Socializing Successes, Privatizing Failures

You may have heard the saying that big business in America privatizes their successes and socializes their failures, meaning that when they are successful they claim all credit (and profit) for that, but when they stumble they look to the public for a rescue. While this certainly matches the facts of American business over the last couple of decades, most of us live by the reverse maxim — we socialize our successes and privatize our failures.

That is, when many of us are successful we downplay that and ascribe it to collective effort.

“Oh that was easy, I just got it from Larry down the hall.”

“I can’t take credit for that, I was just copying Eileen.”

“I could only afford that house because my parents helped out.”

While it’s definitely a positive thing to recognize the ways that we have benefitted from the efforts of other, too often this becomes a double standard. The things we wrestle with become OUR fault, while the things we succeed at belong to all the people around us.

But if your successes are as much because of the efforts of those around you, then your struggles are also social! It’s a raw deal when everybody else gets the credit for the positive things while you soak up the responsibility for the not-so-great things!

I’m not advocating that you blame everyone else for your problems, or refuse to acknowledge others’ contributions to your success. But in my work I’ve never seen it really be helpful for anyone to refuse to acknowledge the ways that the things they struggle with have been co-created with others. Not only is it unrealistic to blame only yourself, it is also often a way of avoiding conflict.

It’s so easy to just say “oh that’s my fault” as a way of not having to have a difficult conversation with important people in your life. You take the blame, and you don’t have to deal with other peoples’ potentially unpredictable emotional reactions.

But when you do that again and again, then you start to think of yourself as the one who always messes things up. And you’re not. You’re a complex, fully-featured human being who, like all of us, is trying to make your way in a complicated world.

Give yourself a break. Be realistic about how your screw-ups have happened. Have some difficult conversations with people around you. And if you need support in that process then reach out to someone!