I apologize way too much. This is something I am working on, but I really do need to apologize that I have not posted something in over a month. I have been busy, which is part of the problem, but also I have struggled with perfectionism in the past, and in not being sure what to post next I have posted nothing. I know I am mostly writing to myself right now because looking at my stats I can see no one has seen this page in weeks, but what would help me the most in deciding what to write next, would be if someone would tell me what they want to see me write about.
I apologize far too often, and I apologize for everything whether it is my fault or not. I win a game: I apologize. Someone bumps into me in the hallway: I apologize. I like something someone else does not or do not like something someone else does: I apologize. When anything goes wrong in my or anyone else’s life I blame myself. This has enabled me to become overly critical of myself, and to let people push me around however they choose. When people push me around I become even more critical of myself, blaming myself for letting them do it. I have been learning that I need to be able to stand up for myself. It is important to stand up for myself because while right now my passivity has not led me into anything overly wrong, I can see that as people realize how ready to mold myself to their wishes I am, they begin to take advantage of it more and more. This could easily lead into more negative activities if I do not act on this deficit of tenacity.
While I have written this in regard to my own struggle with blame, I think it really can be applicable to others as well, or maybe you have the opposite problem and are not really able to blame yourself for anything. My challenge to you is that as the new year comes up bringing your resolutions for the new year to commit to taking a look at the places in your life where you have been placing blame either on yourself or others and how that has affected you. For me, I did not realize how much control blame had on me until I was learning about forgiveness and realized that I honestly could think of no one to forgive because I had placed all blame on myself. In order to think of someone to forgive I had to go back to the things I was blaming myself for and systematically discover who I really should have blamed and forgive that person as well as myself. Not that I think blame is good, but if you are someone who blames yourself, you need to take the blame off of yourself and I think the best way to do this is to find someone else to place it on and forgive them, and in doing so forgive yourself as well.
