There are two types of people in the world: those who succeed and those who fail. Those who succeed are very good at prioritizing, focusing on what they want and then working to achieve it. They also have the ability to accept help. Successful people are constantly monitoring their progress and improving themselves. Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, criticize incessantly.
Successful people always monitor their progress and criticize those who continually fail to do so. Some types of negative criticism, like constructive criticism, are actually good for professional and personal growth. The other type of negative criticism, which is commonly referred to as nagging, is merely self-evaluation.
Self-evaluation is when you take the credit for accomplishments you haven't done. It can also be a form of blame if you criticize others without actually taking responsibility for your own actions. This is how some people get from zero to hero by blaming others for their lack of success instead of taking full responsibility for their own actions. By placing the blame elsewhere, these people feel that their actions don't invalidate their previous actions. In fact, by assigning blame to others, they actually feel that their past mistakes have rendered them useless and inadequate.
So how do we escape this vicious cycle? First, stop assigning blame to others. Second, become more productive by identifying what you want to change in yourself. Once you make a plan to improve yourself, you'll find that negative feedback is much less distracting and even becomes fuel for your creativity. Instead of focusing on why your actions aren't productive, you'll instead be focused on the plan to make your actions productive.
One way to stop assigning blame is to practice letting it go. When you are criticized, challenge that view with information that supports your view. For example, if someone points out that you're wasteful, start by saying that yes you are but it's not because you haven't set up a system for keeping track of your spending. Next, challenge the underlying assumption or belief that your criticisms are valid because you're making a valuable point.
It takes self-evaluation to admit that you aren't perfect. Self-evaluation also helps you get more creative because it lets you explore your fears and let you know when you're justifying your actions based on your true worth as a person. This process will let you identify what's holding you back from being truly productive. It will also help you eliminate the need to blame others for your failures by removing your self-evaluation as a motivator.
The key to changing a habit of blame is not to ignore negative feedback. Instead, you have to acknowledge that negative feedback is a part of self-evaluation. In order to change a negative feedback into a positive feedback, you have to ask yourself whether the negative feedback is really relevant to your situation. If it is, you have to decide whether it's worth ignoring the criticism.
You can't make anyone change who they are. Only you can do that. If you consistently allow unproductive people to use you as a punching bag, you will find yourself no closer to any sort of meaningful success than you were before. Instead of letting yourself become frustrated with your own inability to achieve success, step back and take a good look at how you're doing. Maybe you just need to take a few pointers from other successful people so that you can develop an inner strength that allows you to overcome even the worst of circumstances.
Most people don't like self-evaluation. Instead, they prefer to hear comments along the lines of "you did a good job," instead of "you failed." By allowing self-evaluation to control your life, you will be in a much better position to take actions that are motivated by something more concrete than self-evaluation. Instead of blaming other people or events for the things in your life, you can focus on how you respond to what life hands you.
By recognizing when you're unproductive, instead of pointing fingers or blaming others, you can develop a more constructive self-image. By taking responsibility for your own actions, you can become more motivated to change the things about yourself that are unproductive. By deciding right away that you are going to work on unproductive traits rather than dwelling on why you failed, you have a better chance of becoming a more productive person. If you allow yourself to start focusing on your strengths and weaknesses, rather than dwelling on unproductive behaviors, then you have a better chance of changing your life.
While it's easy to let blame your circumstances or others when you feel unproductive, this only causes you to digress even further. The thing is, blame is not the way to go when it comes to unproductive behavior. Rather, you should work on developing your inner strengths and weaknesses instead. By working on being strong and improving your weaknesses, rather than focusing on why you were unable to do something, you can get right back on track. Instead of blaming others or events for things in your life, which only perpetuates the cycle of blame, you can take responsibility for your own actions.
