Are You Playing the Blame Game?

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“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

☆

I see clients every day who play the blame game.

It’s their fat parents’ genes, it’s college life, it’s their work schedule and office environment, it’s the junk they “must” keep at home for everyone else, it’s a spouse that likes to go out to dinner 3-4 nights a week, it’s that everyone in their social circle is fat, it’s kids’ after-school activities . . . and on and on and on . . . and, of course, my personal favorite is when I get blamed.

They’re always the victim of circumstances, situations and scenarios not of their own creation, both as to why they became fat and why they stay fat. And I ask, “Don’t you ever get tired of blaming everyone and everything for your being overweight? Doesn’t all that blame-throwing wear you down?

If you ask anyone who has stopped the addictions of smoking or drinking or gambling, for example, the two common threads they all have as relates to how they got on the road to recovery and kicked their habits. 

1. They accepted responsibility for their addiction. It was no one’s fault but their own.
2. They removed themselves from all triggers (people, places, things) —some forever, if necessary, and others just until they’re past the worst possible cravings of their addiction.

Is this latter point very difficult sometimes? You bet it is, and so too is it with those who are over-fat. But, the two questions I ask clients repeatedly are:

1. What do you want to achieve?
2. What are you willing to do to get what you want to achieve? 

In an article, Two Lessons on Blame (which includes a great short animated video), about the toxic behavior of blaming others, the author writes that:

1. Blame releases anger (at ourselves); and
2. Blame is faster than accountability.

. . . and to that I would add: Blame is also easier than accountability. Those who waste time and money as they bounce from one ‘easy’ quick fix fad to another are those who are quick to play the blame game, for both becoming over-fat and for staying there.

If you are over-fat and playing the blame game, as hard as it may be to do you’ve got to look in the mirror and acknowledge your situation and that you alone can change it. There’s no such thing as a Skinny Godmother who will come to your rescue by granting you a wish, sprinkle skinny dust on you, wave a wand and . . . poof! . . . you’re skinny.

As Steve Siebold writes in his book, Die Fat or Get Tough, 101 Differences in Thinking Between Fat People and Fit People:

“Fat people are waiting
to be rescued from obesity.

“Fit people know no one
is coming to the rescue.”

Obesity IS reversible.