Your Blame Is Someone Else's Leverage

Jake Luehrs
May 23, 2026

ONE QUESTION

What is my reputation with myself?

ONE THING TO PONDER

It’s fascinating to watch the most clever people use learning as a form of procrastination.

ONE PERSPECTIVE

Blame...it's easy to do, sometimes perfectly valid, always unhelpful!

But here's what I've learned after years of sitting with people in their hardest moments… I have never, not once, met a happy person with a victim mindset.

Blame, as valid as it sometimes is, quietly hands our power to the very thing that hurt us.

Whatever we're pointing at, that person, that situation, that circumstance.... We just made it our master.

We confuse blame with taking responsibility, thinking they are tied together. Meaning, if I'm not to blame, it's not my responsibility. I disagree.

That's the logic of a 5 year old.

Maybe we were genuinely wronged. Maybe life handed us something deeply unfair. Maybe the wound is real and the injustice is undeniable.

And yet. Here we are. Still breathing. Still reading this. Still carrying something that was never supposed to be ours.

So the only question that matters..the one I hope you sit with is this:

Now what?

Because that's the only question that actually matters.

It seems we have two choices:

The first is to prove that we were right.

It feels like justice. It feels like something. But it tends to leave us validated and miserable at the same time.

The second road is harder at first, and quietly extraordinary. You move. Not because what happened was okay…most times, it wasn't.

But because you matter more than the story of what broke you. You let the reckoning come later, but you refuse to stand still in the messiness of blame.

One path leads somewhere beautiful.

The other keeps us anchored to the worst thing that ever happened to us.

We get to decide. And I hope you choose yourself!

Onward and upward!

LEAD & LEARN : WEEKLY PICK

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21 Harsh Truths About Why You’re Still Lost

Modern Wisdom

This one stretched my brain a bit. Feeling lost usually isn’t a lack of potential, it’s a lack of honest direction. Mark Manson breaks down how avoidance, comfort, and chasing external validation quietly keep people disconnected from themselves and stuck in cycles that never lead anywhere meaningful. Clarity tends to come when we stop trying to escape discomfort and start taking responsibility for the life we’re creating.