The Brutal Cost of Blaming Everyone But Yourself
"The ref screwed me." "My coach didn't prepare me right." "My teammates don't push me hard enough." "The seeding was unfair." "They got lucky."
Every excuse feels justified in the moment, and we can always justify blame. Each one-liner builds on each other like a pyramid, eventually isolating you at the top. When we blame someone else for what we failed to own, we hand them our power. Failure is scary, if not terrifying. And I get it. As a wrestler for Team USA for over a decade, I had my own fear of failure and moments where I lacked of ownership over my career. I created situations for myself that were obstacles; the excuse that someone else had “more talent,” “more resources,” or even “a more ideal body type for wrestling” only left me alone and isolated with my world view. Never did that perspective help me shift towards the wrestler I wanted to become, only away.
It’s an easy fix, but it takes time to integrate and you have to be committed to the process. The wrestlers who never reach their potential aren’t lacking talent, but lacking ownership and willingness to commit to what they know has to be done. A coach or parent’s role is to guide the athlete to grow their independence. As an athlete you only have one choice: learn the game of self-accountability or be left behind.
The Victim Mindset That Guarantees Mediocrity
When you blame external factors, you become a victim of circumstance. As a victim of circumstance, you are always waiting for the weather to improve, instead of taking action despite the rain. This type of person believes that next time it will be better: they hope for better refs, better coaches, better draws. They're passengers in their own career, complaining about the driver while refusing to take the wheel.
The most dangerous part? Blame feels good. It protects you from the uncomfortable truth that you weren't good enough today. It shields you from the work required to be better tomorrow. It's emotional comfort food that keeps you satisfied but malnourished.
Watch these wrestlers after a loss. They do not process and integrate the lesson, they have a series of explanations as to why it should have happened differently. They are protecting their ego, and are unable to extract good information from the experience. Sport culture teaches us to be fixated on the win and the loss when we compete. Neither give good information about how technical you are as a wrestler or competitor. The ONLY true information we need from competition is how did we react in a pressure situation and how we evolve to do better. This is how we hone our process and become masters of emotional regulation.
The Hidden Power in Every Excuse
Here's what most don't realize: every excuse contains the seed of improvement, but only if you own it.
"The ref screwed me" → "I need to win by margins that make refs irrelevant"
"My coach didn't prepare me" → "I need to take ownership of my preparation"
"My teammates don't push me" → "I need to find ways to push myself"
"They got lucky" → "I need to be so good that luck can't beat me"
But when you stay in blame mode, you never extract these lessons. You're so busy being right about why you lost that you miss the opportunity to ensure you don't lose that way again.
The Accountability Ladder: Where Are You Stuck?
Level 1 - Blame: "It's everyone else's fault"
Zero power, zero growth
Waiting for the world to change
Level 2 - Excuses: "It's not my fault because..."
Acknowledging involvement but deflecting responsibility
Partial victim, partial participant
Level 3 - Reasons: "Here's what went wrong"
Analyzing without owning
Observer mindset, not owner mindset
Level 4 - Ownership: "I chose this outcome through my actions/inactions"
Full power, full potential for growth
Everything becomes learnable
Level 5 - Solutions: "Here's how I'll ensure this doesn't happen again"
Ownership plus action
Transformation begins here
Most wrestlers are stuck between levels 1-3, explaining their losses instead of owning them. Champions live at levels 4-5, turning every setback into a setup for growth.
The Compound Effect of Blame
One excuse seems harmless. But blame compounds like interest:
Year 1: "The ref cost me that match"
Year 2: "Refs always screw me"
Year 3: "The system is against me"
Year 4: "Why even try when it's all politics?"
What started as a single excuse becomes an entire worldview. These negative-focused wrestlers develop a reputation for being complainers. Coaches stop investing in them because they keep trying to encourage a positive mindset and are met with pushback. Teammates distance themselves from the toxic negativity. Opportunities disappear because nobody wants to work with someone who refuses to own their outcomes. This is the vortex you create for yourself. Your own personal self-fulfilling prophesies: “the world works against me. I am unlucky and untalented.”
The Ownership Challenge
For the next 7 days, you're not allowed to blame anyone for anything. Not refs, not coaches, not teammates, not opponents, not parents. Everything that happens is your responsibility to own and learn from.
Day 1-2: You'll feel frustrated, wanting to explain why things aren't your fault
Day 3-4: You'll start seeing patterns in your excuses
Day 5-6: You'll begin finding power in ownership
Day 7: You'll wonder why you ever gave your power away
This is a skill, and it takes practice. Even if it seems impossible or unrealistic at first, you’ll begin to see the positive twist on every situation. That your ability to own your part, creates more power over your situation and your reactions. This isn’t about blaming yourself for every outcome. Instead, it’s about learning to build your resiliency, and become honest with how you always play a part in the outcome- positive or negative. You honestly can’t afford to not at least try this out.
It’s Not Really a Sacrifice
Once a coach told me, “Katherine, you’re not sacrificing to be here, training and competing. Your family, they are sacrificing. You are doing exactly what you want to do.” This blew open my perspective on taking ownership over my career. Nothing is really a sacrifice when you actually want to participate.
When you are honest about what is a sacrifice (am I sacrificing time with friends on the weekend to wrestle? Or am I doing exactly what I want to do, but I can also be miss being with them?), and what is really not, you release the chokehold it originally had around you. Once I released the feeling of guilt around leaving my family in order to train and compete, I was free to do what I wanted to do: wrestle.
The Unstuck Wrestler 16-Week Performance Program begins with Week 1: Accountability and Ownership, establishing the foundation that you own your season and when you control the controllables, you success is inevitable. Stop giving your power away through blame. Start taking ownership of all areas: your preparation, your performance, and especially your failures. That's how we build resilient wrestlers.
December 1st is go time, be sure to be signed up for The Unstuck Wrestler before then. Don’t continue making the same mental mistakes as last season. It’s time to evolve, take ownership for your wrestling season, and become Unstuck.
