How to accept responsibility for your mistakes

Everyone knows that person who is always looking for a place to lay the blame. We listen, sometimes patiently, sometimes with a subtle eye roll or a tense set to our jaw, as they complain about anything and everything and never seem to realize that they are, in fact, responsible for most (and sometimes all) of their own misfortune.

We live in a culture that practically forces perfection. We are terrified of making mistakes. Robert T. Kiyosaki, in his book If You Want to Be Rich and Happy Don't go to School, explains this at length.

We agreed [he writes] to meet in a couple of weeks. The day we got together again, I met his family and asked his children about school.
"What was the last test you took?" I asked his daughter.
"History," she stated.
"How many questions were there?"
"About 100."
"Well, how did you do?"
"I got a B, 85 right answers out of 100."
"So you missed 15?"
"Yes."
"What caused you to miss 15?"
"I don't know."
"Do you know what the 15 mistakes were?"
"No. But I don't really care. What I care about is the ones I had right."
His friend's daughter didn't care about learning from her mistakes, only about being right. This makes two excellent points:

• We are not encouraged to learn from our mistakes
• We are taught that being right is more important.

As a result, I believe we learn from a very young age that it is better to shift the blame to someone or something else than risk being imperfect.

This, I further believe, results in a dishonest society (think corporate bailouts and the stereotypical lying politician).

If we stopped pressuring our children to be perfect and started teaching them to feel safe in saying "All right, I screwed up, how can I fix it?" we would likely live in a better world. This, I think, even results in better decision makers and people who take more initiative, because they are less afraid to act (or stick to their decisions). There is less fear of screwing up.

I did not fail a hundred times, said Thomas Edison. I found 100 ways not to create a light bulb.

In order to accept responsibility for your mistakes, you must treat them as learning experiences.

Of course, in some instances, people make very serious mistakes which are sometimes called felonies and misdemeanors (a joke, if you don't mind).

Some mistakes are harder to own up to, but very often the only redeeming feature of these mistakes is whether or not you can be a big enough person to admit that it was your fault and correct whatever behavior led to it.

If your mistake is one of the big ones, think of it as the first step towards redemption.

If your mistake is a huge one -- perhaps a felony, as mentioned above -- you may not even see a reason to take responsibility and seek redemption.

Here's my take:

In the Christian faith, it is believed that there is nothing you can do that is so horrible you can never be forgiven.

Now, before you click away or close your browser, keep in mind that I am not trying to make this a religious article or "push" my faith on anyone.

My point is that Christians believe God is the ultimate good. Now,

• if God is supposed to believe that no mistake is too great for forgiveness, then

• it stands to reason that forgiveness is also good, which, to me, means that

• even a person with no religious denomination could deduce that forgiveness is a good quality to possess.

Therefore, there is no reason to push a society into believing that making mistakes is totally unacceptable.

Unfortunately, we do not live in that world. The world is notoriously unforgiving. Still, we must learn, if only for our own sanity, to stop blame-shifting and being unsure of our decisions because we may we wrong.

There is a kind of freedom in taking the helm; in taking responsibility for the course of your own life.

Then again, this must be balanced by our ability to admit we may be wrong, which is actually another way of taking responsibility for our mistakes.

In the end, accepting responsibility for your mistakes depends on the mistake.

In a failing marriage, it may mean taking a closer look at what you are doing (or not doing) to contribute to the problem. Same with a failing career, or with a troubled parent-child relationship.

Are you really listening, or are you so certain you're right that you've shut out any other possibilities?

Are you suspicious of your spouse or your child or your boss, but you've got no proof of the "offense"?

In one of those criminal mistakes, it may mean taking a look at what kind of personal problems you have that led you to do whatever it is you did. Are you a substance abuser? Do you suffer from emotional problems?

And there's another one: if you are or you do, you must learn to stop blaming others for these problems. Maybe you were abused or neglected as a child. Those are terrible things, but the fact is you are old enough to think for yourself and understand right from wrong even from a very young age.

Accepting responsibility for these things does not mean pretending those things didn't happen, but it does mean being mature enough to let the irresponsibility that caused them to end with you.

In closing, accepting responsibility:

Look at yourself, and how you are contributing to your own issues. You will have to remind yourself, over and over, to do this when you start to point the finger at others (trust me, I know). It is a hard habit to break.

Know when you are wrong, and say it. Deal with the consequences. It will make you a stronger, steadier, saner person.

And finally, it means changing the way we treat our children, our students, and each other. Learn to forgive, so that others will be more willing and able to accept responsibility for their mistakes.