When confronted do you defend yourself and your actions or look for your role? Do you make excuses rather than owning that you're responsible for for a meeting breaking up without a resolution because you weren't willing to compromise?  

Blaming as opposed to taking personal responsibility pervades virtually every area of our lives. It has become an epidemic! If we want to feel good about ourselves, we need to take responsibility for our words, our thoughts, our emotions, our choices, our parenting, our popularity, our actions....  It's easy to blame a parent or our childhood for why we do or did what we did, but it misses the point. It's not about pinpointing who is at fault. It's about recognizing that we are the responsible party. 

And why do we instantaneously blame the outside world when things don't fall our way? We're outward focused, due to the nature of our senses which take in the outside. But in addition, our focus automatically goes out to other people and situations when we experience anger but don't express it constructively. In a split second, our attention jumps FROM our self, our heart, and taking responsibility for what we have done, and pins the fault onto other people, things, and situations.