Why Self-Accountability Outranks Luck and Excuse-Making Every Time

There's an energy that comes from defending yourself, but it rarely leads anywhere useful. One afternoon, after a project failure, you find yourself writing a defensive email to your boss, listing every obstacle you faced: the late bus, the miscommunication with a teammate, a string of back-to-back meetings. The list keeps growing until you feel more drained than ever. Your defenses are up, but the problem remains, unchanged.

A few days later, you run into a friend who asks, without a hint of judgment, 'Okay, but what’s your next move?' For the first time, you pause your mental spiral and write a short list: email a collaborator to reschedule, buckle down on one small task you've been putting off, commit to a single hour of focused work. The shift is subtle, but suddenly you’re back in control.

Week by week, you track when you blame others and when you push yourself to own something—however small—that you can actually do. You realize (sometimes begrudgingly) that blaming circumstance saps your motivation, while ownership, though uncomfortable, always makes you feel lighter and more focused. The complaints fade. The list of next moves grows longer and more actionable.

Psychologists call this the difference between an external and internal locus of control—a fancy way of saying that people who focus on their next controllable step become more resilient, creative, and successful in the long run. Owning the next move doesn’t mean you magically solve everything, but it means you stop pouring energy into blame and instead invest it back into progress.

Next time life throws you a curveball, ditch the excuse list and ask yourself what’s the tiniest thing you can do right now to better your position tomorrow—write it down, even if it feels too small to matter. Catch yourself every time you slip into blame mode and instead push yourself to find an outcome-oriented question. It might not erase the problem, but over a week, you’ll see patterns change and feel your energy coming back. Try it out: tomorrow, take charge by owning just one step.