When you blame yourself, rightly or wrongly, You use a perception neural net aimed at the member of your mental committee believed to have committed a blameworthy offence while you deliver the blame from another committee member that presumably knows how to prevent, get out of, and/or avoid the problem. Wouldn’t it be better if you could (preferably both of) teach the erroneous committee member how to solve the problem and exhort him to engage in activity for his betterment.
To implement this, notice when your committee members are blaming one another, and extract the old way of blaming, and replace it with the thought of advising and encouraging. You can even do it in the same grumpy tone of voice if that makes you more able to implement. We’re trying to generate forward progress in a way such that we can continue to know the correct meaning of forward progress, and bring the mental object to mind when needed for further repair. You’ll know this has worked when your mind settles inwardly, determined to instruct and encourage. Do not go on to step two at this point, begin the instruction and exhorting.
If that does not work, begin talking to yourself about how dangerous the old way of blaming yourself is; how it leads to your suffering, how it causes the suffering is bonus points if you want to really drive the point home, but just marking it as “dangerous, causes suffering” is a really positive step. spend at least 10 seconds either repeating a danger mantra or diving into the details of how it’s hurting you. My danger mantra is “This (blaming in this case) is a danger to me, truly it leads to my suffering.” You will know this step is done if the mind settles inwardly and becomes peaceful.
If these steps seem reasonable, please continue with them as described here The next two steps are ignore it and slow down thought creation as pertains to the offensive thinking (blaming in this case)
I’m going to now teach the warping of perception with goodwill. Remember that perception I mentioned in paragraph one? Here’s what you do there to fix this. Think to yourself, “May all beings be skillfully happy. May we know the causes of true happiness and be willing and able to act on that knowledge” and use your understanding of that meaning supported by those words to warp the perceptions that you have any power over. Because perception is a fabrication and as such you have a hand in the creation of each one. Warp the perception creator as well. More words that will support the proper warping of the mind are “May all beings be healthy. May no being anywhere deceive another for any reason. May all beings whether small, middling, or large be skillfully happy. May all no-legged beings be skillfully happy. May all one legged beings be skillfully happy. May all two legged beings be skillfully happy. May all three legged beings be skillfully happy. May all four legged beings be skillfully happy. May all many legged beings be skillfully happy.” Or perhaps you like to work with directions: “May all beings to the north be skillfully happy. May all beings to the east be skillfully happy…south…west… above… below” If you find that you are leaving yourself out of all beings, make it explicit in your words: “May all beings, including me, be skillfully happy.” each time you express this thought, try to work it into your bones, into all your perceptions. Take it on as a basis for all thoughts and deeds. If you’re not ready for that, at least warp the perceptions that the blaming committee members use.
Managing expectations: It will take a minimum of 3 weeks to see changes using the first five step way, or even longer for the second approach, but the second approach has other benefits such as being pleasant to do, curing resting bitch face, making your sleep better and nightmare free, and making humans and non-human beings like you more…