It was my fault.

My friend - a marketing planner just got fired for a rather strange reason.

He was assigned to plan a communication for a brand, after studying the client's request, he made a plan to present to his boss and was scolded. The boss directly directed a new direction which, according to him, had little to do with the assignment. Remonstration was ineffective, so he had to redo it according to his boss's instructions. It was not surprising that his company lost the contract to another company and the client's response was just as he predicted: off-topic, not solving the problem the client raised. Suddenly, the boss changed 180 degrees, turned around and blamed him and the result is known to everyone. Less than two months before Tet, my friend fell into unemployment. Unfairly!

If there were a vote for the most difficult sentence to pronounce in Vietnamese, I think no sentence could surpass “lụn mình” (my fault). Just three short words, but how difficult it is to say! Not only in the boss-employee relationship, but in almost all social relationships, from close, close, social to completely strange, everyone tries to push the blame to someone else. Anyone is fine, as long as it’s not them.

I think this phenomenon is a disease that we need to be vaccinated against from childhood, like measles or hepatitis. And the first dose of vaccine comes from no one else but the parents. Is it true that when we do something wrong in front of our children, we often choose to ignore it so as not to have to apologize in front of them? Do we think that admitting our mistakes will make us less “majestic” and less respected in the eyes of children? And so, we have transmitted to them the disease of blaming - something that will stick with them forever like a wart, making them irresponsible and cowardly people.

Someone once said that in this world where blaming is so easy, it takes a lot of courage to say “it’s my fault”. I think that’s true. If you can overcome your cowardly fears and try saying “it’s my fault” once, you will see that the results are not as terrible as you imagine. And your relationships with others will also be much easier.