Beating the Bad Habit of Blaming Others

I’ve received feedback from a reader (my wife!) that my posts might be a tad too long. She’s likely correct, and please feel free to let me know yourself.

You are excruciatingly busy these days… true. You are distracted by the bombardment of stress and stimuli… true. So, I’ll be less long-winded (or texted).

There is far too much on your plate — too much for you to own. False — the human brain, the sense of self, likes ownership. My stuff, my team, my career, my schedule...

In days primeval, having a healthy sense of "me" meant my food, my clan, my survival. That was a good thing. The science of habit change described in popular books like James Clear's Atomic Habits, Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit or Dr. Judson Brewer's Unwinding Anxiety have clearly demonstrated how the human brain evolved to form habits. These habits are not only to simplify the brain's processing "load," but also to make us more likely to repeat actions that helped us avoid threat (i.e. facilitated survival) or got us access to resources (i.e. food = survival!). The “bad” thing is that we’re in a different life space and our brain likes to make a habit out of the same survival “me-ness.” Now, and going forward, we need to train our brains for “we-ness.”

For most of us (all those reading this, I would assume), we don’t need our brains screaming “me!” for survival’s sake. The habit of mental ownership leads us to blame, shame and unskillfully react to "them," others who may be doing or saying things we don’t like or are merely different than "us." Society, you, and me need a big, compassionate dope-slap. There’s a need for huge ownership beyond the usual, habitual, narcissistic default mode.

The new human brain can learn the higher, mindfulness-based habit of true ownership. It’s a simple, universal, and radical formula based on simple variables:

• Other’s behavior you don’t like = (T) (Trigger)
• Your body reacts rapidly with sensory experiences = (E)
• You think blaming, negative, rigid thoughts and do unskillful, reactive things = (A) (Actions)
• These inner and outer actions have less than ideal results = (R) (like a felt sense of illusory control, self-certain rightness, or a bit more comfort at the cost of conflict, disconnection, and polarization)

Your New Habit of Radical Ownership (O) is as follows:

O = (T + E + A + R)

Your Old, Survival, Habit-Brain has the formula like this:

O = (T + E + A + R) – BP (bad person’s fault) = zero

You need the new formula. Once the other person does/says a triggering thing, it’s now "yours." The fact that it’s a trigger for you? Yours. The fact that their action triggered uncomfortable experiences in your body? Yours. The fact that you thought and did things in reaction? Yours. The results that flowed from these actions? Yours.

So, that’s true ownership. You, I, the world needs it badly. Only when we’re each habitually and radically reframing our reactions to others as "ours" will we have a shot at truly connecting despite differences and solving problems despite disagreement.

This is where mindfulness comes in. And the science is clear here as well. Learning to train our minds to attend to what's occurring in the present moment in our thoughts and bodily senses without reacting (judgmentally, rigidly or selfishly) — which is the definition of mindfulness — allows us to experience how when others do "triggering" things around us, the experiences in our thoughts and bodies are happening we can merely observe them. Mindfulness helps us cut the loop between triggers, sensory experiences, the thoughts and actions which lead to results that drain, disconnect and derail our daily lives.

So, how about a new habit of ownership?

Sorry, this post was as long as the others. If you’re triggered, that’s on you.