4 Mistakes And Life Lessons To Be Grateful For

Failing To Take Accountability

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In life, we will deal with people who are incompetent, aggressive, annoying—you name it. Put simply, sometimes other people are the problem. But, as much as it sucks to admit, focusing on how other people played a role in your disappointments or failures gets you nowhere. And that’s because we can’t change how other people behave. If you ever fixated on how a failure was everyone else’s fault, chances are, you never made any more progress in that area of your life.

The only way to make consistent progress is to always and only focus on what you can control. That’s what taking accountability is all about. It’s one of those life lessons that’s hard to swallow because, sometimes, other people did play a role in our failures. But there’s little value in focusing on it.

Research out of the Journal of Personality shows that few people actually take accountability. It found that, when we succeed, we give ourselves credit, but when we fail, we blame external factors. It feels good in the moment, because it’s a way of licking our wounds. However, if you think about it, when you blame factors (like other people) beyond your control for your setbacks, where does that leave you? Stuck.

Lesson: Forward momentum is always found in focusing solely one what you can control. Focusing on anything else is only a waste of time.