It’s Not You: Why We Need to Stop Blaming Ourselves for Every Little Thing

I had a major epiphany last week.  Are you ready for it?

It’s not you.

It’s not me.

I am actually not necessarily the cause of all of my problems.

Some of you probably just read that and thought “duh,” but this was an earth-shattering, ground-breaking revelation for me.

I know I wrote about something similar in a recent post, but I felt like I had to reiterate it again.  I think it bears repeating.

It’s not you.  And it’s actually not me.

I can be very hard on myself.  When I look the great, pervasive (read: utterly baffling to the point that they keep me up at night and have me crying in my journal) questions of my life (Why am I single?  Why don’t I lose weight?  Why aren’t my Zumba classes growing? Why did I fail the bar? Why? Why? Why?!!!!), the answers I come up with have historically been rooted in finding something deeply and desperately wrong with me (You’re not pretty enough.  You’re too picky.  You’re too religious.  You’re too self-sufficient.  You’re not interesting enough.  You’re not fit enough.  You need to eat better.   You’re not doing enough strength training.  You’re slow.  You’re too fat. You sometimes act like a know-it-all.  You lack discipline.  You didn’t study hard enough.  You didn’t pray hard enough.  You didn’t trust God enough.  You didn’t have enough faith.  You trusted God too much and didn’t work hard enough.  You misunderstood or misapplied some sort of discrete, obscure Biblical teaching.  Your class is too hard.  Your teaching style sucks.  You’re hard to follow.  You’re not fun.  They don’t like your music.).

(Side note: I realize that half all of these are “lies!” *Tamar voice*)

(God I miss having Tamar on “The Real”.  Oh the lies we tell ourselves.  But I digress…)

“Yourself to Blame”

If things go bad for you
And make you a bit ashamed
Often you will find out that
You have yourself to blame

Swiftly we ran to mischief
And then the bad luck came
Why do we fault others?
We have ourselves to blame

Whatever happens to us,
Here is what we say
“Had it not been for so-and-so
Things wouldn’t have gone that way.”

And if you are short of friends,
I’ll tell you what to do
Make an examination,
You’ll find the faults in you…

You’re the captain of your ship,
So agree with the same
If you travel downward
You have yourself to blame.

Mayme White Miller

We are taught in our culture that we are solely responsible for our own successes… and failures.  That if there is something that is wrong in our life, it is up to us to fix it.  After all, we need to pick up ourselves by the bootstraps.  God only helps those who help themselves (which is not written anywhere in the sixty-six books of the Bible, by the way).  We are taught to analyze our role in our disappointments.  We are taught to take responsibility for our actions — and the outcomes.  Sara Eckel writes in her book It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single (this book has become my saving grace/bible), “We’re a nation that believes strongly in personal efficacy — if there’s something in your life that isn’t working quite the way you’d like, then the problem must begin and end with you.  Even people diagnosed with serious illnesses are instructed to maintain a positive attitude, as if that will make the cancer go away.”  This entire message of responsibility and taking action was meant to be empowering, to teach us not to live life passively, to take charge of our lives, and to be active in creating the change we want to see.

What has happened, however, is many of us have taken these messages to heart, and when things don’t work out the way we planned or despite our best efforts, we take it out on ourselves because we have learned that there is no one else to blame, and it is childish and immature to blame our misfortunes on others.

Where these cultural messages fail and fall short, however, is they leave no room for fate, circumstance or situations beyond our control.  My life is teaching me that sometimes it’s not my fault, and that while I own my actions, I don’t control the outcome (Proverbs 16:33).  I’m learning that sometimes — many times — it’s not me.  It’s just the circumstance in which I find myself.

In case this all seems abstract, let me explain.

Last week Sunday, I went to Movati Trainyards to teach Aqua Zumba only to see that my class had doubled in size from the week prior.  If you read my last post in my Chronicles of a Plus-Sized Zumba Instructor series, ever since I started out as a group fitness instructor, I’ve had small class sizes.  Perhaps I am not as popular as I had expected/wanted to be (Side bar: Sooooo… you should know that I have a slight preoccupation with class sizes that I need to get over).  My Aqua Zumba class at Carlingwood, on the other hand, has now dwindled to about 2 or 4 people on a Monday and Wednesday.  But lo and behold — here I was that Sunday at Trainyards and I was greeted by 20 smiling women in the shallow end.  I was so taken aback I began thinking about what would happen if this class grows anymore.  It was a pleasant surprise.