A Wren Says

I couldn’t stand that I had gotten flustered by the curve ball thrown by my coworker. I hated that I let myself get so silent as the stress creeped up, and I became less sure of the right steps. “That wasn’t what we had agreed to do. Why is she countering all my statements? Aren’t we supposed to be a team here?” I took off my headphones at the end of the call, my forehead stinging with the frustration that I tried to hide.

As I recounted all of the details of the meeting to a loved one, we reached an epiphany: this wasn’t actually all my fault. Despite all of the ways that I could have responded differently, my coworker’s actions really did derail the meeting. I felt blindsided, because I was. I felt tripped up, because I was. There was another person’s actions that I had to contend with. Fixing that situation could not have been all on me, because I wasn’t the only cause.

There are many times in my life where I need to improve. There are so many times where I need to find a solution to rectify a problem I caused. And much more often than I admit, many issues were not actually all my fault. It’s time that I started sharing the blame instead of hoarding it all for myself.

Maybe like me you are replaying conversations in your head, certain that you can find the right words that would have completely shifted the dynamic. Or maybe you are running through a list of the various actions you could have taken instead that most definitely would have led to a different result. And you know what? You can really kill some time with those thoughts, time that you will never get back.

Those conversations, those meetings, those moments that didn’t quite go as well as you planned all involved another person. Give yourself the grace to trust that you are only one part of the dynamic. Allow the other person in that dynamic the autonomy to make independent decisions and shoulder some of the blame when things go awry. Do your best and allow others to do the rest.

The blame is not all yours. Learn to share.