Live life above the Line

Whenever something doesn't go as expected, most of us tend to "blame" someone else for what went wrong. In doing so, we lose a tremendous learning opportunity.

      The World makes progress by learning from mistakes. When we blame someone, it gives that person power over the situation. e.g. "If John had done what he agreed to do, then this would never have happened." That may be true. However, this statement gives John the power over the situation, and we usually learn little from the experience.
    If we avoid the trap of laying blame, we sometimes tend to justify what happened. " I would have got that job done except I had to travel all night yesterday and was too tired to focus on the project today." This is just another form of blame. Instead of blaming a person, we blame the circumstances. Again, no matter how reasonable the justification, we lose an opportunity to optimally learn from the situation.

  If we get beyond blaming and justifying, there is another level of sub-optimal learning. That is shame-beating yourself up; "i did the dumbest thing!" Instead of blaming another person or the circumstance, we blame ourselves. This too reduces the opportunity for learning.

Where, then, is the optimal place to view life experiences? From the point of personal responsibility.....from above the line

                                      LEARN
                            ______________

                                         BLAME

Recently I have had things happen in my life where I chose to focus on blaming people for the decisions they made, this didn't enable me to learn the reasons why those disappointments were happening to me and harness my energy to keeping my 'Life above the Line' so I continued to allow the same outcome to happen to other processes in my life. I focused on "how can this person do that to me", or "how can they make those decisions".
      I have now realised, and following on from my recent posts, that the way I perceived myself as a person, as a footballer, as a partner and my inner attitude towards myself and these specific people only generated them to apply the same attitudes towards myself. Its as simple as saying "mistrust someone inside and that will infect your aura to point where people will mistrust you, and you won't even know your sending those signals".  Attitudes are magnets, and you attract the same attitudes back. Likewise, your inner attitudes attract the same people for your relationships as friends and partners. If you begin these at a time where your living life "below the line" then its inevitably that these relationships end because learning is not possible throughout the relationships.
      If we are not learning then excuses for blame are always found, either blaming someone else, blaming circumstances, or blaming yourself. Fortunately we all have the ability in life to learn from our experiences and to enable us to search out where there are opportunities to learn, and avoid placing blame. But deciding to "live life above the line" is needed before. Tell yourself you will.  

Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions

Granted, we may not be responsible for everything that happens. However, the more we are willing to view the world from this vantage point, the more the reins to life are in our hands. By operating "above the line," each of us has optimal control, direction, and command over our existance. From this perspective, "free will" surfaces in each individual action, allowing us to learn as much as possible from each situation.

     Life is a succession of choices. Embrace each outcome from "above the line". As much as possible is learned from each situation. As a result, the next choice is more likely to be wiser.

Choose to look at everything from Above the Line