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Opinions of Saturday, 28 June 2014

Columnist: Akwah, Nana

Get Rid Of That Baggage of Blame - And Learn

How To Be Answerable For Yourself

People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.

Most of us blame others for our suffering and despondency on a regular basis. We all do it; whether or not we concede is an entirely different course of action. Most of us blame others for our own selfish reasons, just to avoid the feelings of helplessness or frustration.

People by nature need to have an understanding of what causes their distress, hurt or discomfort. To lessen the physical or mental suffering an escape opening is needed to let loose their pain or discomfort upon, and therefore seek for what makes the best conceivable escape opening. Look for a scapegoat!

An ideal scapegoat can be anyone or anything that we willingly crave. This can range from people to insensate objects. Some will go as far as to blame their problems on influence of human destiny or bad advice given to them. It is much easier to blame others for most of the shortcoming we have than to take the responsibility required of us to own up to our mistakes.

Our inability to recognize that there are however, things that we can do; to give us the freedom from the limitation; and the tendency of blaming others. Instead of becoming defensive and blaming, we should take the time to seek out why we feel the need to blame others.

Evaluating yourself and why it deem necessary or the need to blame others for our problems is not a difficult task. You can simply weigh up the situation, the people involved and of course the outcome. Here are a few things to look at, if you choose to consider why you are blaming others.

Determining or ascertaining your function in the state of affairs: Determining or ascertaining other people's functions in the state of affairs: Reflecting on your emotions and reactions: Finding out how you are responsible for your actions: And taking a close look at what you may have done differently.

More often times than not, people do not want to be accountable for their actions. It is logical and why this is true. It is far easier to point the finger than to accept responsibility for our actions. When we say or state that we are blameless and claim ourselves to be victims, we hurt or injure our happiness, comfort, security, safety and even good fortune.

When we allow for ourselves to be seen as a victim, we become a victim of circumstance, which include as well, our own wrong acts. We would sooner be labeled as not victims than what we really are, but as people who blame and even worse, point the finger of blame.

Many will actually go as far as to insist that it must be someone else's fault that this has occurred or happened to us. It all starts from a young age when we hear the adults and those around us blaming other people and things for their misfortunes.

I can still recollect my grandma blaming the footpath for hurting me. It had nothing to do with the fact that I was a stubborn child; it must have been the footpath that jumped up and scratched my leg which is not the case.

More often than not we do not think about this, it seems normal and it has become deep-seated in our belief and value system.

It is because we are ingrained with these ideals, that, we tend to blame others, we blame our parents for the way we turned out, or the lack of a better education which somehow must be someone else's fault and the list goes on and on. The longer we continue to blame and make excuses for ourselves, the easier it becomes.

The use and posturing of blaming is a form of passive aggression. When we blame others, we are essentially justifying the situation or actions. By justifying the blaming we may use facts or allegations to get our point across. Many a time we try to protect our self interest by not accepting responsibility and we may view admitting fault as a weak spot or a blow to our ego.

Most of us are guilty of blaming others in our lives, it happens with politics, families, the government and even destiny. It can also be disadvantageous to blame yourself in excess. It is one thing to be answerable for your actions, but to blame yourself unreasonably is not better.

When we blame ourselves as opposed to be answerable, we are building or inputting into our mind's eye that we are bad, deserving to be punished for what we have done. We must accept it is very difficult to learn from this type of attitude.

On the contrary, when we accept responsibility we can take the lesson learned and move forward with a positive attitude. There is a need to be a balance of accountability and at the same time identifying the responsible party, whether it is us or another.

Therefore, for those who do want to change their blaming behavior, we must first step back, identify what is causing us to have the predisposition to blame others.

At the end of the day, we must be aware of that, we can continue to blame others or accept the task and burden to lead our lives in the cogent direction we choose, not the direction we are being led by our contradicting statements caused by blaming.