Do you blame others for your lousy choices/your lack of self-control? Or do you take ownership of your words/actions? 24/7? No exceptions?

What would be the point of blaming others? I'd fool nobody but myself. Like everybody else there are times I've made excuses but I prefer that it doesn't become a habit. 

There was about a 2 year window of time when I did. It taught me a great deal about the value self-ownership. And yes, that includes my choices. The cool thing about owning your choices is you don't have to explain to anyone but yourself and you're much less likely to repeat the mistake in the future.

Only one time have I blamed somebody else. It was an incident in the Navy and I still get angry about it. Otherwise I take responsible for my screw-ups.

For personal growth, I find it necessary when evaluating the actions that in retrospect would not be my current choice in which to engage, assignment of blame (i.e., WHY and I chose to do so---and "i" is capitalized for emphasis, not just grammar) is critical to my thought process for figuring out how to avoid such future behavior..

But this is simply because of the realities that there are remote and proximate causes of behavior and that behavior is also frequently over-determined---i.e., the motivation for having done something is seldom singular.. 

Now, of course I am totally responsible for my behavior. While my intent may be a mitigating factor, we all know that "good intentions don't guarantee good results.".. 

But "blaming others" can in fact be useful in figuring out whether I have been given erroneous information by someone I should have been able to trust, or simply have extrapolating a principle that I learned properly but didn't come to understand well enough (which is on me).

I find this procedure has greatly facilitated my growing and changing over the years.. This post was edited by tom jackson at January 7, 2017 12:40 PM MST

My problems are my own and up to me and only me to fix.

no cause it was my fault