It’s not my fault.
It’s not my fault I don’t have a teaching license.
Let me explain.
Many years ago, when I was still young and childless, I was hired by a preschool on condition that I would take classes at night and get my teaching license. The state would pay for it if I met certain conditions. The deal was that I had to take four classes in a very short time, and then be mentored by two mentors for 30 or 40 days each. “Mentored” meant that a certified person would supervise me while I did my work on the job.
No big deal, right? The schooling would be the hard part. The mentoring wasn’t my responsibility. My job was to get to class in the evenings (an hour away), complete the assignments, and work full-time at the preschool during the day. The mentoring was somebody else’s job. Somebody else was supposed to find me those mentors and arrange for them to show up at my job, mentor me, and send the appropriate paperwork to the state.
As you can probably guess, it didn’t happen. The second mentor (if there was one) never showed up. Somebody dropped the ball, I’m not sure exactly who. The program was new. It had been court-mandated after somebody had sued the state for something, and the result was a lot of new stuff surrounding preschool that very few people understood. And whoever was supposed to find me two mentors didn’t do it.
Two and a half years after being hired, and one and a half years after I had completed the necessary schoolwork, I had a baby. And I quit everything. I got fed up with the whole thing. I threw in the towel and left. I was tired of waiting for a second mentor, I’d had enough of the whole disorganized experience, and I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. My boss asked if I was going to come back and complete my mentoring so that I could get my teaching certificate. (Is that a joke? When, exactly, was this second mentor going to materialize?) I said no and stayed home.
It’s not my fault!
I think we can agree it’s not my fault that the mentoring didn’t happen. It’s not my fault that the teaching license was never issued. The school (or the state, or somebody) should have provided those two mentors without any effort on my part. It was their responsibility. They didn’t do it.
On the other hand, there were things I could have done that I didn’t do. I could have put a lot more pressure on somebody, somewhere to find me that mentor – especially when I found out I was pregnant and knew I wanted to leave the school soon. I could have agreed to return to the school after my baby was born. There were steps I could have taken that I chose not to take.
After I chose to leave the school without receiving my teaching license, I had choices to make about my attitude. This is the point where it is very tempting to adopt a victim mentality.
Poor me. This wasn’t my fault. I completed the schoolwork. I did my part. It’s not my fault I don’t have my teaching license!
I’m never going to trust anyone again.
I’m never going to try anything again.
My life’s problems are somebody else’s fault.
Except that, if I allowed this setback to ruin my life and my attitude, that wouldn’t be anyone else’s fault but mine.
The Rearview Mirror
If you drive a car, you have a rearview mirror. It’s necessary. Sometimes you need to know what’s behind you so you don’t cause an accident. Especially if you’re changing lanes or backing up.
Rearview mirrors are important. But most of your driving time is spent looking ahead – at the road – not looking behind you. It’s far more important to watch where you’re going.
Trying to live your life while focusing on things that happened in the past – whether your fault or not – is like trying to drive forward while staring at the rearview mirror.
Stuff happens that isn’t your fault. Other people drop the ball. Other people cause problems that affect you. But there is a limit to how much you have to dwell on them, analyze them, talk about them, grieve over them, and generally allow them to keep you stuck in a rut.
The Deflector
I’m sure you know someone who spends their whole life whining about their circumstances and how everything that goes wrong in their lives is somebody else’s fault. Something happened to Deflector that wasn’t fair, and the setback got stuck in their heads. They can’t let it go. Years later, Deflector is still making choices that keep them from moving forward because their minds are still wrapped around whatever happened. And they’re telling themselves that it isn’t their fault. It’s somebody else’s fault, maybe everybody else’s fault. They’re trying to protect themselves from getting hurt again, but in the process, they’re sabotaging their own success.
The Deflector is rather like a person who finds a fire burning and decides to pour gasoline on it. No, they didn’t start the fire. (If you didn’t already know that, you will soon because they will spend a great deal of time letting you know how much they didn’t start it!) But they are responsible for making it bigger and keeping it going. The fire might have burned itself out a long time ago if they had only stopped fanning the flames.
Learning vs. Getting Stuck
This gets tricky because only an idiot wouldn’t learn from the past.
We used to leave the door to our chicken coop open so that our chickens could go outside to their fenced-in outdoor pen whenever they liked. But after a raccoon got into the fenced-in pen twice, then walked in through the open door to the chicken pen and ate two of our chickens each time, we started closing the inner door at night. Now our chickens can’t get outside until we let them out the next day. But at least they are safe.
We learned from the past. We don’t like locking our chickens in each night and making them wait inside until we remember to let them out the next day. But we make that choice so they don’t become breakfast for the local raccoons.
There’s a big difference between learning from the past and being stuck in the past. You choose your attitude. Responsible people think, “That didn’t work last time, so I’ll try something different this time.” Deflector thinks, “Poor me, I’m a victim, nothing will ever work out for me, why bother trying?”
Validating Feelings vs. Accepting Excuses
So what do you do when someone in your life has every excuse for why they can’t do any better?
The feelings are valid. The frustration is valid. The ongoing excuses for avoidable failures are not.
As they teach the students in our local school: React and recover.
It’s ok to have feelings. It’s ok to be upset and to want someone to listen and understand when you express your feelings. It’s not ok to refuse to recover when it is in your power to do so. It’s not ok to expect to be excused from your responsibilities for years (or forever) while other people in similar situations pick themselves up and move on.
You can validate feelings without accepting excuses. You can sympathize with someone who broke their leg a year ago while still expecting them to walk today.
Choose to Move On
The buck stops here. You don’t cause every problem, but you do choose how you respond.
Focus on the road, and see how far you can go!