible. I don't want someone responsible for my emotional life now. That abuser is not the person I want in charge. How it affects me now is all me. 

09:12 

If you've been in this situation, take your power back and refuse to let people who don't deserve it have so much control in your lives. I know I've listened to several things with Elizabeth Smart as she's talked about her experience. And she's reflected on this same idea that the best way she could move on from her horrendous ordeal was to not let these people control her life anymore. That if she were to move on with strength and with dignity, that was the best revenge that she could get. 

09:45 

Now, this is not an overnight process. It's not something that's going to happen quickly, but awareness is the first and hardest step. Awareness that we are giving up control of our feelings and our emotions and our actions to somebody else. If  we can first become aware of that, that's the first and the hardest step, okay? And if that's all you can manage right now, work toward awareness, that your thoughts are controlling everything. The more aware you can become of that, the better things are. So again, blaming others is completely giving up power over our own lives and allowing someone else to dictate how we feel, all right? So that's the lowest level of what's going on here. 

10:35 

The next level up is a little bit better, but it still is a bad place to be. And that's blaming ourselves. So first we tend to blame other people and to point that finger. And then the next thing we want to do is start blaming ourselves, and this is a dangerous trap as well, because it's a really negative place to be. Blaming myself automatically puts me, again, in a place of disempowerment in victim mode. It abdicates responsibility for my feelings and actions to a place of abandonment. I abandon myself when I respond with negative feelings over that which I can't control. 

11:12 

And this blaming of myself is rooted in shame, in the feeling that I'm not enough, that something is inherently wrong with me, that I don't have what it takes to be in control, that I am bad, right? And blaming ourselves causes us to feel negative, disempowered, weak and out of control. Blaming myself is beating myself up, making myself wrong, and this is always painful. There isn't room for growth in this place of self abuse. There isn't an out when we're blaming ourselves. This is not taking responsibility for what I think, feel, or do. It's putting myself in a place where I have no control. It's a difference in mindset, right? I'm thinking that I am wrong, that I am bad and that there's something wrong with me. And this is where blaming ourselves is also a very dangerous negative place to be. So this is not taking responsibility for what I think, feel, and do. It's putting myself in a place where I have no control. 

12:30 

So the highest level of growth and self-awareness here is taking responsibility, taking control of what I choose to think and feel. So let's look at some examples of what responsibility looks like as opposed to blame. So responsibility would say, "he was late, that's why we're not on time." Whereas blame would say, "I'm stressed out because he didn't pick me up on time." Do you see the difference there? One is responsibility for actions and one is saying that it's his fault that I'm stressed out. No, it's my fault for being stressed out that I wasn't picked up on time, right? Because of how I choose to think about it. 

13:15 

Here's another example. "Their lack of effort may be why they didn't complete the task," as opposed to blame which says, "I'm so frustrated because he didn't do what I asked him to do," right? Again, he didn't do it and that caused my feelings of frustration. No, my feelings of frustration were caused by my thoughts about him not doing what I asked him to do. Alright, whereas the fact that they didn't complete the task, that's a responsibility, right? This didn't get done, that's a responsibility. So these are assigning responsibility instead of blaming our emotions and our actions on another person. 

13:56 

So again, no one else is responsible for how we think or for how we act. I am taking responsibility for what I think, what I feel, and what I do, and that's the opposite of blaming. The biggest difference here is in how I feel, and feelings are always generated by my thoughts. When I feel happy, when I feel hurt, angry, frustrated, it's all self-generated by what I am choosing to think. And nobody else can create or generate a feeling for us. No one is that powerful. When I take responsibility for how I feel, I become empowered to feel what I want to experience. 

14:45 

Now, in the moment, this can be really, really difficult. For one, we may not even have the awareness yet. And for two, I may not want to be responsible yet, right? I may still be in a place where it feels really good to blame somebody else for all of my problems because then I'm not responsible for fixing them, right? As long as it's somebody else's responsibility, I'm off the hook. But yet, I'm also completely disempowered. And that's not a good place to be. So when I start realizing that my thoughts are creating every experience I have, then my responsibility is starting to kick in. And this is the sweet spot of awareness that we're aiming for. We're starting to, we want to get to the point where we start realizing that, "oh, my thoughts about this situation are creating every feeling and action that I have." This is what we're going for, right? Responsibility leads to change in the direction I find myself going. Blame keeps me stuck because there's no power in blame. Responsibility, though, leads to a complete change in how I feel about the circumstances in my life. 

16:10 

So when I own my behaviors rather than blaming, I then have the power to change the behavior. I have the responsibility to  behave the way I want, to think what I want, and to feel what I want. I get to decide in every single situation how I want to feel. Isn't that amazing? Feeling upset and taking responsibility for feeling upset is very different than feeling upset and blaming someone else for my being upset. You're seeing the difference here. It's not that being upset is a bad thing. It may be the right emotion at the right time, but blaming my feelings of being upset on somebody else, that's where it becomes problematic. But if I take responsibility for being upset, then I have the power that I need to to do what needs to be done. 

17:15 

It's okay to feel upset. It's just am I blaming somebody else for that or am I taking responsibility? Being responsible empowers me to change it. Blaming disempowers me and makes me feel like a victim. Blame is hopelessness. It's out of control. It's rage. And there's no place to go when we're a victim. We are waiting for somebody else to save us when we're a victim. And you know what? Everybody else in this world is so busy saving themselves and taking care of their own business that they don't have time to save us. It's our responsibility to take charge of our lives and get us where we want to go. And that starts by feeling what we want to feel, to get where we want to go. And that starts with getting our thoughts where they need to go. 

18:15 

So here's the deal. It's time to ask ourselves, am I living in blame of others or am I living in self-blame or am I living in responsibility? I think we're probably all going to dabble a little bit in all of those, no doubt. But the more we can start shifting from the blame end of the spectrum through self-blame and over to responsibility, the better we're going to be because owning our responsibility is where that place of empowerment comes from. And when I feel empowered to grow, I'm just a much happier, rooted person, right? I just feel like I can do what I want to do. 

19:02 

So owning responsibility can be really difficult upfront. But once we start owning that responsibility, then we can start feeling in control. And that's when we can start to move on. And knowing that moving on is our choice is amazing. Knowing that no one else can keep me somewhere I don't want to be is very liberating. I get to choose. I get to choose how I feel and no one else has power over that, right? It's like when I had my first big aha that you know what, when it comes time to stand before God, there's not going to be any finger pointing. I'm not going to be able to point to anybody else and say, "well, it's their fault that this happened in my life," or "it's their fault that I made these decisions." No. When I'm standing before God at that great and beautiful Judgment Day, it's all me. And that's a little bit scary because, yes, it's all me, but it's also very empowering, isn't it? Nobody can keep me from getting what I want. I get to choose, and nobody else has power over that. 

20:12 

And it begins by moving my thoughts into a place of responsibility instead of a place of blaming others or blaming myself. Again, blame is, "you did this, you are wrong, you should be ashamed, you're awful, what is wrong with you, can't you get your act together," whether that's to somebody else or to ourselves. But responsibility is, "I got this, I can figure this out, I'm strong. I have the power to decide. I can get what I want out of this." From a place of responsibility, we can begin to change our lives and create what we want. If we own all of our results, all of our actions, all of our feelings, we are empowered and we start this process by owning our thoughts. 

21:07 

Is this easy? Absolutely not, especially up front it can be really, really hard when we're first starting to learn this skill. It can be incredibly challenging, but the more we practice and the more aware we can become and the more it will start to feel like situations are slowing down and we're not caught up in a fast moving situation that catches us unawares, the more we practice choosing our thoughts, the better we get at it. 

21:40 

So if you find yourself getting caught up in feeling ways you don't want to feel, the first step is to start to be aware of that. Aware that, "oh, I'm feeling this way, this isn't the right emotion right now. This isn't how I want to feel right now." And then I can start to figure out what thoughts I'm thinking that are causing those feelings. And this is almost always going to happen after the fact, especially up front. Because up front we just, we're not good at it yet, it's a practice thing, right? And so when we find ourselves having gone through a situation and we walk away and we go, "ugh, I don't like this feeling," we then can stop and say, "wait, wait, wait, okay. So I'm having this feeling, let me figure out what thoughts I'm having that are creating this feeling." And then I can start doing that. 

22:29 

 And I found that for me, it's a process of...the better I become at analyzing it after the fact, it seems like during situations they see to be slowing down a little bit for me. It's almost like time changes and I'm just more aware of what's going on, right? So we start off by doing this after the fact. It's super helpful and the more aware we become after thorough reflection, the more we start to become aware during the situation. So we won't ever be perfect at having the right response every time. That's not possible. We're people having a human experience, right? But I've found that the more aware I become of how my thoughts create my feelings, the more time seems to slow down in situations and I'm able to see them more clearly during the situation. It's been a pretty amazing experience to see that transformation. 

23:29 

But again, this is all a process. I'm still in this process and I imagine I will be for my entire life. But it's a place of growth that I am absolutely loving and enjoying. It's putting me in the driver's seat of my life rather than the passenger's seat. And just like driving a car, sometimes it's a sunny day and the drive is amazing and beautiful. And sometimes it's cloudy and cool and sometimes it's black as night. Sometimes it's stormy and visibility is next to nothing. But being in the driver's seat, I have control over how fast and how long I drive and whether my lights are on or whether I pull over and wait for conditions to be over. Nobody else has the ability to do that for me. But I do. 

24:18 

And if I choose to be in the driver's seat by owning what I am capable of owning, I can choose all of that. This is the deal. We won't feel happy all the time. Just like the drive won't always be sunny and clear. But we also won't feel disempowered and out of control as if we're in the passenger seat and somebody else is continuing to drive when we feel unsafe. We're in the driver's seat. We can feel empowered and in control. When we retain our ability to respond, our response ability, our ability to respond, we retain control in our lives. And that, my friends, is a place of empowerment and a place of growth. And that is really where our contentment in life comes from. 

25:18 

Gosh, I love growing up, don't you? I love learning things and having the pieces of my life start coming together. Thank you so much for joining me today. So if you would love some personal help from me to learn how to take responsibility for your life, or if you just want help navigating some tough situations, contact me at tanyahale.com and you can book a free 20 minute coaching session to get you started. And I would love to help you step into your life with more responsibility. So again, if you feel this podcast is adding value to your life, you can subscribe, you can leave a review, and you can share this podcast and this information with other people. I hope you have a terrific day, and you feel empowered in the choices that you make and the thoughts you choose to think. Have a terrific one. See you later. 

26:09 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.