Photo by Jonathan Weiss on Unsplash
Avoiding responsibility is rampant in our society. I witness this daily in my practice and my work with parents who overindulge, overcompensate, and over-invest in their children’s lives. We try too hard, do too much, and prevent them from failing in life. The consequences are self-absorbed, emotionally immature, and insecure young adults who have not learned from their mistakes or developed resiliency in life. Is our government making the same mistake with big business and our bailout plan? Has government assumed the role of parent while companies have been childlike in their behaviors? I don’t have enough knowledge or understanding about the need for the bailout, but it does seem to mirror the role that parents often mistakenly play with their children. Bailing out others, making excuses for them, and rewarding inappropriate behaviors by eliminating consequences is detrimental. It’s time for us as a society to accept responsibility for our actions and to hold others accountable. We should reward positive behaviors, encourage ownership of task completion, and teach effective coping skills for life. We can develop internal self-confidence when we rely on ourselves to succeed and stop blaming others when we fail. We learn more from failure than we do from succeeding. Let others fail!