It’s Not My Fault: The Blame Game.

Finger pointers. We all know them.

They’re the folks who navigate through life fumbling through mistakes and avoiding the repercussions.

No matter what happens, it’s not their fault. It’s his. It’s hers. It’s someone else’s. It’s the result of an unfortunate childhood, faulty parenting or challenging life circumstances. It’s an unreasonable boss or an incompetent employee. It’s a demanding customer. It’s anyone else but the person who is afraid or unwilling to look in the mirror and face the truth.

Sometimes it’s easier to blame others than to accept responsibility for one’s own shortcomings.

And that’s unfortunate.

Successful people step up and own up. They turn mistakes into lessons and look for ways to learn, to grow and to overcome. And they work to make things right.

Unsuccessful people avoid owning inappropriate behavior. They make excuses. They continue to blame others. And they show no remorse for their transgressions.

As the saying goes, for every finger pointed at others, there are three pointed back at the one laying blame. It’s a saying derived, literally, from the physicality of the gesture—the trio of digits that must be folded inward in order to cast the lone finger outward. But truth be told, on a figurative basis, the number of fingers pointing in return is far greater than three, as the blame game backfires.

And when that happens, nobody wins.