308. All My Fault

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 308: All My Fault.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me, I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hey everybody, how’s it going? Did you have a good week? I just finished up today day five of Train Your Brain so, sending lots of love to all of you who were there. We had an amazing event this week online. And I loved getting to know so many of you. I loved getting to teach so many of you and getting to coach so many amazing new people who were, just really brought their A game in terms of being open and real. And we all benefitted from it.

So if you missed it make sure that you are paying attention because every now and then I offer something like this that’s very inexpensive and very life changing. And I don’t know when we’ll do it again but probably later on towards the end of the year so you’ll want to join us.

Today I want to talk to you about a thought that I love that not everybody likes. I will say I am unusual. I don’t know if it’s a good thing but there are certain ways that I like to think about myself in the world that work really well for me. And they are ways that most people reject or that most people don’t think to think about. And so sometimes I offer those to you here. And again you can take or leave any thought that I offer you. But this thought that serves me really well is it’s all my fault, it is. I like most everything to be my fault.

Now, sometimes I am coaching people and they say, “Well, this isn’t my fault.” Or “He thinks this is my fault.” Or “I’m just trying to look at this correctly and I know part of it’s my fault but it’s not all my fault.” And I understand where you’re coming from. I know why we get defensive. But I just want to have you think differently for a minute and try on the idea that it could be very good news if any problem that you’re experiencing is all your fault. That is honestly where I like to hang out because that is when I feel the most empowerment.

If it’s all my fault then the only person that I have to try to figure out how to control, or manipulate, or change is me. And it’s not always easy to control me. Don’t get me wrong, not always easy for me to get me to do what I want me to do. But easier than me trying to get other people what I want them to do, easier to control me for me than for me to control everyone outside of me. And so it’s all my fault is one of my most favorite thoughts.

Now, I’m going to give you tons of examples and tell you why I love this thought but I want to begin by explaining that this only applies to problems that are truly your problems. And a lot of you guys get confused out there. I know this from when I coach you. You get confused about what is a you problem versus what is another person’s problem. A lot of you try to take on the problems of all the people around you, especially the people that you love. And that’s coming from a good place. It’s coming from kindness and love.

And I know you mean well and I don’t want you to stop loving people and caring about people. I don’t even want you to stop feeling bad or offering to help and support people in any way that you possibly can. I want you to keep all of that. I just want you to stop making their problem your problem because when you take someone else’s problem and make it your problem it doesn’t take away from their problem. It’s not like you take some of their problem and you take it on.

It just means that now we have two people with a problem instead of one person with a problem and one person with empathy, and compassion, and support. Do you see what I’m saying? Let’s imagine that you have a friend who’s in a pool and they can’t swim and they’re drowning in the pool. Some of you think I should jump in the pool and drown with them. And what I’m offering is that no, we want you to stay on the side of the pool. Or we want you to be a strong swimmer if you’re a strong swimmer.

We want you to throw that friend a life preserver. And you can’t do that if you jump in the pool and you also can’t swim. Do you see what I’m saying? So again it’s all my fault is not a thought that’s going to work for you in every situation. If you’re taking on someone else’s problem, that is definitely not your fault. So let’s go through some examples and I’ll try to apply that.

I first discovered the power of this thought way back when I first discovered coaching actually, when I was working in corporate as a corporate trainer and I was taught the model and I used it to coach leaders. And at that time I had two young children who were – I still have those children but they were littler, they’re teenagers now. At this point they were little toddlers/babies/little kids. And my husband and I lived in a little teeny, tiny place in beautiful Huntington Beach, California less than 1,000 square foot duplex down by the beach. It was awesome and challenging.

And I remember that I had this routine where I would put those two little kids in the bath. And all of their clothes that they had just taken off and left on the bathroom floor, I would wad up in my hands and throw them outside the bathroom door into the hallway. And my thought was, well, okay, I’m going to get them out of the way so that they don’t drip water all over them, we don’t make even more of a mess. And I’m throwing them in the hallway to remind me after I’m done bathing the children to put those clothes in the dirty clothes hamper or wherever they need to go.

That was the idea but in reality, sometimes I didn’t right away put those clothes where they needed to go. Sometimes I was still juggling kids or I just forgot, or I just got lazy or whatever and then the clothes sat there for a little bit in the hallway until I finally pick them up and put them away. Well, this was pretty early on in my marriage too. I’d only been married a few years and we had a couple of kids. And I remember one day being like, “There are always clothes in the hallway. The kids’ clothes, why are they always in the hallway?”

And then my favorite thought came into my head. Wait, this is all my fault. This is my fault because I’m the one who started the trend of throwing clothes out of the bathroom door into the hallway. And then my husband just followed suit. He’s like, that’s a great idea, throw them in the hallway, except he was even less diligent than me about picking them up and putting them in the room. It didn’t really bother him. He would let them go a while. And so I would be the one that would come along and pick them up and put them away in the dirty clothes basket.

And my kids, as they got older, they started chucking their clothes out into the hallway because they had seen me do it and they had seen their dad do it. And I realized this is all my fault. I created this. I actually led the way on this little habit that we have of throwing clothes in the hallway. Okay, this is all my fault. Now, what do you do about it from there? Well, you can talk to people. You can develop a new routine.

But what I did initially that I think was the most powerful part of this, even before I solved the problem of there always being clothes in the hallway was I stopped being mad at my husband and my kids. And I stopped blaming them. And I stopped resenting them and judging them. And I just went, “Okay, yeah, I started this, they copied me, makes sense.” It’s really not a big deal actually for there to be clothes in the hallway. But certainly knowing that I’m the one who started it and created this problem is a much more empowering feeling and it gets me out of judgment and resentment for the people around me.

I’m going to go through a bunch of other examples because I know some of you are like, “Okay, I can see it in that case.” But in this case, I never did that and they all still do this. So let’s go through different examples. Now, notice in that scenario it was a me problem in that those clothes being in the hallway bothered me. That’s it. Now, they only bothered me because of my thoughts. So we could say the problem is mine because of what I’m thinking and I could coach myself around it. But I like to sometimes go to that next step of and I even contributed in people acting the way they do.

I influenced them in some way, or I haven’t influenced them in any other way. I haven’t even attempted to influence them in any other way. This is so commonly true you guys. We don’t even attempt sometimes to influence people. We’re just like, “They should know.” So if you’re not asking people to change their behavior if you want them to. If you’re not making requests or if you’re making requests from resentment and frustration, they’re going to feel that. They’re going to feel your judgment. You’re not being very influential from that place.

I just coached somebody this week on Train Your Brain who said, “My in-laws give money to my husband’s sisters and not to us. For example, they’ve bought them cars. We needed a car once. They didn’t buy us a car.” And I said, “When you needed a car did you ask them to buy you a car?” And she said, “Well, no.” And she was able to laugh at herself. This is what we do. So if we stop and go, “Wait a second, my in-laws buying cars for my sister-in-laws and not for us is all my fault.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to go ask them to buy you a car.

It just means you can stop resenting them and judging them because you didn’t do what you could have done. You didn’t even try what you could have tried to try to get the result that you wanted from those in-laws. You see what I’m saying?

Let’s say that you’re a manager and that you have an employee, because again when I first discovered this, I was using the tools to teach leaders. So a manager would say to me, “I have this employee who is just not cutting it. They’re just not performing.” So I coached sales managers for a long time. And they would say, “This employee is not hitting their numbers. They’re not reaching their goals. They’re not selling enough.” And they would want to talk to me all day long about what the employee is doing or is not doing that is creating the problem.

In other words they would want to blame the employee. And I would say to the manager, “What if this is all your fault?” Now, don’t get me wrong. The employee not showing up, not doing their best, not putting themselves out there, not picking up the phone and making calls, whatever it is they need to do. That’s not what I’m saying is the manager’s fault. The manager’s problem is that I have a team that’s underperforming because I have an employee that’s underperforming, that’s my fault. I know that sounds like the same problem but it’s not.

Here’s what I mean. Manager, in what way is this all your fault? If they can really get still enough, and by the way when I say it’s all your fault, I don’t mean so you should feel bad about it. I just mean I have created this problem. This is good news, because if you start judging it, you won’t be able to see it. You’ll get defensive. You’ll deflect it. It won’t be available to you. But if you can be open to it’s okay that I created this, and not be mean to yourself around it then you’ll get a lot of leverage.

So as the manager this is my fault because I have not been consistent about giving them feedback. I have not enforced the disciplinary process the way that it’s supposed to be enforced because if you had then that employee would no longer be on your team. They would no longer be with the company. That’s what HR structured disciplinary plans are for, are to help people either grow up or grow out we used to say.

You either need to develop and start performing or you go down this other path of not working here anymore. And it doesn’t have to be because we hate you. We love you, it’s just this job isn’t a good fit clearly for your skill set.

Because we definitely want to support that employee, we want to say, “Listen, I want to help you perform better. I want to help you achieve your goals. What help do you need from me? What development do you need from me? But know that these are the expectations by which I will need to hold you accountable. And these are the timelines we have to get you developed. And if that doesn’t happen this is the path that it puts you on.” Ultimately that employee isn’t on your team anymore.

So do you see how as a manager it’s all my fault if I have an underperforming employee on my team? That employee should either be getting better or should be headed out the door if I’m doing my job. So we could say, “Employees are not doing their job.” And what I’d say to the managers, “In what way are you not doing your job?” Let’s just identify that because then good news, we know what to focus on. We know what to do instead of what to try to manipulate and control outside of us.

Now, a lot of you listening don’t have employees but you have children. So you can see how that would apply with children in many cases. Now, be careful because you can’t fire your kids. So it doesn’t look obviously exactly the same. It’s not like either you start behaving and following the rules of our home or you’re fired. But there should always be consequences and so at some point with kids, we do this with employees too but we especially do it with kids. We start making their problems our problems, that’s when we get into trouble.

So if your kid is not following the rules or meeting whatever expectations you have within your home, if they’re violating rules that you have in place or they’re just not getting the grades you expect them to get, or they’re not behaving, they’re not whatever it is. The goal isn’t to obviously get them out of your family but it is to hold them accountable in whatever way you think will best serve them and protect you and your household. And if your child still chooses not to, which sometimes they will, but be honest with yourself.

More often than not when I coach someone who says, “I have a kid who just doesn’t listen”, “I have a kid who’s disrespectful”, “I have a kid who uses this inappropriate language in talking to me”, “I have a kid who’s really mean to his siblings.” More often than not the parent says, “You’re right. I have not been very consistent in my parenting. I have not consistently enforced what I expect. I have not consistently gone back and talked about what I expect of them. I have not revisited those conversations.”

And sometimes they say to me, “Well, I have tried.” And I say, “What do you mean you’ve tried? How many times have you tried? What have you tried? You’ve got to try harder. You’ve got to try longer. You’ve got to try more consistently.” And yes, our hope is that that child’s behavior will change but sometimes it won’t. At which point it becomes their problem and not your problem to take on. And I know that you might still feel a lot of negative emotion though. It’s not to say that you wouldn’t want to feel sad, or worried, or disappointed in your child, you might.

But make sure you’re owning doing your job as the parent. Your job is to lead that child similar to the way a manager leads an employee which means you teach them, you develop them, you be there for them. And you are consistent at holding them to what you expect, that means you have to know what you expect. You have to revisit it because children grow up and then the challenges change. And then we have to revisit our expectations.

But when I recognize this thing is going on with my child and it’s all my fault because I’m not doing my job as a mother. Again I don’t mean it’s my fault that the child’s making the choices they make. I mean it’s my fault that I have this problem of my house not running the way I want it to run, of the feeling not existing here that I want to feel.

This happens for me in my business a lot, there will be a mistake that happens somewhere or something that gets overlooked, or a piece of a project that didn’t turn out quite how I wanted it to, it didn’t get executed on the timeline I wanted. It happens all the time that I notice oh my gosh, that thing needed to be done yesterday and it’s still not done, it didn’t happen. And obviously when they’re tasks that are my tasks to own it’s very clear that that’s my fault.

But even if they are tasks that somebody else on my team owns, almost always I can circle back to this is all my fault. It is because I’m the one who hasn’t created the process necessary. As the leader of this company I have to create those processes or assigned someone else to create the process and then look over it and make sure it’s right. I’m the one that hasn’t set the company up in a way to make sure that those things don’t happen.

I’m the one who didn’t double check the work or make sure there is somebody else double checking the work and put the systems, and processes, and routines in place. I’m the one that didn’t communicate it clearly. In my mind it made perfect sense but I forgot that people can’t read my mind. Dang it. Or it’s something that I do intrinsically that I forgot I need to communicate to someone else. As we have grown as a company we’re so, you know, we’re still little but we have a team of about six or so staff now.

And so many things that I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve got to explain that to someone. I forgot to tell them that.” In my head it makes sense but to actually put it down on paper and articulate it, it’s really challenging for me. There’s a lot of things I just sort of intrinsically do that I’m learning now. I’ve got to figure out how to explain that to someone. I’ve got to explain how I want it done. So it’s all my fault. This is good news. This is what helps me make my company even better. So it helps me figure out that we even need a process, that we even need an employee to do that thing.

Some of you even are in a relationship. I know a lot of you are like, “Well, you should meet my husband. You should see what he does or how he behaves. That’s not my fault. He’s angry. He’s negative.” He’s whatever. Listen, there comes a point you guys at which you’ve got to choose if you want to be in that relationship. And sometimes for some of my clients, their spouse being however he is being isn’t your fault. But your problem of being in a marriage that you don’t like being in is your fault, it is. And I say that with the utmost love.

I don’t mean that you shouldn’t have married that guy. I just mean that you did marry that guy. So what I’m saying when I say it’s all my fault is I am the one that got me into this situation. And I don’t mean that you did anything wrong. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t have. I just mean phew, that means I have choices here. I have power in my own life. I have power around my own problems. I can either make peace with the way that he is or I can leave this relationship. I mean that’s the truth.

If I’m in a marriage with a man that I can’t stand or a woman I can’t stand, yeah, we want to take a look at your thinking. We want to make sure that you’re operating from a clean space. But ultimately, you’re the one choosing to stay there. And I just want you to keep the authority in your life. Some of you are afraid to notice in what way it’s your fault because you think that means you have to leave. And you don’t have to leave. And yet maybe you do want to leave.

All I want is for you to be in the driver’s seat of every problem in your life. And this thought, this is all my fault, yes, what a relief, thank goodness, let me figure out in what way this is my fault. What I have I done to create this in my life? What have I not done that has created this situation in my life? From that place, I don’t mean that you spend in the past.

I mean that you go, “So what do I want to do now? Who do I want to be now? How do I want to think about this now? What do I want to create going forward? Because if the decisions I made in the past created where I’m at today then the decisions I’m making today will create where I end up in the future.”

So if this is all my fault then now what? Now what? Now I know that’s not an always an easy question to answer. But any problem that is a you problem is yours to own, that will give you the ultimate authority over them in your lives, I promise you. So many things are all my fault. I notice them every day. I’m not kidding, problems that I have created that are all my fault. And I love to discover them. Sometimes I don’t even worry about what I’m going to do next. I just go, “Oh yeah, that’s on me.” Make sure you don’t do it with judgment, make sure you do it with the utmost love and curiosity.

Alright you guys, thanks for being here today. I’ll see you next week for another episode. Take care. Bye.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one, I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.