My short blog post about this book is here:
http://www.wakalix.com/wp/2008/09/07/mistakes/

A really interesting look at our natural tendency to assign blame – and never to ourselves – instead of admitting mistakes and failings. The authors look at the way we create scenarios to get ourselves around what they term “cognitive dissonance” – the knowledge that we’ve done something stupid or wrong, a knowledge that doesn’t jive with the thoughts we have of ourselves as smart, good people. It also gives the reader a number of strategies to help them look at their thoughts and actions and re-evaluate them in more objective ways.
It’s a very interesting read that will leave you thinking, and seeing more clearly.

Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) is a book that I found on the new book shelf at my local library. The part of the book that really spoke to me (and made me feel very uncomfortable) was the chapter about marriages and relationships. Having gone through a divorce, I know it is so much easier and more satisfying to blame the other partner for the failure, and so much harder and uncomfortable to take a square look at the mistakes that I’ve made, not to mention admitting them to others or attempting to make amends for them. But that is the whole point of the book: that, especially in our culture today, we are almost blind about extent to which we go to blame others for mistakes and to justify our own.