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169. The Blame Game · Impact Ready

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  Welcome to Impact Ready, a show dedicated to helping you elevate
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  your impact in the world. I'm Steph Safer, your host.
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  Let's explore the power of showing up with intention and
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  energy each day. This is for those who seek to
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  make life truly meaningful. Get ready for impact.
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  Hi team, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here today.
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  In this episode, we're going to talk about one of the most
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  common human experiences there is out there in the world, and
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  that is the experience of blame. Super fun topic, I know, but
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  actually this is one of the most powerful things that I talk
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  about with coaching clients and I want to have this conversation
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  with you. One of the keys to having
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  powerful influence in your world, one of the keys to
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  creating a fulfilled life, to finding freedom in your own
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  life, to feeling lighter, to feeling more ease is to take
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  radical ownership. One of the keys to being impact
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  ready is radical ownership. Taking radical ownership in your
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  own life to ask the question, what can I own here is one of
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  the most powerful things that you can do because it's saying
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  to yourself, I'm taking responsibility for my part in
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  the situation. So we've established that.
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  We've talked about it so many times on the show.
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  But what gets in the way of radical ownership?
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  It's that thing that we deal with in our lives, every single
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  one of us. The thing that we deny is
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  happening so often, but something that every single one
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  of us has feels in some area, some realm of our life.
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  And that is the condition, the feeling, the experience of
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  blame. In this day and age, there's
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  plenty of blame to go around. I know you've been blamed for
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  things in your life. I'm very certain that you
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  currently blame certain things in your life.
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  I know I do. I know I'm constantly figuring
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  out and mining out new things that I have kind of hidden blame
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  around. And some people deal with it
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  more than others, but nobody is exempt.
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  Even high performers struggle with blame just like everybody
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  else. And while we can acknowledge
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  there's plenty of blame to go around and that oftentimes blame
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  is appropriate, yes, I'm saying that I'm saying that oftentimes
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  blame is appropriate. It's almost never helpful.
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  And that's a really hard distinction for most people to
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  make. There's plenty of blame to go
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  around, and yes, oftentimes blame is merited, but it's
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  almost never helpful. And this is really hard.
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  So we're going to call out the hard here.
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  You know, there's a saying, while all truth is true, not all
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  truth is helpful. And what that really means to me
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  is while the facts might make us feel better, not all facts are
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  useful to help us improve our lives.
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  This is the really tricky part about blame because blame has us
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  focused on truths, specific truths, but they're truths that
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  don't actually help advance things in our life.
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  And at the same time, blame has us ignoring truths that will.
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  It's like a filter that we look through where we can see some
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  things and we can't see the others.
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  In other words, the more we blame things in our life, the
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  less access we have to solutions, the less agency we
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  experience in our own life. Something we've described before
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  is the more we feel like a victim in our life, the more we
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  perceive that we're getting tossed around in the waves of
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  life, so to speak, the less we get to be the captain of our own
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  ship. If you remember a past podcast
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  episode where we've talked about problem energy versus solution
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  energy, problem energy is not positive or negative, it's just
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  what it is, but it's low frequency energy and blame lives
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  there. Blame is a place where we are
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  having feelings of resentment or anger or frustration or
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  irritation, and blame lives in that low frequency zone.
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  That's fine, it is what it is, but you can never get to
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  solution from a place of problem energy.
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  And so when we are in blame, we lose access to our solutions.
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  And that's what happens so many times for people.
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  Blame is one of those elusive things.
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  It comes in a lot of different forms.
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  It wears a lot of different disguises, but it's there no
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  matter who you are. And it sneaks around and it
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  pokes holes in our sails. It drains our energy and it
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  keeps us at that low frequency, that low problem energy
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  frequency. For these very reasons, as a
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  coach, we understand that if you deeply care about someone and
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  the trajectory of their life, you'll care about the amount of
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  responsibility they're bringing to their life.
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  If I were to say it another way, I would say if you care about
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  others, you're going to care about their ownership.
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  It's why we care about the ownership that our spouse takes,
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  because we care about the trajectory of their life.
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  It's why we care about our kids learning to take personal
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  responsibility, or why it matters with our colleagues.
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  Because if we care about people, we are ultimately going to care
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  that they are able to take ownership and have access to
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  their own agency and their power and their solutions.
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  Because we all deal with this because it's ever present and
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  everybody has this experience at some point.
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  The question isn't whether blame is diminishing your life or not,
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  It's where. It's where.
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  Where in your life is blame having that diminishing effect?
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  We have this experience pop up in all areas of our life around
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  money, around our intimate relationship, our friendships,
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  our career and work, our health, and really just in general
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  around opportunities that we have.
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  We know what the typical blame sounds like.
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  It often sounds like, oh, she did this to me or I never had
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  that opportunity. Nothing ever works out for me.
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  I didn't have access to that. They should have done this.
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  That's kind of the the obvious way that we think about blame,
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  but there are some sneaky ones. Blame can also sound like this.
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  That would never work. That can't happen.
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  They would never go for it. That's impossible.
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  That's never been done before. Someone else is already doing
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  it. I don't have time for that.
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  We can't do that because my spouse would hate it.
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  We can't do that because my kids would never go for it.
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  The market won't allow for that or doesn't want it.
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  Other people with more money and power have already done it or
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  have already saturated that space.
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  Notice how a lot of these things are things that we probably say
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  on a weekly basis in regard to a lot of different things in our
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  life. And at first glance, these
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  statements don't sound like blame.
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  At least they didn't to me. But when you look at the root of
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  the statement, it's all about feeling like power lies outside
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  of yourself. That's the thing, that there's
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  some other external force or factor that is in charge of you.
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  And that's a lot of what blame is.
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  It's a shift in power outside of yourself, often US giving the
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  power away. And that's why we think radical
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  ownership is so important because it allows you to reclaim
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  your own power to make the shift so that it's no longer outside
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  of you, but within you. That's how you get access to
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  solution to things. You take responsibility.
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  You ask that question, what can I own here?
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  And the impact of that is that you reclaim your power and you
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  start to find a new way forward. We're always stuck in our life
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  if we believe that the power for us to do something lies in
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  someone else's hands. I have felt that way so many
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  times, especially in my adolescence and my 20s.
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  So how do you know if you have places in your life where you
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  are unconsciously blaming? Well, like with so many other
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  things, we can look to the language that we use because it
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  often reveals areas where we are empowered or areas where we are
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  disempowered. And as we said, blame is the act
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  of putting power outside of ourselves.
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  It is a disempowering act. So you can look for specific
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  language. Disempowered language looks like
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  this. Maybe I can't.
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  I have to. I should.
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  I'll try. I don't know, so I'll stop.
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  So that's disempowered language. Empowered language is not
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  actually all that different. It's really just one word that's
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  switched out of those previous statements.
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  Instead of maybe it's yes or no. Instead of I can't, it's I can.
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  Instead of I have to. It's.
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  I get to instead of I should, it's.
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  I choose to instead of I'll try. It's I will or I will not.
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  Instead of I don't know, so I'll stop.
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  It's, I don't know. So I'll find out that language
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  is decisive. It's being in choice.
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  It's taking ownership of your actions and your time and your
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  energy. I know that you can feel the
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  difference even with me just reading them out loud.
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  The great thing is that when we start paying attention to our
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  language and we start solving for that first, it often solves
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  like 50 other problems that are all stemming from the same place
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  of disempowerment. So you might be working on your
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  language or on money, but it also then bleeds into your
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  language around your marriage, and it solves problems there and
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  then that bleeds into your language around how you show up
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  for your deadlines and work, and that gets solved.
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  Now, I'm not saying this is easy to do, just that it's freeing to
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  do. I'll acknowledge that it might
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  be simple in strategy, but it could be kind of hard to get out
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  of the habit of it. Blame can be very addicting and
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  sometimes it's hard to break away from those addictive
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  tentacles that have us. I mean, we know that blame gives
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  us something otherwise we wouldn't do it.
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  It gives us a reprieve from our own feelings about something.
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  It sometimes gives us a little hit of dopamine like gossip or
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  drama. I mean, have you ever had that
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  something happens and you might sit around and and justify
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  blaming someone else with your family or your friends and it
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  gives you that little like high that's dopamine in the short
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  term. What it does is it abdicates us
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  of the responsibility that we know we need to take in our own
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  life. So the question that I have for
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  you is where is blame showing up in your life?
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  And at at first pass, I know it doesn't seem like a very fun
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  question to have to answer, but remember, we're all in the same
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  boat here. Every single one of us finds
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  ways to hand over our personal power by putting blame on other
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  things, even sometimes unconsciously.
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  But every time we do that, we're essentially saying I have no
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  choice. The awesome thing about this
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  whole situation is that we have a lot more agency and personal
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  power than we think we do. Than we realize you have this
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  tremendous amount of power that's buried beneath all of
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  this blame. And when you can dig it out, you
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  get to experience more choice. And more choice equates to more
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  freedom. And there's nothing better than
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  feeling personal freedom in your own life, baby.
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  It's just the best. Again, it takes breaking out of
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  the addictive nature of all of this.
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  It requires that you take a look at some of your internal
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  conversations going on in your head and being really
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  intentional about the language you use.
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  But you can do it. And this year is an awesome
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  opportunity to stop wasting time and valuable energy blaming
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  other people and switch gears to mining out and digging out your
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  own agency and choice again. You'll find power you didn't
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  even realize you have. So I hope that this helps and
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  spurs on some thought. I'm really excited about this
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  idea of freeing myself from more of the blame that might be
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  hiding away somewhere unconscious.
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  Thank you for being here and for listening to this conversation.
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  And as always, thank you for being ready to Impact Team.
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  Thanks for listening to Impact Ready.
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  I hope today's episode inspired you to own your impact and
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  recognize that you are powerful. By elevating our energy and
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  awareness, we can create exponential change in this life.
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  If you enjoyed today's insights, share them with a friend and
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  subscribe to the show for more. I truly appreciate you.
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  Thanks again for being here.