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Blame, it's the natural shield that we humans try to use anytime we think that we're in danger because something we've been involved in has gone wrong.

We instantly hit the blame button when something goes wrong because we don't want it to be our fault. It's easier to tell the world that it was some other person's fault than it is to admit that we stuffed up.

If we admit that we made a mistake then we've got to fix it or do something about it but if we blame someone else then it's their problem, not ours and e can hide behind whoever we blame.

When we blame someone else we're still the highly professional webmaster, the expert, the skilled coder but if we admit that we are at fault then we become a little tarnished, a little less bullet proof, and certainly less skilled and professional and that damages our own ego.

And that's ok isn't it? I mean we do have to look after ourselves don't we? If we blame other people ... the market ... the weather ... our competitors ... we can still be confident in our own capabilities can't we? If it wasn't our fault then we're still perfect aren't we?

But just how often does something go wrong for us and we can honestly say that we are blameless? Are we really that perfect that we're never at fault? Not even a little bit?

Maybe we could have given better instructions. Perhaps we should have left that intricate coding till we had caught up on some sleep. Perhaps that wasn't our best work and we really should have done it again rather than pretending that our work is always pefect.

Of course we don't want to admit it but how much more damage are we doing to ourselves or our goals if we don't admit that some of the problem might be our fault?

Here in this industry many of us used to blame the summer slowdown for a drop in sales. Of course traffic was down, that was easy to see and to blame for the drop in sales, but how effective were our marketing efforts?

Not everyone reported a drop in sales at that time so perhaps they're marketing was much more effective than ours but by blaming the season we were absolving ourselves from any blame. If we weren't to blame then we didn't have to try and produce better sales copy ... we could just bumble along and grumble until things improved.

A potential customer of ours recently complained that Google was not sending him any traffic so it must have been Google's fault and the fault of the web designer he had used. He couldn't see that by refusing to pay for anything but a very thin site, and then doing absolutely nothing to promote his site, he was guaranteeing that his website would do poorly in what is a very competitive vertical.

Instead of accepting that most of the blame was his, it was easier for him to blame others and now he blames me too because I declined to help him for free.

So do you use blame as a shield to protect yourself and your ego? If you do want to blame others or the conditions or your competitors for your poor sales then you are going to go on having poor sales and you will never achieve your goals.

Blame might be a shield but it is also a burden that is going to weigh you down and hold you back. When you make mistakes you need to do two things.

The first thing you need to do is to own up to your mistakes ... even if the only person who knows that you have made a mistake is yourself. If you don't admit that you made a mistake you will go on reinforcing the thought that you are perfect and there's no need for you to improve, when obviously you do need to improve.

The second thing you need to do is to actually take action. Admitting that you need to learn more, take more care or work more efficiently is fine but it's meaningless unless you start taking action to change those things that causing problems.

Accepting the fact that, when something goes wrong, you are at least partly responsible for the problem is a great step forward but if you don't do anything to prevent that problem from arising in the future then you have done nothing to improve the situation.

If you don't take action then you only have yourself to blame for your situation.