EP 35 | You Can Be a Good Person And Still Be the Problem

What if accountability isn't an attack on your character?

In this episode of Rebuilt Different, I talk about the idea that you can be a genuinely good person and still contribute to your own problems.

Not because everything is your fault.

But because sometimes the lesson isn't in what happened to you—it's in the pattern that kept you there.

Because being the problem doesn't automatically make you the villain.

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Transcript

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I think some people would rather be right than grow. And honestly, I understand why. Because growth usually requires a moment where you have to stop focusing on what everybody else did and start asking yourself, okay, but what was my part in this? And that's uncomfortable. Because most of us want to believe that if our intentions were good, our role in the situation was too. Of course we want to see ourselves as a good guy, the reasonable one, the one who was trying, the one with good intentions. And maybe we are. But I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is assuming that being a good person automatically means that they're playing a healthy role in the situation. Those aren't the same thing. You can be kind and still have poor boundaries. You can be generous and still tolerate too much. You can mean well and still make a mess of things. Because admitting that you played a role in something forces you to look at yourself instead of everyone else. And most people would probably rather analyze what happened to them rather than examine how they participated in it. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Rebuilt Different. I'm Epiphany Page, and today we're talking about something that I think makes a lot of people uncomfortable. The idea that you can genuinely be a good person and still contribute to your own problems. Because somewhere along the way, a lot of people started treating accountability like a character assassination. As if admitting that you're wrong means that you're unworthy or flawed or toxic. And I don't think that's true. I think accountability is just information. And the more information that we have about ourselves, the better decisions that we can make moving forward. One thing that I've noticed in my own personal human behavior studies is that most of us are pretty generous when it comes to explaining our own behavior. If we were late, we were busy. If we were short with someone, we were stressed. If we forget something, we got a lot going on. But when it comes to other people, sometimes we're not nearly as generous. Now suddenly they're rude, disrespectful, selfish, uncaring. And what's interesting is both people always have a story. Both people will always have reasons. Both people usually think they're right. That's why conflict is so complicated. Because most people are not intentionally trying to be the villain in someone else's story. They're usually trying to protect themselves in their own. And I think when people hear the phrase that you might be the problem, they immediately picture someone who's toxic or mean, manipulative or controlling. But that's not always how it shows up. Sometimes being the problem looks like poor communication, avoiding difficult conversations, getting defensive, refusing to listen, not apologizing. But sometimes I think it shows up in a much quieter way. And I think this is where a lot of good-hearted people get stuck. Think about dating. Maybe you're generous, patient, understanding, supportive. I know a lot of ladies watching this will probably be able to resonate with that. You go above and beyond for people. And relationship after relationship leaves you feeling more disappointed, more used, or more drained than the last one. But at some point, it becomes worth asking, what role am I playing in this pattern? Not because you deserved it, not because what they did was okay, but because the patterns keep repeating, probably worth something paying attention to. Maybe you keep ignoring red flags. Maybe you're choosing to see the potential instead of the reality. I've done it many, many times. So no shame or blame here. Or maybe you're giving people access that they never earned. And that's the tricky part. It's easy to identify the behavior that hurt you. It's a lot harder to examine the pattern that kept you there. Because one question asks, What did they do? The other asks, what am I supposed to learn from this? And that's where accountability becomes powerful. Not because you're blaming yourself, but because you're learning from yourself. And I think this is where things get interesting. Because for a long time I thought that understanding people would protect me. I've always been fascinated by human behavior. I just have. It's been a hobby of mine. Why people do what they do, what happened to them, what shaped them, what they're afraid of, what they're carrying. And I still think that's important. But at some point I realize something. Understanding someone doesn't automatically make them good for you. And understanding someone's behavior doesn't make the consequences disappear. I can understand why someone is emotionally unavailable. That doesn't mean that I should keep waiting for them to be available. I can also understand why someone might struggle with communication. But that doesn't mean that I need to accept poor communication. I can understand someone's circumstances and still decide that they're not the right person for me. And I think a lot of people get stuck there. Because understanding someone feels productive, it feels compassionate, it feels emotionally intelligent. Sometimes we're so busy trying to understand the other person that we never stop to understand ourselves. And psychologically, I think part of the reason why we do this is because our brains love consistency. Not happiness, consistency. What's familiar feels safer than what's unfamiliar. Even when what's familiar isn't working. I know we've talked about that before. Which is why a lot of people keep repeating the same patterns with different faces, myself included. Different relationship, same dynamic. Different friendship, same dynamic. Different job, you get the picture. But eventually you gotta ask yourself, what keeps feeling familiar here? I think one of the funniest parts about growth though is looking back at older versions of yourself and realizing how many things seem so obvious now. Things you couldn't see then, patterns you couldn't see then, lessons you hadn't learned yet. But I think that one of the signs that you're growing is occasionally looking back at a past version of yourself and thinking, yep, wouldn't do that again. Not because you're judging yourself, not because you're ashamed of who you were, but because you've learned, you've had more experiences, you've gained information, and you've become someone who sees things differently now. And I think that's what growth is. Not becoming perfect, just seeing things that you couldn't before, and making different choices. I do think that one of the biggest misconceptions about accountability is that they treat it like a verdict. Like the moment that you admit that you played a role in something, you've somehow been declared guilty. A bad friend, bad partner, bad person. That's not what accountability is. It's just being willing to look at a situation and ask, what can I learn from this? Because if every lesson that you learn begins and ends with what someone else did wrong, eventually you stop growing. Not because there aren't people who hurt us. There are. Not because people shouldn't be held accountable, they should. But because growth requires us to look at the only person that we have the ability to change, ourselves. And that's why I think this conversation matters. Because you can still be a good person and have blind spots. You can be a good person and repeat unhealthy patterns. You can be a good person and still tolerate things that you shouldn't. You can be a good person and still make mistakes. Those things don't cancel each other out. They're part of being human. So if there's one thing that you take away from this episode, I hope it's this. Being the problem doesn't automatically make you the villain. Sometimes it means that there's just a lesson waiting for you that you haven't learned yet. But I promise once you learn it, everything changes. See you next week.