Why you must never play the blame game in life or relationships.Here’s how #DearNephew
You are not responsible for somebody else’s emotional reactions. Your life will get very simple and much easier when you focus on telling the truth.- Mel Robbins
Dear Nephew
Have you ever heard someone throw a slap or say something cruel and then defend it with
“Look what you made me do”,
“You provoked me”
Humans love to pass blame for their emotional reactions. A violent outburst. Hateful words. Physically lashing out. They say it to their children, friends and spouses.
The husband who beats his wife.
The wife who verbally stabs or throws things at her husband.
The parent who gets irritated with a child and overreacts.
Instead of accountability it’s a means of making the other person feel guilty rather than offering a proper apology to them.
I’m sounding like a broken record but as a man you must learn to take responsibility for your emotions, for your sake, the woman you marry and the children you’ll have.
One person has to be the emotional pillar of the home and it falls on you as the man.
You can’t blame your wife and children for any emotional reaction you have.
The same way you are not responsible for the emotional outbursts of a woman.
Are there things men and women do to push each other’s buttons? Yes.
Sometimes deliberately for a reaction.
But you do not want to be easily malleable to anyone who can predict how you’ll react if they push a sequence of buttons.
In the era where anyone could be secretly recording or broadcasting an interaction with you, do you want to go viral and become a meme for the amusement of strangers?
Do you want a reputation for flying off the handle?
Saying or doing things you’ll later have to grovel, apologise, make excuses, or blame people around you?
Does an ambassador loose his cool when insulted by a representative of the host country?
A businessman on a billion-dollar deal his company needs to survive?
An FBI negotiator with a crazy man on the phone with a gun and several hostages?
Exactly, they don’t get emotional or react to what other people say. They have an objective.
Former Navy Seal and leadership trainer Jocko Willink writes in his book, Extreme Ownership
“There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.Yours? Never let any person or situation get the best of you.
You are the leader of your life. Your family. You are the one who’ll face certain consequences no matter what an external party did.
Your objective is to resolve the situation with the relationship maintained.
There will always be antagonists and contrarians in life.
Artists face critics, inventors face naysayers, comedians face hecklers, and popular accounts on social media face trolls.
You will always come across people who say and do things devoid of rhyme or reason, inconceivable actions which you’d only expect from a child or the mentally impaired.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote
“If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity . . . you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge — a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral.
Learning emotional control will take time, there are points and situations where you will fail, lose control and fly off the handle, it takes a lot of practice and mastery.
You take responsibility and enter introspection.
This enables you to avoid repeating that behaviour in the future by identifying what triggered you and why.
In his book, The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene writes
“Learn to question yourself: Why this anger or resentment? Where does this incessant need for attention come from? Under such scrutiny, your emotions will lose their hold on you. You will begin to think for yourself instead of reacting to what others give you”.
You are not an elevator. Don’t allow people your buttons.
Till next time
Your Uncle
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