Another thing about that chick flick...

I talked yesterday about a movie I saw that really got my goat with regard to the way the young women characters related to having relationships.

But wait, there’s more.

A side plot in the movie was around the protagonist’s relationship with her flighty, over-critical mother.  There had obviously been friction between mother and daughter for years, and the daughter’s inability to forgive her mother was “obviously” blocking her from achieving her full potential.

At one point in the movie, the daughter confronted the mother, saying something like, “It’s your fault I’m like this. Nothing I ever did was good enough for you,” and other accusations in the same vein.

I waited for the mom to turn around and say, “Hold on a minute. I’m willing to talk about this, but don’t put the blame for your lack of results in life all on me. You are almost 30 years old, and have had enough years of adult life to turn around any ill effects from the years you spent under my roof. Take responsibility for your own life.”

She didn’t. She got upset, she got sad. And eventually she ended up apologizing for her bad behavior as a mother. I sighed. I guess the target demographic for this movie didn’t want to have a mother figure pushing back and encouraging a daughter figure to stand on her own two feet.

The more we go through our adult lives blaming someone else for how we are, the more we lose. We lose the opportunity to get free of other peoples’ beliefs and attitudes about us. We lose the opportunity to find our own center and our own strength.

At some point, preferably sooner than later, we have to put responsibility the results we produced or not produced in our lives squarely on our own shoulders.  It may take some time (depending on how entangled our self-image is with how others see us), but it is an accomplishment that will lead to lots of other accomplishments.

Forgive Mom, Dad, sister, brother, aunt, whoever for “what they did to you.” Now that you’re an adult, you do it to yourself—every time. Accept that, and you’ll get rich much sooner!