I find that black and white thinking sabotages our chances of success. For instance, you may have come to a decision that your boss is very strategic in his focus, so you always give big picture ideas, and never prepare for a time when he needs details. When you get scolded by your boss, rather than accept responsibility, you blame your boss for having two minds.

Blaming is easy.
Taking responsibility is hard.
It’s no wonder so few people actually succeed in real life.

I was just watching the 2009 Oprah Show “Class In America” and listening to how so many people are getting angry and upset by people who are rich. Sure, there’s lots of people who are now retrenched and can’t find a job, but I think this has probably caused a change in consciousness.

Recently, I was conducting a training program for a corporation. One guy in particular was pretty low in energy and was constantly not paying attention, looking away and appearing fairly uninterested. He was probably in his mid-40s. During the second day, I had a chance to interact with this person and found out that he had been retrenched for over 18 months and was on this new job for only a few months.

It set me thinking. Are some people who have been laid off responsible for their plight? Was this man fired because of the low energy and disinterested manner in which he ran his life?

The blame game is easy to play because it means we don’t have to do much. The power is now given to other people to make things happen. But a lot of the time, you have to realize that blaming is a luxury we don’t have. As much as I would like to blame, it is from moving on that helps me get the results that I want. And yes, even in situations that I deem to be unfair to me, responsibility for what I could do that I didn’t yet do so that such a thing would never happen to me again.

I recently discovered that some people I used to work with are complaining that they have so much more work to do and keeping the same pay. Strangely, their boss knows me and he is a little disappointed that they have such an attitude. It has become obvious to him that their quality of work had declined, but he says “I can let them go anytime, no one is indispensible except the one who contributes beyond themselves in this organization. That person I will reward.”

So, I think it’s time to go back to ourselves and ask a serious question: how much power do we really want? How far do we want to go? That is the measure of how much responsibility to take upon yourself to make the right kinds of choices to move forward, and not get trapped by the negativity of the blame game.