It’s easy to blame others when something bad happens. However, you should never, ever do this unless you want to be an underachiever.
During this weekend’s slate of NFL and College Football games, I saw numerous examples where players and coaches blamed a bad call by a referee as the reason for losing. In each case, the referee did make a bad call and the bad call did impact the outcome of the game.
Even still, a football game is made up of more than one or two plays. As such, you would need two hands to count the numerous other mistakes and missed opportunities made by the team on the losing end of a bad call. If those mistakes weren’t made, then the referee’s bad call wouldn’t have mattered.
These mistakes and missed opportunities are the real reason for the loss. Why give that power to the referee when you can’t control the referee?
Our day to day lives are very similar to this. It’s human nature to try to blame something we can’t control when things don’t go our way. This, however, is a recipe for underachievers.
That’s right, underachievers are the ones who give control of their successes and failures to uncontrollable factors.
On the other hand, high achievers always take responsibility for their fate. High achievers focus on the factors they can control, and logically figure out how to work around the factors they cannot.
If you are not achieving your goals, take full responsibility for this. It’s okay to identify the uncontrollable factors, but don’t give them any power over you. Treat the uncontrollable just like an obstacle on an obstacle course and figure out the work around. Then, spend the majority of your time optimizing the factors under your direct control.