I personally think there’s no greater obstacle to progress and self-development than blaming others. The world just doesn’t coincidentally fall into place according to our plans.The only condition that I set for teammates when recruiting game team members is for them to not blame other teammates. I only accept members into the party after they’ve promised me this. But when they go against their word and start blaming other people, I kick them out of the party promptly after the game. We generally have good vibes within the team when I implement this policy. What exactly is blaming others? It’s when a person blames someone else or their enviroment when things don’t work out as planned. These are some common, direct examples.
- “If you had just done XX.. then we could’ve accomplished YY”
- “We lost because of XX”
- “My teammates were so terrible this game..”
The worst part about playing the blame game is that it makes things passive and negative. There really isn’t any reason to blame other people in the first place. People are free to make their own decisions in modern day society, and it was their decision to enter whatever party they chose. Likewise, working for whatever company is the worker’s decision, as is whatever task they’re working on. But blaming others is the easy way out for many people. People are able to preserve their trifling, precious egos by blaming others. Of course, not everything is caused by one’s own mistakes. Some things may’ve been another person’s fault. But it’s not exactly constructive to blame that other person.
- Humans are not designed to gracefully embrace negative feedback. Perhaps slow recollection of things from a controlled state of mind may find more success, but immediate negative feedback will more than likely trigger an emotional response.
- It makes people passive. People who like to resort to blaming others are stingy with compliments as well. They can’t help but be passive because they’re afraid of being blamed as well.
- There is no progress for these types of people. It’s extremely difficult to focus on what I myself can do to improve when I’m so focused on other people or the environment. And there’s also no guarantee that I won’t be faced with a different problem in the future. There may be less than ideal environments later on in the future.
I believe that reflecting what I could’ve done better in this less than ideal situation is much more constructive than blaming other people. And after I’ve done so, if it becomes apparent that my choice to be in this particular environment is the cause of the problem, then it’s more than likely time for me to leave. Let’s all become people who achieved “despite the fact”, instead of playing the blame game.
