Supposedly, there are two types of people that exist in the world. Those who take responsibility for their own actions and those who like to blame others. We call them overcomers or victims.

Overcomers see every action as their responsibility. If something goes wrong then the scale leans towards them thinking that it was their fault and they look for ways to fix it it. Victims, on the other hand, keep a ledger with the score firmly balanced towards others as the problem initiators.

For instance, let’s assume you buy a plant from your local nursery yet within a short period of time the plant withers up and dies. Overcomers start to investigate the plant’s death with themselves as the main suspect. Did they water the plant enough? Too much? Was the soil amended correctly? Did they fertilise it enough? Or, too much? It’s not until they’ve been through all the scenarios where they may have failed this plant that they concur that it possibly could have been someone else’s fault.

Yet victims instinctively blame the nursery and vow never to go back there again, sharing this new found experience with whomever will listen. There’s NO way it could have been THEIR fault.

It’s an intriguing dichotomy. The same situation but two very different responses to it.

I like to think I’m an overcomer, as I’m sure we all do, but there are times when I’ve taken the ‘Holier-than-thou’ approach and pegged my problems on someone else. When the dust has settled though it’s interesting to look through the charred remains and realise that, in fact, the problem was solely mine.

There was a period when Google dropped this blog from their indexes. As I madly scrambled for answers I told everyone, including Google, that they sucked. Their stupid algorithms and penalties had imposed a death sentence on my blog and I was not going to let it happen – not that I had a lot of choice in the matter.

Months passed by without any improvement until I happened, perchance, upon some article discussing how Google didn’t like broken links in sites and would often penalise them for it. I hastily sought a program that could expose any erroneous links and assuming that I wouldn’t have any, started the scan process of my blog. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of broken links started to appear. Links to newspaper articles that had passed their used by date, credits to sites where I had used an image and even to other bloggers who had now closed up shop.

I began the arduous journey of repairing them all and slowly, but surely, Google started to take an interest in my bog again.

The lesson: I realised that I am just as capable of being a victim as much as the people I blame as being victims. It was an experience that humbled me because I didn’t think I thought that way.

My sincerest, and humble, apologies to those who I’ve blamed for my inadequacies.

UPDATE
Sorry for the oversight of not mentioning the name of the product that I use. It’s called XENU and is currently a free app. It’s no-frills but it does the job.

Hope it helps you out as well.