Taking Responsibility

Someone told me recently that I beat myself up too much, and that got me thinking about responsibility and blame. There is a fine line between taking responsibility for your actions and the situation they have led you to and blaming yourself for being in that situation. Blame is an aspect of self pity which leads to self hate. Many times I have looked at my life and remembered some poor choice I made and thought “You idiot. Why did you do that? You’re a fuck up. You’re a fool…” and so on. Rather than simply acknowledge my actions and move on, self pity takes a hold and we go in to a spiral. It’s a common occurrence for me and I’m sure everyone does it sometimes.
There are some people who do not blame themselves for their actions nor do they take responsibility of any kind. People who think that everything bad that happens to them is somehow someone else’s fault. My brother is one of these people. All my life I’ve watched him complain about everything bad in his life but somehow none of it is ever his fault. He’ll lash out and blame anyone but himself. Whereas I tend to blame myself too much. I try not to play the blame game; I try to take an impartial view. When something crappy happens my intellectual view is this - Really our lives are a combination of choices. The choices that we make and the choices that other people make and how those choices intersect. Nothing is entirely our fault but we are never entirely without responsibility either, so just admit your part in it all, learn what you can and move on. Easy. That’s the theory anyway, but when I try applying that mentality in real life somehow it doesn’t quite come off like I’d hope. It stops me from getting angry at other people and the world at large but it can’t stop me from getting angry at myself. I can forgive the universe for randomly screwing me over but I can’t forgive myself for my perceived inadequacies and weaknesses. I'll have to work on it.