If you commonly make excuses for bad behavior, rather than accepting some blame, you may be creating a negative image of yourself. According to psychologists in a recent study of college students, people who regularly avoid responsibility for their actions by placing blame on someone else or making up doubtful excuses, were viewed as being deceitful, self-absorbed and lacking in character.
Researchers pointed out, however, that making excuses can have some positive effects. Excuses help to reduce the feeling of failure as accepting blame for every mistake can lead to people to feel unnecessarily bad about themselves, even leading to depression.
According to the study, excuses became problematic when the person commonly used them or used excuses that sounded false. Excuses that enabled weakness, such as blaming a computer for a poorly done job, were also looked down upon.
Excuses were more likely to be accepted when the person took some responsibility. For example, rather than blaming a computer for losing your work, try saying that you should have saved your document more often.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 2002;21:497-516
The take-home point to remember here is that when you point a finger at someone else, it is wise to look at the hand doing the pointing, otherwise there will be three fingers pointing back at you.
Frequently you will be the cause, not the person you are blaming, and blame is one of the most counter-productive approaches you can take.
It used to be a trait that I had, but when I learned the importance of accepting responsibility for my own behavior, my entire life turned around.
Though I am still challenged with blame, I am grateful to have such a useful tool like EFT that can help me to process the blame and transform my feelings about a challenging situation into positive ones.