Ep #21: Blame Vs. Responsibility

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

What’s up, my brothers. Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. And today, we’re going to look at the contrast between blame and responsibility. And, given these two words, you can probably guess which side your alpha state falls on and which side your beta condition falls on.

But, before we get started, I just really want to quickly repeat the universal truth, because it plays in very strongly with the blame responsibility contrast. If you want to, you can go back to episodes four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. I do full episodes on the universal truth and each component of the model; circumstance, thought, emotion, action, and result. But just very quickly, the universal truth, which applies to all of us – this is how life works, my friend, this is true for everybody – is that our circumstances, which is our past, other people, and the present, the world as it’s happening, these circumstances in our life are neutral.

They’re completely neutral. They’re completely out of our control and they are facts. So those are the three, kind of, components of circumstances. Now, circumstances live and exist independently of our thoughts, emotions, actions, and results. There is a very loose correlation between our circumstances and our thoughts, and this is where the beta condition comes in.

The beta condition believes that circumstances and thoughts are the same. In other words, the beta condition is living in itself, essentially, and it thinks that the sentences in its head, the sentences in the head, the condition itself is the way life is; that thoughts are facts and that we are our thoughts and so there’s no difference between what’s happening, the past, right, what’s happening, what’s happened, and other people, and the way we think about it, that it’s one and the same.

The truth is that our thoughts are choices and that our thoughts, what we think about the world, is independent of the way the world actually is. So, circumstances happen or have happened, and then we have a thought about them.

Now, from here, this is where we can kind of hijack the process, which is what the coaching is all about. We hijack the process between being a beta male and becoming an alpha male, where you deliberately choose your thought. But, deliberately choosing your thought, or by allowing your thought to be reactive to the circumstance, whether you’re in that beta condition or whether you’re deliberately choosing your alpha state, all thoughts create emotion.

This is neuroscience. Again, I’m not going to go into it here. You guys can go back and listen to the podcast, but this is the truth. Our thoughts create emotion. Our emotions drive our actions. Our actions determine our results. This is cause and effect. Every action has a result. And then, that result will likely reinforce the original thought, which is confirmation bias, and then it kind of loops around. So that’s where we get beliefs, where we think the thought over and over given the evidence from our results.

That’s the universal truth. And again, I go into that much deeper in previous podcasts. But today, we’re going to talk about blame and responsibility, and I wanted to very quickly remind you about that because we’re going to talk about that a little bit here.

So, what is the definition of blame? Blame is assigning culpability for a fault or a wrong to someone else or to yourself. So it’s assigning culpability for a fault or a wrong. Responsibility is the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization.

So already, given that I’ve just given you the universal truth, kind of repeated that, already you can kind of see that blame requires circumstances to be absolutely right or wrong. It denies the universal truth. To be in a state of blame, you are in your beta condition because you are not in alignment with the universal truth. You have to have a preconceived concept of a circumstance being either right or wrong, outside of your choosing it, to be right or wrong.

So, to have blame, there has to be an inherent rightness or wrongness in the world, whereas responsibility allows for the fact that circumstances are neutral. It allows for the universal truth to manifest and the model to be applied.

Now, are circumstances really neutral? That might be your first question. How can circumstances really be neutral? And, you know, go back and listen to episode number five for a really in-depth definition of this. But here’s the thing; we make the mistake of believing we know what is right and wrong because we judge it now. We judge it in the moment.

And it’s not we that does it, right? It’s our beta condition. It’s the sentences in our brain. It’s that little thumb-sized group of cells that’s making sense of the world as it’s happening. It’s the brain acting without supervision, which is the beta condition, right? And it makes these reactive assessments or judgments on what it intakes as data. So, we see something, we hear something, we feel something, through touch there is sensory data, and then we make it mean something with our beta condition.

I want to quickly tell you guys a Zen story that might make more sense of this. One day in late summer, an old farmer was working in his field with his old sick horse. And the farmer felt compassion for the old horse and desired to lift its burden. So, he let his horse loose. He said, “Go into the mountains and live out the rest of your life.”

And soon after, his neighbors from the nearby village visited offering him their condolences saying, “What a shame. Now your only horse is gone. How unfortunate you are. You must be very sad. How will you live? How will you work your land? How will you prosper?” They judge that circumstance of this farmer losing his horse as bad.

And the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe now, who knows, we will see.” Two days later, the horse, the old horse, comes back now rejuvenated after meandering in the mountainsides while eating the wild grasses. And the horse came back with 12 new younger and healthy horses, which followed the old horse into the corral.

Now, when word got out to the villagers of the old farmer’s good fortune, and it wasn’t long before the people stopped by to congratulate the farmer on his good luck and they said, “How fortunate you are,” they exclaimed, “You must be very happy.” They’re in their beta condition again, judging the moment.

And again, the farmer softly said, “Maybe so, maybe not, who knows, we shall see.” And then, at daybreak on the next morning, the farmer’s only son set off to attempt to train one of the new younger wild horses, but the farmer’s son was thrown off into the ground and he broke his leg. And one by one, the villagers arrived during the day to bemoan the farmer’s latest misfortune, “Oh, what a tragedy, your son won’t be able to help you farm with a broken leg. You’ll have to do all the work yourself, how will you survive? You must be very sad. This is a bad circumstance,” they say.

And calmly, in is alpha state, without going into his usual business, the farmer answered the villagers again, “Maybe so, maybe not, who knows, we shall see.” Several days later, a war broke out and the emperor’s men arrived in the village demanding that young men come with them to be conscripted into the emperor’s army. As it happened, the farmer’s son was deemed unfit because of his broken leg.

Now, in the teahouse, the villagers again commented, “What very good fortune you have, sir,” as their own young sons were marched away. They said, “You must be very happy that your son isn’t going off to war.” And again, the old farmer says, “Maybe so, who knows, we shall see,” as he headed off to work his fields alone because his son still had his broken leg.

But as time went on, the broken leg healed. However, his son was left with a slight limp. So again, the neighbors came to pay their condolences, “Oh what bad luck. Too bad for you. Your son will never be able to do as much work as our sons will be when they return back from the war. This is bad fortune for you.” And again, the old farmer simply replied, “Maybe so, maybe not, how knows, we shall see.”

And, as it turned out, the other young village boys had died in the war and the old farmer and his son were the only able-bodied men capable of working the village lands. The old farmer became wealthy and was very generous to the other villagers. And so they said, “Oh, how fortunate we are. You must be very happy.” To which the old farmer replied, “Maybe, who knows, we shall see.”

Now, the reasons why I tell you this story, guys, is because again, what I want you to understand is that circumstances are neutral. We never really know what is right or what is wrong, what is good or what is bad, what is better, or worse. Things just happen. Life just occurs. You know, this illusion of judging things in the moment has to take us back to the universal truth.

You see, the beta condition doesn’t see things the way they are. The beta condition sees things the way it is. It cannot be neutral because it’s in its nature to judge. It’s in its nature to choose good or bad, right or wrong. So, if you think that things and behavior is inherently wrong, bad, or worse, if you believe that there is a right or wrong, if you believe in should and should-nots, for example if you believe that life should be fair, or if you believe that what happened to you or others shouldn’t have happened, or if you just believe that what you think is right and if people disagree with you then they are wrong, then you are operating in your beta condition and you’re manifesting a beta male persona.

The truth, my brother, the universal truth that applies to all of us is that life is neutral. Time, as it passes, is neutral. The only thing that makes life right or wrong is the mind. It’s a thought you have about what’s happening or has happened. Everything happens the way it is supposed to happen. And we know it’s supposed to happen that way because it did. And it couldn’t have happened any other way, because if it could have happened another way, it would have happened another way.

And the evidence for why things happened the way they did is because that is the way it happened. The past cannot be changed, and arguing with that is suffering. This is an alpha male tenet.

Let’s get back to blame and responsibility. Blame decides ahead of time that some circumstances are inherently wrong, and when someone’s behavior, including our own, acts in a way that creates a result of wrongness, we assign them fault. That’s what blame is.

An extreme example is killing another person. Now, I know that none of you guys out there – well, I should hope that none of you guys out there are murderers. But I’m assuming this. Now, this is an extreme example. We think murder is wrong. We say murder is wrong. So we assign blame and fault to a person who kills another person. And yet, in wartime, we give medals to soldiers who kill the enemy.

You see, the act itself is the same. The act itself is neutral. It’s how we think about it that makes it right or wrong. And life is taken either way, but in one circumstance, we say wrong, and in another circumstance, we say right. the circumstance itself is neutral. It’s the way we think about it. Animals kill each other all the time. Humans kill each other all the time. But as a society, we have collectively decided to think – and this is the key – we have a thought about murder as being wrong.

It doesn’t make murder wrong, it makes it a choice or a thought that we have made collectively as a community. Understand that murder itself is neutral. Blame is in response to fear; fear of not understanding how the world works. I want you to remember the Zen story, what seems bad today could be amazing tomorrow.

So, take this as another wacky example, right, imagine a serial killer that we think is a bad person. I just talked about murder, so this murderer is bad. We’ve judged him as bad. And yet, it could be that one of his victims, had they not been a victim, would have walked into their office building and shot up the place because they were angry at their boss. But the serial killer prevented that from happening because he got to this guy first and it was one of his victims.

I know that’s a crazy example, but we don’t know – go back to the Zen story – we don’t know what our actions will have in the future. Another example is World War Two. Had it not been for World War Two, we wouldn’t have the submarine, which has given us an enormous amount of information about our planet under the seas and oceans.

Now, you think about World War Two and all the horrible things that happened during that time, but there were things that came out of that that have created the life that we have today. By having the submarine, we have actually saved millions if not billions of lives.

Blame, my friend, is short-sighted and it’s in the moment. It’s always looking to punish what it judges as wrong today without knowing what happens tomorrow. Now, before you start judging me in your beta condition, I want to step back very quickly and say I’m not suggesting that actions don’t have consequence. I’m not saying that at all.

For every action, there is a result. So, every action has a result and a consequence that follows. But blame does two things. First of all, it either says, not me, him, or not me, her, or not me, this or that. It is the beta condition assigning to other people the reason for results it doesn’t want or would cause it to suffer.

It’s like asking the arsonist, who is creating the fires? Who’s starting these fires? And the arsonist says, “It’s not me, Mr. Fireman. It must be the faulty electrical or a smoldering ember. I didn’t start that fire.” But we all know the truth, the universal truth that is cause and effect, that every result we have in our life is a direct effect from an action we took.

So, whatever result we have, it’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s not his fault, her fault, or their fault. It’s because of what we took. The other thing that blame does is it says, “I did a bad thing so I am a bad person.” If blame’s not directed at someone else and it’s directed at ourselves, it says, “I’m a bad person because I did a bad thing.”

And as I mentioned before, the fallacy is the judgment of the result. It’s saying that the result itself is bad and therefore you are a bad person for having created that result. And again, this creates guilt, it creates shame, it creates fear. And it’s not the truth.

So, with all that said about the beta, what about the alpha? How does the alpha male respond? And here’s where we get into responsibility. This is how the alpha state is elevated and manifesting into an alpha male. The alpha male – alpha men take responsibility. They don’t assign blame, not to other people or to themselves.

They own their results because they take responsibility for their actions and they know that all circumstances are neutral; neither good nor bad. It’s like that farmer in the Zen story. He’s acting in his alpha state. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, let’s just wait and see. It is what it is.

Responsibility isn’t blame. It sounds more like this; I was there at the time I took those actions and these are the results from those actions. I cannot change the past and now I have more information, more knowledge, and I can move forward differently if I choose.

Now, I’m going to repeat that, but I want you to remember the definition of responsibility when I repeat that. The definition of responsibility is the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization. Nothing in there says anything about right or wrong, good or bad.

So I’m going to repeat that again, and you can think this – as an alpha male, you think this, and you may even say it to yourself, say it out loud to yourself. If you’re in that beta condition about your prior actions, about something you’re blaming yourself about, say this; I was there at that time and had the opportunity and ability to act independently. I made a decision without authorization and with the knowledge I had at that time. I am prepared to take the consequences for my actions.

Never once in there did I say I was wrong, that I did something bad. It’s simply that I had a certain amount of knowledge, and based on the knowledge that I had, I acted and created a result, and then based on those results, I have more knowledge, I can reassess, and if there are consequences that come from those results, I will stand up and take those consequences. That is the alpha male in manifestation from the alpha state.

So, guys, I want to leave you with something, I want to give you something. I’m going to give you five points to think about to help you kind of remove this concept, this condition, this manifestation of the beta condition from your life that we call blame.

Number one, never blame your circumstances for your results; never. Guys, your results come directly from your actions. You have what you have or you don’t have what you don’t have because of actions that you took, period. It’s not because of anything else. It’s not anybody else’s fault. It’s not anything that has happened to you. It has nothing to do with any of that stuff.

It has to do with your choices in your life. Your life is a culmination of your choices, not your circumstances. You can rise above whatever circumstance you’re blaming right now and make choices that serve your results. That is the universal truth.

So, number one, never blame your circumstances for your results. Number two, always be keenly aware of and learn to separate your thoughts from the facts. This is what I do with my students, with my clients. It’s like the first move we make. If you’re learning how to read, you learn the alphabet, right? If you’re learning how to dance then you learn the basic steps. When you learn how to elevate your alpha, this is the first thing you learn. You learn to separate your thoughts from the facts.

There is what is happening or what has happened, and there is what you think about what is happening or has happened. And you have to separate those two things. What is happening or what has happened is like watching through a video camera. It’s like watching everything unfold and everybody watching it, whatever’s happening, everybody can say yes, this happened.

What you think about what has happened, that is your judgment, your thoughts that are entering into the picture, learning how to separate those two, being keenly aware in the moment and learning how to separate those in the moment is a skill set, and that is the first step in elevating yourself to alpha state.

Number three, recognize that what has happened was supposed to happen that way. I’m not saying things are meant to be. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about the future. I’ll do another podcast on future-focused thinking. What I’m talking about is the past. I’m talking about that whatever has happened was supposed to happen that way. And the alpha male tenet, this is one of the alpha male tenets – I’ve given you several of them, but this is another one; what happened was supposed to happen and couldn’t have happened any other way because if it was supposed to happen any other way, it would have happened another way.

What happened happened and it was supposed to be that way. And the evidence we have for that is because it did. We don’t need any more evidence. We don’t need to prove that it could have been different. It couldn’t have been, because if it could have been, it would have been. So that’s number three; recognize that what has happened was supposed to happen.

Number four, this is what is probably commonly called the butterfly effect, and I want you to go back to that Zen story. If you’re ever in this beta condition of blame, I want you to consider this butterfly effect. Your action that might seem bad in the moment, it might seem negative now, could end up becoming very positive. It could end up saving lives, preventing harm. It could prevent some other outcome later that later on will be positive and wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t have done what you did now.

So, whatever you think is bad now could end up creating something amazing later. That’s the butterfly effect. It goes back to that Zen story. Guys, don’t judge your actions in the moment because what you’re doing is supposed to be happening, that’s why it’s happening and you never know what the future holds.

Now, this applies to other people as well. Don’t judge the behavior of other people because you don’t know how it will affect the whole. You don’t know how it will affect the future.

And number five does have to do with other people. And it is, never blame other people for what they do. This comes back to the model, guys, and I didn’t really explain too much of the model, I just talked about the universal truth. But when it comes to the model, understand that other people’s actions are a manifestation of their thinking, and often, their misguided thinking.

We cannot see the mind behind the action. We can’t see the thought behind the manifestation. We only see the action itself. We see the symptom, not the cause. And people might have an intention and take an action and get a result that they did not intend by their action. They might have the thought that this action will create this result, but it creates a different result and not the result that they intended.

So, when you want to blame someone for something that they’ve done, I encourage you to look beyond what the action is, look beyond the action itself, look to the thought that manifested the action. And the reason why I say this is because it’s especially important in your relationships; your relationships with your significant others, with your friends, with your family. Because when you inquire about the thought instead of just judging the action, that’s when you make space for compassion and communication and can begin to learn.

That’s essentially when you elevate yourself to alpha. And that looks, that smells, that sounds so much different than just judging people for what they do because you’re looking to their mind. You’re looking to their thought. You’re open and you’re ready to understand.

Alright, guys, that’s what I’ve got for you today; blame versus responsibility. The beta male, form his beta condition, will blame circumstances for results, blame himself for what’s happened, all of this, blame, blame, blame, right, things are wrong. Alpha male takes responsibility, “I was there at that time. I took these actions with the knowledge that I had and I’m here to essentially take on whatever results come without any rightness or wrongness that goes along with it.” It’s just a result; it’s just neutral data.

That’s what I’ve got for you, my friends. I will see you next week. We’re going to do more contrast next week, and until then, elevate your alpha.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha – your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset – at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.