31–40 of 106 posts
Take a look at the happiest couple you know. They aren't happy because they are perfect for each other and always have the same opinion, but rather because they are forgiving of each other's faults.
From the description of Battered Person Syndrome [1]:
- The abused thinks that the violence was his or her fault.
- The abused has an inability to place the responsibility
for the violence elsewhere.
No, it's not your fault. And this is just a mechanism of deflection. Step back from your solipsistic convictions for five minutes and realize that your rationalizations here only serve the purpose of avoiding forgiveness. You have decided that not only are you not a victim but in fact you and you alone are responsible for everything and therefore you don't ever need to forgive anyone. Moreover you have now implicitly…
Let's get the $9000 example. If you were cheated out of $9000, you can stop at "this guy was a con artist" and just feel bad. Or you can say "I have to do these and these checks next time somebody asks me for $9000" - and then next con artist maybe won't get that lucky with you. Because you can't change how next guy behaves, but you can change how you behave.
"Everything is my fault" is entrepreneurs' wishful thinking so that they can believe they can fix whatever situation they're in. However, not everything is under their control, no matter how hard they try to believe. You don't control the weather, the people in the streets, the companies sending you checks, the currency exchange rates, etc.
Quite so, but most people can control more than they give themselves credit for. Think again before you give up on some things. You can effectively control the weather you get by moving to another city/country. The companies sending you checks are 100% in your control - it's your career choice. Not sure why you'd want to control the people in the streets - sounds a wee bit tyrannical :-)
Something like this appeared in Good to Great . In a study of CEOs who lead their companies to significant improvement that lasted after the CEO stepped down, they found a common personality characteristic. The best CEOs constantly were watching for problems, took responsibility (aka fault) for everything that went wrong, credited everything good to others, and then anything that could not be credited to someone they…
Of course a complete apology feels good, it provides absolution. It will feel even better if forgiveness is tendered by the employees. But to reiterate the real challenge is not getting into situations like this in the future.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think interpreting these posts in the literal manner that you and the grandparent are doing is a bit misleading. If you read what the OP wrote in the most literal manner, he sounds like a nutjob. You're right - there's no way to say that it's his fault that everything happens. What if a stranger had a bad day for his own reasons, and decided to use that as an excuse to be rude to the OP? Or someone broke into his h…
I used to feel and act exactly like Derek: let's just pretend everything is my fault because that's how I will learn to be better regardless of whether other people could have been better too. What I've started noticing, though, is that after doing this for a couple of years, when it's become automatic, it gets difficult to differentiate between "for the sake of learning, let's assume this is my fault" and "this is a…
I ask myself, in a non-judging way, "what could I have done differently?" Sometimes the answer is "nothing" - you just caught someone on a bad day. But sometimes there are some things I can change about my behavior. If so, I try to incorporate that and go forward.
Whatever happened has already happened. You can't go back and change it, so there's no point in ruminating on it. But you can change how you behave in the future, and that's what a lesson is for.
I shouldn't have been wearing such sexy clothes or walking alone in the park at night. It's my fault.
I personally take a proactive view of my environment, but Derek's post is lacking moderation. From the description of Battered Person Syndrome [1]: - The abused thinks that the violence was his or her fault. - The abused has an inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battered_person_syndrome