I think a lot of people get responsibility and blame mixed up. If owning something feels like beating yourself up, it's tempting to dodge that by finding someone else to point at, and neither does much good. That was on my mind going back through One Conversation Away, the online summit I hosted in 2019, where I interviewed 28 people about conversations that changed their lives.
What struck me was how many of those conversations arrived as bad news. A diagnosis, or a partner saying they were done. And in almost every case the real turning point came a bit later, when the person decided what they were going to do about it.
One guest became disabled very suddenly, and a doctor told her she'd use a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Another doctor told her life would be different and no less enjoyable, and she was angry with him for it at the time. Years on, she calls it both the best and the worst thing that's happened to her. On its own it looks like a tragedy. Next to everything she's done since, it means something else. She told me that whatever happens, we get to choose how we respond. She also said that not seeing the whole enormity at once probably helped, and I think she's onto something. We often cope worse by trying to take in the entire picture when all we actually have to manage is today. And she was honest that having support and some security behind her made her choice easier than it is for plenty of people. I liked that. Owning your response doesn't require pretending everyone starts from the same place.
Another guest had nowhere to live as a teenager when a couple who barely knew her offered her a home. She spent a long time testing them before she believed they meant it. Then something clicked. She realised nobody was going to pay for her education and decided that was her way out. From then on she worked like her life depended on it, until scholarships covered her fees. The kindness opened the door. Walking through it was down to her. She said you can only join the dots looking backwards, which is why she won't label any one moment of her life as all good or all bad.
A mum I spoke to was given devastating news about her baby's health only days after the birth. She had her 'why me' stretch, and I think that's worth saying out loud, because owning what comes next doesn't mean skipping the grief. Then she told herself she was a problem solver. She did the research and fought for the help her daughter needed. Later, after a long battle over therapy, an official on the phone suggested she should be fighting for other families too. Her first reaction was anger. About a year later she saw she had something to offer and started helping other parents. I like that the anger didn't stop it. It just took a while.
Then there was a guest whose marriage had come close to ending years before. Their partner sat them down and said they were leaving. After one very long night of talking, where my guest let their guard down properly for the first time, they got another chance. What happened next is the bit I keep thinking about. My guest spent a year working on their own side of things without waiting for the other person to change, and the marriage came back stronger. The view they'd come to was that cutting people out rarely fixes anything, because you just take your own patterns into the next relationship.
The idea I find most useful here came from a guest who'd spent years in sales training. A trainer once got him to admit he likes being in control, then pointed out that blaming other people means giving that control away. The trainer's advice was to look for what you could have said or done differently that might have changed the outcome. He admitted it isn't always literally true, but believing it changes what you do next. That's where I'd draw the line between responsibility and blame. Blame goes looking for someone to punish, and that someone is often you. Responsibility goes looking for the part you can still move.
So when something knocks you flat, how long do you usually spend on who caused it before you get round to what you're going to do? None of the people I've mentioned got there quickly, and a couple of them were angry for a good while first.
What I took from this one
- Owning your response and blaming yourself are separate things, and only one of them moves you forward.
- Give yourself room for the 'why me' part before expecting the problem solving to show up.
- In the thick of it, deal with today and leave the full picture for later.
- Ask what you could have said or done differently, even when most of it really was someone else's fault.
