Blame vs. Response-ability - 002
One of the first things we’re tempted to do when things aren’t going our way, is to blame someone or something else for how we feel or the impact it has on our lives - and it feels like we have “no other choice”.
Today’s episode is going to explore why this is just a myth and why this is GOOD news.
“Blame is a choice.
Yes people are
responsible for their actions,
but they are not responsible for
our reaction to them.
That’s entirely up to us
and our perspective.”
In this episode you’ll find out about:
3 myths about blame keeping you stuck
What you can choose instead to take back power over your ‘response-ability’; your ability to choose your response
How I moved past blaming the driver who cause my sister’s fatal accident
What to do if you’re struggling to let go of blame
Show notes & resource links:
A Current Affair story on Nicole’s accident with video footage.
Don’t forget:
Full episode transcript:
This is Okay Now What with Kate Fitzsimons Episode 2.
Hey, hey and thanks for joining me once again this week on Okay Now What. Look at me go, two episodes in. I'm on a roll and loving it. I want to say thank you so much for everyone so far. Who's posted a photo of the podcast app on your stories, on Instagram, and getting the word out there and passing along the episodes to your friends and family. Really your support means the world to me. I'm still quite surreal to finally have my podcast out there. Before we do dive into today's topic, which is all around blame and how it really is affecting your ability to build resilience.
I do want to give like a bit of a prelude because I was listening to my introduction of my first episode and I realized that I said, I can't believe how long it's taken me to get this off the road, and I was like, I was either meant to say off the ground or on the road.
It made me just want to give you guys like a word of warning like, "Hey, if you're coming on this podcast journey with me, just be prepared that I'm going to take two sayings and accidentally blend them together and be totally clueless that I've done that." You're probably sitting there thinking Kate that makes no sense. You would be correct. I think the most amazing part is I often don't even realize I'm doing it. Like for example, I stood up and delivered this speech to travel agents, like 2000 travel agents. It was this fancy dinner.
I stood up and I went to talk about travel insurance and I was like, “I know I'm preaching to the preachers here.” Anyway, like two years later I was talking to my boyfriend and I said that to him and he's like, “You know it's preaching to the choir, right?” I was like, “What? No, it's not.” But really it is. You will find plenty of made up sayings on my show. We're just going to roll with them.
Sometimes I will be aware I'm doing them and other times I won't. You know what? I bet perfection … Trust me to step up on the word, perfection is overrated. Humans relate to humans. I just want to show up as a human I am on this show for you guys and try, and edit as little as possible. We don't have the edit, delete button in real life. I'm trying to stay away from it on my show, so we can really just have those real, authentic sitting over coffee conversations together. We are going to dive in now to the topic that I mentioned at the beginning of the show and that is blame.
Now I know that sounds like a real hoot of a topic to discuss, but honestly it is one of the most important things if you do want to become someone who learns how to overcome all those unwanted setbacks and those challenges and those things where people aren't treating you in the way that you think they should be.
The number one question I tend to get from a lot of people is, “How did you get past what happened in your sister's accident?” For those who don't know, there was a guy driving on the wrong side of the road that hit my sister and her partner on a motorbike when they were turning into the driveway of their hotel over in Koh Samui Thailand. To be honest, like the driver never really got charged in the way that he should have and proceedings didn't go according to plan in terms of getting justice around all of that.
I guess if there's one person who really felt like they had good reason to sit there and blame and get angry at someone for what they did and the impact and the way that it shook my family's life up, I know a thing or two about the temptation of wanting to blame. When people see what I've achieved with the foundation and how I have managed to move forward in such a positive way, it was because I realize and recognize these three myths that I want to share with you guys about blame, which are really robbing your ability to build resilience and mental strength and that capacity to overcome the tough stuff and not stay dwelling on it.
The thing is like, we all feel so justified in our blame. They've done this thing. It was wrong. They shouldn't have done it. They shouldn't have said that about me. They shouldn't have treated me that way. We feel so justified like rightly so in holding onto blame. The truth is we're actually not justified. Before you totally just want to slap me in the face for saying that, please just hear me out to the end of this episode.
I'm telling you, it's a good thing. The three myths or also sometimes lies that I like to say about blame that are out there that we're going to explore together today is the first one is this idea that blame isn't a choice. It is what just happens to us when something bad happens, when someone does something, we don't have any choice, but to blame them. That's the first myth we're going to debunk together. The second is that blame is a way of getting payback or punishing the person or the thing out there that we think is unjust or shouldn't have happened. It's some useful way to almost get back at the other person or the thing out there. The third myth is exploring more of that self blame that if it's not their fault, then it must be our fault and our temptation to then want to turn that anger or frustration or start beating ourselves up for something that happened or didn't happen.
Underlying all of these three myths is really that truth that whilst we don't have power over the world, I want to show you why you do always have power over your response to it, over how you show up in the world in the face of all of this. On whether you become bitter and you complain and you point the finger and you ruminate and you become that person that ultimately adds to the negativity and the suffering in the world or whether you show up from that place of empowerment, of openness, of curiosity, of courage, of strength. I know so many people think that that is something that you're either born with or without and you just a strong person or you're not.
I can tell you finishing high school, I finished school with chronic anxiety and an eating disorder because I had no clue how to handle my emotions when just even day-to-day things went off track because the thing is I really approached this world, this idea that all of my feelings and my emotions, whether I was snapping at my mom or getting cranky with my boyfriend or getting really anxious and stressed over exams, I thought all of that was being caused by my exam marks or what my boyfriend didn't write back to my text message or my mom not letting me go out at night or asking me to clean my room all the time.
I always thought that it was all these things causing it. I felt like I had to put all my energy in the outward world and always blame and always resist and always fight against and try, and justify and control. We only have so much energy in a day. If we're spending all that time constantly trying to control and manipulate things to be how we want it to be, we send ourselves crazy because of course we can't do that. Of course, every day we're going to come up in situations where we have no control over anything outside of us, but the one place where you always have power, the one place that no one else can ever, ever touch is that space between your ears, your perspective, and the way that you choose to interpret any event in your life, the way you choose to interpret whether your friend brought you flowers for your birthday or not.
Whether you were invited to that party, whether you are diagnosed with a chronic illness, whether you have to move states and go to a different school, whether you didn't get into that sports team or you lost your grand final in a split second or whether you lost your sister in a split second. No one can ever touch the space where you get to choose what you make that event mean and the lens through which you see it. That is why we ultimately have no right as a human being to ever blame anything outside of us for the impact that any event has on our lives because although we don't always get a choice in what we will see in the world, we get a choice about the lens through which we see it.
For example, there is video footage of my sister's accident. I don't have the power to change what I see in that video, but I do have the power to change the meaning that I attach to it, the lens through which I see it. So many people thought initially like, “How do you watch that? How can you sit there and watch your sister's live, been taken in a split second?” Of course when I first saw it, like it was horrific, but I'm sitting there and I'm like, “You know what? Whether I throw these under the bed and I never looked at it again or whether I go and share with everyone, it doesn't change the fact that it's happened.”
So thinking of it, I knew that I wanted to find some sort of strength and pace and reason to get out of bed in the morning and I knew it was up to me to find that. So I applied in my mind, I was like, “You know what? Maybe this isn't just a crazy coincidence. I can look at this through the lens of a gift because there's no way that you can watch that footage and not be changed and not have something shift in regards to your safety.” I can't take back the driver's actions that killed my sister, but I can always choose to find meaning in it and change the impact that it has and how it makes me feel and whether I became totally depressed and turned to drugs and alcohol and just made the video footage mean nothing more than we live in this cruel world of suffering.
But instead I found a meaning in it that could show that something good could come from this suffering. The same is true for every single event in your life. Whether you've missed the train to school, you're not asked out by that boy that you liked or you break your leg before a big game, like you get a choice about what you make it mean and how you think about it in your own mind. That is the cause of whether you feel totally devastated about it and you curl up and give up on the world or whether you find some meaning, some strengths and reason to get back up and try again.
That is entirely up to you. No one outside of you has the power to generate an emotion for you that is coming entirely from your own thoughts. We know that because if circumstances themselves are things outside of us, we're the cause of how we feel, then we'd all have the same experience of them. Clearly that's not true because we all apply meaning differently. That's why someone who wanted 70% and ends up with 55% in exam mark can feel totally devastated about it and the temptation is to blame the exam mark. Remember the mark itself it's harmless. It just sits there on paper. It can't jump out and plan a feeling in you.
We really know the cause of any devastation or frustration that you're feeling is what you're making that exam mark mean. Maybe you're making it mean that you're going to get into the uni course that you want or you're too stupid to pass this subject or you're just a failure. Of course it makes sense if you make that exam mark mean I'm not good enough that you're going to feel upset about it. We can see then if you did shift and redirect your perspective to, “Okay. I just haven't got the hang of it yet.
I can also feedback and understand why I bombed out on that question and with practice I can improve upon it before the next exam” You can say, if you made that shift in perspective, do you think you'd feel as devastated or frustrated about it? Now, of course, I know it's natural to feel some disappointment if you do fall short on something that you were hoping to achieve or you do get some sort of diagnosis or of course, if you're dumped, it's natural to feel some heartbreak or something. What I want you to recognize is you can either stay spinning in that story and completely disempower yourself with it, but you still had the freak out, had the meltdown, and then ask yourself now what?
Now, what am I going to make this mean and focus on to find some strength and inspiration when I need it most? I don't care how strong, big, powerful or mighty they think they are, no one on this planet can take that God-given right for you to be able to choose the freedom to make that decision of what you want to focus on, the perspective you want to take and the meaning that you're going to attach to the event. That is why blaming someone isn't inevitable or something just happens to us. It is actually a choice and it's not a great one because the moment that you point the finger at someone and say, you're the reason I'm so unhappy, you're the reason I'm so self-conscious, you're the reason my life is the way it is and I would be happier if you would change or you would be different or I could go back and change my past or I didn't have those parents or I didn't have that ex-boyfriend.
The moment you start pointing the finger at someone else is the moment that you surrender all of your power over your emotional life because unless you figured out remote control or a way to literally be out of control someone else, you're giving up all of your power into something that is beyond your own power. You are cementing your own victimhood. Look, I get it. We all do it from time to time in certain ways. Especially when something first happens because we live in a society which is always looking to point fingers, always looking to pass the blame onto someone else because blaming in the moment feels great. Like releases us and relieves as any sort of responsibility. We don't have to do anything. If it's someone else's fault, we can throw our hands up in the air and say, “Poor me.” And sit down and throw ourselves a pity party.
Hey, I'm not saying be superhuman. We all do this from time to time, but what I want you to think about is how much that then in the long-term disempowers you. How you then stay stuck at the effect of those people's actions and what I want you to recognize is you don't have to. You are far more powerful than that because you can look at the story, separate out the facts, like literally just look at the fact of what they said, what they did, what did or didn't happen in your life, what you believe is causing you so much frustration and anxiety or devastation. Just like the facts of that story, those factors do not cause your feelings. You don't get a choice about those facts, but I'm telling you the choice of how you choose to interpret them and what you make them mean about your life, about the world, about your worth, about your future, like the options of how you interpret that is endless.
The reason that I have been able to get up every single day in the face of all of my grief and my setbacks and my fears and my anxiety is just recognizing even when this circumstance isn't something I would ever choose for myself in seven million years, there is something to be gained from every single experience. It might be a lesson that I wish I didn't have to learn the hard way, but hey, this is what I go given. This has been signed up for this lesson and this is how I'm going to have to learn it and just surrendering and accepting that fact and rather than blaming, I'm so frustrated or devastated about this because of what happened.
It's recognizing that there is no upside to that blame and owning the fact that you can begin to feel better and to feel more powerful and to feel stronger. If you take that step of taking all the energy you're trying to control the uncontrollable world outside of you and redirect it into the one place where you have full control. That is your internal world and your perspective and learning how to better manage your own mind and thoughts around things so you can get your power back.
Of course, I'm not saying it's a quick fix pill that you swallow and it's all magically better. This is a skill that takes practice because at school we were never taught about how our brain and mind works and how to really begin to change those thought processes and question our limiting beliefs and how to really retrain our mind towards confidently creating the results that we do want in our life. This is a skill like takes practice just like every other skill. I'm telling you, showing up every week and listening to these podcasts are a beautiful training for you to help do this. I've had a great practice at this over the last 24 hours because my internet has really been as fast as me, like walking up the stairs after leg day. It's so slow. I can't even tell you how many times I've watched that little thing spin around over the last 24 hours.
It's so easy to blame the Internet for me not having a productive day. I could throw up my hands and be like, “This is stupid. I'm over this. This is a reason why I didn't get this, this and this done and it can't be a productive day.” I really forced my mind around it and I wanted to see like, “You can say this is a way to actually become more productive at things that don't require the Internet. You can still have a productive way in a different way.” That is what then took all my frustration and helplessness and turned it into a bit of grit and motivation and reason to open up my to-do list and look at what I could do. Again, you can say like, we can hand our emotional life over to our internet if we don't pay attention to our own thoughts and perspective on things.
We do this all the time with like ex-boyfriends or our parents or that crazy teacher at school or whoever it is so often the last person in the world that we want to hand out our emotional life over to, but we're doing that every time we blame. Every time we say it's your fault that I'm so upset. It's your fault that I'm now so anxious all the time. That's what you're doing. You're like, “Here, have my emotional life because I'm blaming you for how I feel and I can't change you. Basically you've got all the power.” When is that ever a good idea? Never.
Just know anytime you are blaming something outside of you, don't slip into that passiveness. You're welcome to blame, but just recognize it is a choice because you could always choose to change your perspective and you'd feel a whole lot better about it and when we feel more positive and empowered, that's where we take more positive action and learn how to overcome things and become more creative. Research actually shows that when we're in negative emotions like fear, anger, frustration, anxiety, like our mindset literally narrows. It closes off and we can't see possibilities or options or solutions because we're so caught just dwelling on the problem and ruminating over it that it literally shuts down our ability to problem solve or think creatively or think outside the box in ways that are going to help us move forward in a more useful way.
That is why number one is blaming is a choice and it's not a useful one. Now, this often leads to when I teach this idea that we really are the ones responsible for our own feelings and how we feel is a choice. How we think about things is a choice. Therefore, our actions and how we show up in the world is a choice. People often want to push back on this because they're like saying, “Hey, are you then saying that people can just run around and do what they want in the world and there's never any consequences?”
Of course, I'm not saying that, but what I do want to debunk about blame is this idea that blaming someone is like payback or punishes them in some way. What I want to show you is blame actually punishes you and here's why. Blaming doesn't feel great. Think about how you feel when you're sitting back and blaming someone for what they said about you and why you feel so upset about it now. Well, because it's literally handing over our power. We often feel helpless and horrible and victimized and then we get miserable and withdrawal from the world more. We turn to drugs or alcohol or we ruminate and we just completely shut ourselves down.
Like we never really take any productive action, yet we still want to like hold onto blame and keep pointing the finger because it's almost like, “Yeah, but if I don't blame them for what they did, then it relieves them of any sort of consequences. I need to keep being angry and frustrated at them because I need to punish them.” I just want to remind you, first of all, they don't feel your feelings. You're the only one who feels your feelings. They feel their feelings coming from their own thoughts and perspective on things. You can try, and stay angry at someone or you want to be like try, and make them feel bad about what they did, but they're never going to feel your feelings.
They're only ever going to feel their interpretation of your actions and how you're showing. It's entirely up to them. Again, never useful to hang onto resentment or anything like that. I want to address that next point that we almost need to blame them to keep them responsible for what they did. I want to say 100% people are completely responsible for their own actions, for their own feelings, for their own thoughts, for how they show up in the world. They do need to be held accountable for what they do do in the world, but they are never ever responsible for the impact that their actions have upon us and our emotional life. Let that sink in. People are responsible for their actions they're not responsible for our reaction to that and how we feel about it emotionally.
It's appropriate to say like, “He was late picking me up and that's why we didn't arrive on time.” It's not so appropriate to say, “I'm so stressed out because you picked me up late.” Can you see the distinction? When blaming extends to how we feel or how we act. That is when we're very confused. No one else is responsible for how we feel as emotional adults. That's on us. No one else is responsible for how we act. It's again 100 % on us. Even with more extreme examples like being bullied, I've had coaching clients who tell me now they have no confidence because they were bullied growing up.
Again, this just isn't true. It's what you make that event mean that's causing any of that insecurity, but at the same time it doesn't mean that the bully isn't free from being punished or suffering consequences for their actions. They are responsible for what they said or did to you. They may have been suspended or expelled for punching you in the face, but what you make that event mean and how you feel about it now is a 100% on you. The reason I want to make this distinction again isn't because I want to release somebody from the responsibility of hitting you in the face. What I want you to do is to keep your power within yourself and not victimize yourself more with the emotional story you're telling yourself about what happened. This is such a big distinction.
Of course, in that moment when someone is punching you in the face, you are a victim to their actions, but after that moment and every moment moving forward, you now have the power to say, “What do I now want to make this event mean? What story am I going to choose to tell about it?” When we're young and we're kids and we are in far more fearful places, we're approaching the world and we don't have the ability to understand and reflect upon our own thoughts. Of course, it's natural when someone's being unkind to you to make it mean things like, “You're not worthy. You're a loser. You're not really safe in the world. No one likes you.” It's that meaning, that's always caused that insecurity for all of these years, but I'm telling you now you have the ability to begin to question and challenge those beliefs and change the story that you're approaching this situation with.
You can easily like now and begin to question, someone who's probably saying those things about someone else probably didn't have the best family life. Hurt people, hurt people, and trying to show up in the world from that far more compassionate and understanding place and releasing that blame because blaming feels awful. The compassion and openness and courage to overcome those unfair things in your life like that feels a whole lot more better and I want you to get to that place because it feels so much better for you and I had to really work on this with the driver who caused the accident as well. He is 100% responsible for speeding along the road on the wrong side of the road and not overtaking someone in the legal way.
That is on him. Losing someone is by far the most traumatic horrifying experience that anyone can go through. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. What I do wish for every single person who does have to face the situation is you can see that in the big picture you still get to choose what you make that event mean, really owning that I'm the only one responsible for this choice and owning that there's no upside in staying bitter and negative. It doesn't punish him and only kept me trapped at the effect of these actions that rather than using my sister's death is proof that the world is cruel and to hide away from living, I use it as proof that life is such a precious gift that you can end for us at any moment, and use that as my inspiration to get out and live life large enough for the both my sister and I.
Rather than going on the poor me, I just went through the horror of having to bury my sister when I was just 20 years old. As hard as that was, I get to choose to look at that event and go like, “Look at what I've survived. If I can survive that I can survive anything.” It's from that thought that I've gone on to prove that to myself a 100 times over. That is the beauty of taking responsibilities for your own thoughts. For your own feelings and for your own actions, but you can't do that until you step out of the blame role until you take that finger that you're pointing at someone else and ask yourself if I was to take both hands right now and actually put it towards creating something or overcoming something or finding a solution away, a meaning in this to move forward, how much better would I feel about this? How could my life be different?
How would I show up differently? How would I treat myself differently or my family or friends? How much more connected to my life would I feel? That is the beauty of stepping out of that victim blame place. I also said the last one that I wanted to address around blame is the temptation to then blame ourselves when something isn't going according to plan or we did something that is “undesirable” or what we'd say is a mistake.
We go and binge on a whole box of Oreos or we don't go to the gym for a week or we spend too long on Instagram and then we miss our bus, something happens and we have that temptation to then want to turn the blame on ourselves and completely beat ourselves up. Again, there's just no upside to that. Just sitting there just saying, “You're stupid. You're an idiot. You should know better. I can't believe you did that, rah-rah-rah.” We all have that negative voice that immediately wants to jump in and make us like villain as well as being the victim to our story.
Again, this is where you just need to remind yourself there's no upside to sitting there in blame, but what I do still want you to do, I'm not saying then again, like the other people, you get completely to be free of your actions and the consequences of them, but rather blame it's about taking responsibility and earning that you made a choice and then this is the effect of the choice. That is the difference between blame, which feels shameful and heavy and disempowering and taking responsibility is the opposite. Rather than putting yourself down, you're stepping up and you're taking ownership over something.
You can feel so much more empowering. Even when it's something you wish that you hadn't done. “I chose to skip my gym session.” Versus, “How dare you, you're so stupid. You're so out of control. You never do anything.” That's blame that I chose to do it and I'm taking responsibility for that and it probably wasn't me showing up as my best self, but I can learn from that and know how to do better next time. That is when you keep yourself completely out of, again, that victim poor me role and keep yourself in a place where you can at least stay open and curious about like, I wonder why I did that.
What led me to want to go and binge on massive bag of cookies or like a whole tub of ice-cream? How was I feeling in that moment? Because shame, compound shame, which has us acting out in more shameful ways and perpetuating us and keeping ourselves stuck in that cycle of shame and self loathing, but if you can recognize like, “Hey, I did this. I'm accepting that it was a choice and it's not so and so's fault, down the road. It's not what my friend said to me today that made me upset and then I ate Oreos.” It's recognizing like I was feeling upset so I chose to ate Oreos because I didn't know how to handle my emotions, but I really wonder what could be different if I began to take that energy in? How could I choose differently? How can I choose to stay present with myself in these moments rather than reach of the Oreos and do that work?
That's taking responsibility. That's the difference between blame and shame and responsibility and empowerment and learning how you can stay in power of your response ability to absolutely everything because that is when you stay in the driver's seat of your life. I was thinking about this last night because I write the podcast in my head the night before just to thinking over everything I want to say to you guys and I was thinking like, “Every time a challenge, a setback, something unfortunate, unwanted is sitting in our path in life. I feel like life gives us two options.” I'm going to give it to you in a quick metaphor because I'm all for the metaphors. They stay in my brain when I need the most and hopefully it helps you.
Basically every time you feel the temptation to blame someone or something else, about how you feel or why your life is the way it is, I want you to remember like life is really giving you two choices. If I said, “Hey, you can go either on this little bike and it's really smooth, the path ahead. It's really easy, but you have to stay like below ground level, so all the shrubs, you won't see anything. You're stuck below shrub level.” Well, actually the path goes around in circles. You don't really go anywhere useful either, but it's really smooth and straightforward and quite easy. Oh, by the way, your bike … Have you seen those kids bikes where the parents like holding it at the back and the kid's like pilling, pilling and having the time of its lack thinking it's going somewhere, but really the mom's in control?
It's like, “Kid, you ain't going anywhere I don't want you to go.” That's your first option. You can take that part or else path number two, is you have to walk up this crazy steep mountain. It's really steep. I can't promise there won't be, maybe some snakes and some rivers along the way. You might have to crawl, get really dirty, get really sweaty. I promise you at the top is the most stunning view that you'll ever seen in your life. Which path are you going to choose? What's your choice? You'd have to be pretty insane to choose the path that has you on a bike going around in the shrubs with your mom pushing you, leading you absolutely nowhere.
That's literally what blame is like. It goes nowhere. It's nothing useful. You miss out on all the good things in life and you've actually handed your emotional life over like the mom that pushing the kid around. Do you think you control your emotions, but the moment you blame someone else about how you're feeling, you're handing over all your power to them, so not useful. So of course doing this work, learning how to manage your thoughts and allowing yourself to feel negative emotion and allowing space for all the ache in your life, it is not comfortable. It is like trying to climb that big mountain sometimes and sometimes you're going to slip and you're going to fall and there's going to be snakes. You're going to have a freak out and it's going to be dirty, but I'm telling you it is worth it because the view at the top is the most stunning you'll ever say. I'm telling you, that same feeling comes when you learn how to have that power over your emotional life, to have the ability to coach yourself through any situation.
My challenge to you this week when you feel the temptation to lose your mind at your mom or go on a rant about your ex-boyfriend and how he's ruined your life or rant about your teacher and how they taught you the wrong question before an exam and it's all their fault that you didn't get the mark that you wanted, rah-rah-rah, I just want you to hit that internal pause button and pay attention to where you find yourself blaming something outside of you for how you feel or how you're acting and showing up. Ask yourself, “How can I hold onto my power right now? What shift in perspective can I make here? What act of forgiveness or acceptance can I make to get power back over my emotional life?”
We only get so much energy in a day, guys. Do you really want to waste it blaming and complaining about the problem or beginning to strategize and focus on the solution and the way out, like if you can shift your life into taking responsibility for all of your mistakes about anything you do wrong in earning your mind and all of your actions and all of your results and feelings like of course you're going to feel rainbows and daisies all the time. The one thing you will no longer feel is disempowered. You no longer feel so out of control and from that place that is where you can make the most change in your life. When you retain your response ability that is when you can change your life.
Can tell I got a bit fired up about that topic, but it is something that was like a massive slap in the face when I got taught it, but also the best slap in the face. It was like helped me actually see things more clearly and I can change my perspective, so I can change anything that comes next. I wanted to pass that along that wake up call to you guys. I hope that you do find it valuable to think about and apply in your own life. I will dive in and speak about more specific real situations and how we can take these tools and use them in the day-to-day things. I just wanted to give you a really clear overview of my approach to the world that I've been told that completely shifted my ability to be resilient and to go from that girl that you know, had an eating disorder and chronic anxiety in high school to becoming Australia's 100 women of influence.
Set to throw that out there. It's such a big sounding title for a little lady like me. I'm proud of what I've achieved over the years, but I also want you to be very clear that there is nothing special about me and I'm still learning all of this stuff big time. I'm not perfect at it, but at least I now know that I have a way forward through any kind of situation. I am telling you, you'll never find that way forward if you're holding on to blame. Blame is like holding onto hot coal and expecting someone else to be burned by it. It's just doesn't make sense.
That's it for me this week, guys. Again, if you did get anything out of this week's episode, I would love for you guys to share a photo of it on your Instagram page, tag me in it. You will make my day, I promise you. Also, please subscribe to this show. This is just a little baby so it needs some help getting out there to reach more people and really help me on my mission to help more of us become more resilient and deal with this beautiful, but crazy world that we live in. Sending much, much love to you all people. Until next week remember, where am I in blame here and how can I take responsibility for this in a way that empowers me. When blame fills so tempting, just remember the visual of that little kid on a bike being controlled by the mom behind it on a path [inaudible 00:34:47] be that kid.
Hey, you. Thanks for tuning into the show [inaudible 00:34:50] that and you're thinking, okay, now what. Besides practicing what you've learned in your life, please be sure to subscribe to the show and leave me a rating and review, so this can reach more people and really help our generation become more resilient. If you want some extra info in between episodes, be sure to follow me on Instagram at katemarie_fitz.
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