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Everything in your life is your fault. The deals, the hires, the missed numbers, the bad month, the fight with your spouse, the body you don't like, the relationship that fell apart, the year that didn't go anywhere.
All of it.
The average person spends his life deciding which parts aren't.
Think Big Minute #52
Not "mostly your fault." Not "your fault except for the parts that aren't." Everything.
Yours.
Most people read that and immediately reach for the exceptions. "What about the economy? What about my partner who screwed me? What about the customer who lied? What about my parents? What about my health? What about my upbringing?"
Sure. Real things happen to you that aren't your fault on paper.
The problem with focusing on those is you can't do anything about them.
If your business is bad because the economy is bad, you have no business until the economy fixes itself. If your marriage is bad because your spouse is hard to live with, you have no marriage until your spouse changes. If your body is the way it is because your genetics are bad, you have no body until your DNA rewrites itself.
You've handed the steering wheel to people and forces that don't care about your life.
The point of "everything is your fault" isn't that it's literally true. It's that it's the only version of the story you can do something about.
A bad hire isn't your fault because the guy lied. It's your fault because your hiring process couldn't catch a liar. You can fix that.
A bad marriage isn't your fault because your spouse is difficult. It's your fault because you stopped doing the work that kept it alive, or you picked the wrong person to begin with, or you stayed years past when you knew. You can fix that.
A body you don't like isn't your fault because your genetics are bad. It's your fault because for a thousand days in a row you made choices that produced this body. You can fix that too.
A bad year isn't the world's fault. It's your fault because you didn't build a life that survives a bad year. You can fix that.
Everything you blame outside yourself is something you have no control over. Everything you take ownership of is something you can change. That's the entire trade.
Most people will never make that trade. They would rather blame the forces outside their control, because if it's the economy, the algorithm, the boss, the spouse, the genetics, the upbringing, the timing, then they don't have to do anything. They get to be the victim of a story written by someone else.
It's lazy. It's comfortable. And it's the most expensive habit you can have, because every day you spend in it is a day you let the world drive your life.
The people who win at this have stopped having an opinion on whose fault it actually was. They decided to treat all of it as theirs because that's the version that hands them a steering wheel.
Grant Cardone has talked about this for years. He was broke at 25, addicted, and by his own telling miserable. He has said the thing that turned his life was the moment he decided that everything that had happened to him up to that point was his own fault. After that he could do something with it. Before that he was a passenger.
You're not a victim of your life. You're the cause of it.
The good news lives inside the bad news. If you're the cause, you can also be the cure.
How to actually run this:
Pick the biggest thing in your life that isn't where you want it. The business, the body, the relationship, the bank account. One thing. The one you've been blaming the most stuff outside yourself for.
Write down the real list of reasons it isn't where you want it. The honest list, not the public one. The version you'd only say out loud to someone you fully trust.
Cross out everything on the list that isn't you. The economy. The market. The other person. The luck. Draw a line through it.
What's left is your list. That's the only list that matters. Everything outside it is noise you've been using to avoid the work.
Pick one item on your list and do something about it this week. Not next quarter. This week. The smallest possible move that gets the ball rolling on a problem you've been outsourcing the blame for.
Repeat until the list gets shorter.
You don't have to fix everything at once. You just have to stop pretending it isn't yours to fix.
Stop deciding whose fault it was.
Decide what you're going to do about it.
Think Big
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