On the uselessness of blaming yourself

 Let me start this one, by acknowledging we all do it. We all, at some point and for some time, have a tendency to blame ourselves for things in our lives when we get results or situations we’d rather not experience and that we feel we may have contributed to them happening. It’s a natural and human thing to do. And contrary to the title, in some circumstances m, it may even be useful. Feeling the feeling of blame, is sometimes a valuable signal. A signal that we’ve made a choice or dealt a certain way with a situation, that is now making things worse so being aware of that feeling may help as a future reminder to not make similar choices in the future.

Where it is a problem, is when we let that feeling of blame linger within us. When we don’t let it go, and often use it as an excuse to not do things or not get back to them, where they could be valuable learning and development tools.

And the main reason why blame is useless, is that most of the times, whatever we blame ourselves for is a sunk cost. Sunk cost is a term in finance, that basically says “you already paid for it, there’s nothing you can do about it now so it’s no longer relevant for future decision making”. You paid for it, it’s done so just move on.

Not only a sunk cost, but blame is also an energy vampire. The energy we spend feeling sorry and blaming ourselves, takes the life out of us. When we’re focused on blaming ourselves, humans tend to go on spirals of all our perceived inadequacies and we feel sad, lonely and often treat others around us badly too as a result. And with this comes an opportunity cost too. All that energy could be much better used in different ways. Instead of sulking and blaming, that same energy could be used for strategising. For thinking and planning how we can improve our odds that we won’t make the same types of decisions or reactions, that are now making us feel bad. Strategizing on skills or habits we need to acquire so as to not find ourselves in similar situations in the future. 

So, Rafael, stop blaming yourself or if you can’t do that, get better at identifying when you’re entering spirals of blame. And when you become aware that you are, remember it’s both a sunk cost and that it carries an opportunity cost too, and try to redirect that energy you’re spending anyway towards something more useful for you, something that has a building and development value and not destructive value to yourself. Because on the other side of building and development, there’s a better version of you that uses every challenge as a stepping stone to reach higher heights and better things.