A few months back, I was at a friend's house, and I heard their son say after he had burnt the toast "it's not my fault I burnt the toast mom." This toaster is messed up, the toaster burnt my toast. I'm not sure how it starts out, but I imagine those who spend their life complaining and blaming others for everything that goes wrong in their life somewhere along the line in their childhood adopted such a view that it's okay to blame inanimate objects, and others for anything that goes wrong.
Now then, I'm not one to tell a parent how to raise their children, but I felt as if there was something wrong there. After all, the toaster makes toast, it works a certain way, and if the toaster burns toast, then you need to keep an eye on the toaster, perhaps it doesn't turn itself off as it's supposed to every time. However, once you know that, you should probably never burn another piece of toast again, because you understand that problem. Blaming the toaster for burning your toast is like the president of the United States blaming the last administration for all of their mistakes.
Now then, I don't doubt it would be nice to go through life, and never have to be responsible for anything that happens in your life, and always have a way out, a great excuse, or someone else to place the blame upon. But to do that you would not be living a life of integrity. My question is why do so many people do this, is it a learned behavior? I can't imagine it is a behavior shared by the winners in the world, and those who achieve great things in life.
There's no way you can learn from your mistakes if you're constantly blaming other people, and if you don't learn from your mistakes, you will simply repeat them over and over again. That's not something that winners do, and if they did, well, they wouldn't be winners would they? Indeed, in this case I felt like saying to the child; "yes it is your fault that you burnt the toast." In fact, I came very close to saying that, but I thought otherwise.
What struck me funny is when his mom said; "I know it's not your fault, and it's only burnt a little bit, I will eat it." I felt that the mom missed a great opportunity to teach her son something very important in life. Nevertheless, there must be a whole bunch of other moms like that out there, because there are far too many people playing the "blame game" in workplaces across America, in schools in your local town, and with politicians in Washington DC. Indeed I hope you will please consider this and think on it.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 24,300 articles will be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..
