Among the favorite forms of excuse-making is blaming others or outside circumstances. The entire “reason” that we have manufactured excuses in the past is to point to something different than ourselves to try to make “that” responsible for what happened or didn’t happen.
The dog . . . ate my homework.
That horrible traffic . . . made me late.
My secretary . . . forgot to call you.
The economy . . . keeps my business from growing.
My background . . . didn’t prepare me for life.
Blaming outside circumstances – and especially other people – never makes us look good, so including blame in an excuse is actually a self-defeating strategy.
Can you think of a time when you used blame as part of an excuse? Are there recent examples? Can you recall how that blame-based-excuse was received when you offered it up?