The Happyist

One of the greatest powers we have in our lives is to accept blame. As someone who strives to never feel that I am being controlled or taken advantage of, accepting blame can feel like you’re letting someone off for wronging you when you know that you’re not in the wrong. Well, as Socrates would say, you’re only actually wise when what you know is that you know absolutely nothing.

Hard as it may be, on a day to day basis, when things have not worked out, I have found liberation in looking at myself first. What could I have done differently there? What did I do that perhaps caused that? Is this really how I am feeling or is there something else about my own situation I need to acknowledge?  Before I go any further, let’s be clear… what we’re talking about here is not applicable in all situations, I am not expecting a person with a major health condition to proceed to scold themself for ‘causing’ said issue.

Maybe it’s the word ‘blame’ that is the root issue of a person’s inability to do this. If we see it as accepting ‘blame’, we see it as having done something wrong. The instinct when someone is struggling in a situation is to offer them comfort- that they are not to blame, it’s not their fault, they are undeserving of the perceived unfair treatment they have received. I’d wager that asking someone to consider the way they approached the situation or are perceiving the situation first would be met with a shield of defensiveness and abuse. Narrating to yourself, or hearing from someone else, that maybe you are ‘wrong’ can be a one way ticket to a demolished self esteem.

But what we’re really saying then is that the reason we find accepting ‘blame’ difficult is because of our perspective of it.

As I stood in the queue for my coffee, with nothing to do and no where to be, the seconds began ticking by gratingly as 3 minutes turned into 6 minutes turned into 10 minutes. Becoming more irate, my watch began buzzing to alert me of my increased heart rate and suggested I “take a break” from doing nothing. It was about then that it occurred to me that this was the first time I had stood still all week. In this moment, I just needed to stand and wait. How wild it would be to see this moment as a gift rather than an inconvenience. I could transform a moment of frustration into a moment I could, dare I say, extract some pleasure from.  

We have the ability to frame things and in most instances we’re framing it without even knowing we’re doing it. It’s a subconscious process that turns our experiences into reflections of our mood and feelings. The driver next to you is, most likely, not actually aiming to deprive you of your time and pride by pushing in front of you, it is more probably the case that you are late and you are tired because your job is causing you heightened angst on a daily basis and your commute causes you stress regardless of whatever they did. Does anyone else suffer from road rage?

But if we have the opportunity to recognise that this process is happening within us, perhaps we do have some choice over how we are framing our exploits and encounters. Maybe we can choose to tell ourselves a different story. We can choose to frame something in a different perspective. 

Maybe you’ve heard of it as a growth mindset over a victim mindset; is the glass half full or half empty?; or Captain Jack Sparrow’s “the problem is not the problem, the problem is your attitude about the problem”. However you dress it up or wrap it, there’s something empowering in the idea that we do have the ability to mitigate our daily gripes and issues somewhat simply by choosing to think of them in a new way. 

When something has made you feel a certain way, could you try to question and own your role in it? Instead of feeling that you’re a casualty with a passive role in something that has impacted your feelings, you permit yourself the power to identify what perspective you’re seeing it from, what story you’re telling yourself, what you didn’t like about it and maybe even do something about it. 

I’d be the first to tell you that the only thing we can really believe in in life is that we have no control over anything. But, choosing to try to see things differently is not about seeking control, quite the opposite in fact. It is about accepting that the only thing you do have control of is your choice.

But seriously, there are some real idiots on the roads…