She hurt my feelings.
{No she didn't...you had a thought about what she said or did that created your hurt feelings.}
He's to blame for what went wrong there.
{What about your part in it? I suspect if you look closely, you'll find that almost always, 100% of the responsibility cannot be put on any one person.}
If they would've listened to me, everything would have been fine.
{But we all have our own ways of doing things, don't we?}
What are *you* doing to make things better?
No matter what the situation is, placing blame *out there* will rob you of all of your power *in here*. Like, every single time. I promise.
As soon as you give responsibility for your emotional wellbeing to anyone other than you (and sometimes we even hand authority over to inanimate objects like traffic or jobs or messy houses), you are asking for trouble. You're asking for your feelings to be controlled by someone else. You're asking for your entire internal landscape to be shape-shifted at the whim of somebody who probably doesn't even know they're in charge.
Because you usually don't have a conversation with your boss or your mother-in-law about how you've promoted them to dictator where your emotions are concerned...
Because you usually don't think about this stuff in a conscious way and even realize that's what happening...
That's cool. We all do this. It's ok. Let's start getting aware of this right now.
So...what are *you* doing to make things better?
There is only right here, right now. It may sound all zen or woo to talk about how there is no next week or 10-years-from-now or whatnot, but there you have it. Truth. There isn't. You have right here, right now. Tomorrow is no guarantee.
Also noteworthy: trying to control or manipulate other people into doing what you want so that you don't have to be in pain (i.e. hurt feelings, things going wrong, not getting your way) <----- this never works. And it will always drive you crazy.
Again, we all do this. No biggie. Let's agree now that it's not the best way to go about living life and start getting conscious around it.
One of the questions that I like to ask myself is: What are *you* doing to make things better?
And it seems to work. If you have hurt feelings, instead of attacking and creating more negative feelings, turn things around and ask what are *you* doing to make things better? When something goes awry, you can complain or you can ask what are *you* doing to make things better? When you had a great idea and they did something else and it didn't necessarily pan out, you can strut around feeling justified about telling everyone how totally right you were or you can ask what are *you* doing to make things better?
You only have right here and now. And you can only control yourself. So, what are *you* doing to make things better?
p.s. Bonus points for doing this hard work in your mind with your thoughts and feelings and then carrying through with better actions. The world needs more of that. Might as well be you who does it, right?