Leadership & Life Balance

The Ownership Replay: Your Plan for When You Want to Blame Someone Else

Rhema Adelaja · National Champion & 4x DUX · October 2026 · 7 min read

Your first instinct after a loss is to blame someone else. This habit makes you feel powerless. Here is a clear process to turn blame into ownership and find a lesson instead of an excuse.

I was seventeen. It was the final quarter of a national championship game. We were down by one point with seconds on the clock. The ball came to me. I drove to the basket, went up for the layup, and felt the contact. The defender hit my arm. The shot missed. The whistle never blew.

The buzzer sounded. We lost. My first thought was not about the shot. It was pure rage at the referee. In the changing room, I told anyone who would listen how the ref had robbed us. It was their fault. It felt good to say it. It felt true. But it was also useless.

Blaming that referee made me a passenger in my own story. It gave my power away. Your first instinct after a mistake or a loss is often to look for something or someone else to blame. This habit makes you feel powerless. It stops you from getting better. It is time to change that.

Why Your Brain Loves to Blame

Looking for an external reason for failure is a normal human reaction. It is a defence mechanism that protects your self-esteem. Psychologists call it a self-serving bias. It is easier to say “the referee was blind” than “I failed under pressure”.

This leads to a fork in the road for your mindset. You can either believe outcomes are decided by outside forces, like luck or officials. Or you can believe you have the power to influence them through your own efforts.

Research shows that athletes who develop an internal 'locus of control', the belief they can influence outcomes, are better set up for success. Those who blame external factors develop a defeatist attitude. They feel like things happen to them, not because of them. Taking ownership as an athlete is not about beating yourself up. It is about taking your power back.

The Real Cost of Giving Your Power Away

Every time you blame an external factor, you are telling yourself that you were not in control. If the referee, the coach’s decision, or the bad weather was the reason you lost, what can you possibly do differently next time? You cannot control any of those things.

This mindset creates a cycle of frustration. You stop looking for ways to improve because you have already decided the result is out of your hands. Your focus shifts from your own performance to things you cannot change. This is a fast track to stress and burnout. Your energy goes into complaining instead of preparing.

Think about it. The most resilient athletes you know are not the ones who complain about bad calls. They are the ones who get straight back up and focus on the next play. They are obsessed with what they can control. Their preparation. Their effort. Their response to setbacks. That is not an accident. It is a trained skill.

The Ownership Replay: A Three-Step Process

The next time you feel that urge to blame someone else, I want you to run a simple process in your mind. I call it the Ownership Replay. It is a way to turn the impulse to blame into a question of personal ownership. It helps you find a lesson instead of an excuse.

Step 1: Acknowledge the Feeling

Do not pretend you are not angry or disappointed. You are. The first step is to simply notice and name the emotion and the urge. Say it to yourself. “I am frustrated, and I want to blame the coach for that substitution.” Acknowledging the feeling takes the power out of it. You are observing it, not just reacting to it.

Step 2: Ask the Ownership Question

This is the most important part. Ask yourself this question. “Putting that external factor aside for one minute, what was 100% within my control that I could have done better?”

This question forces you to look inward. Maybe the coach did make a strange substitution. But what about your behaviour on the bench before that? Were you communicating well with your teammates? Were you fully focused? Maybe the pitch was in terrible condition. But what about your choice of boots? Could you have adjusted your first touch sooner?

Step 3: Find the Actionable Lesson

The answer to the Ownership Question is not meant to make you feel bad. It is meant to give you something to do. The final step is to turn your answer into a single, actionable lesson for next time.

The lesson is not “I am bad at communication”. The lesson is “Tomorrow in training, I will make a point to encourage three of my teammates out loud”. The lesson is not “I have a bad first touch”. The lesson is “I will spend ten extra minutes this week working on receiving the ball on uneven surfaces”.

This is how you build resilience. Sports psychology shows that athletes who attribute failure to internal and controllable factors like effort and strategy are more likely to stay motivated. They see failure as a source of information, not a final judgement.

Putting It Into Practice

Let’s go back to my missed layup. For days, I was stuck on the referee. But when I finally ran this process, my thinking started to change.

1. Acknowledge: I was furious with the referee for the no-call.
2. Ask: Putting the ref aside, what was in my control? I could have been stronger going to the basket to finish through the contact. I also hesitated for half a second before I made my move, which gave the defender better position.
3. Act: The lesson was clear. I needed to add specific strength work to my programme for finishing in traffic. I also needed to work on decision-making drills, so I would attack the basket instantly when I saw an opening.

The referee’s call was out of my control. My strength and decisiveness were not. Focusing on those things gave me a plan. It turned my frustration into fuel. This is a form of cognitive reframing. You are actively changing an unhelpful thought into one that serves your growth.

This is not about ignoring bad calls or unfair situations. They happen. This is about ruthlessly focusing your energy on the things that will actually make you better. Blame is a dead end. Ownership is a path forward.

Your next step is simple. Do not wait for a big game or a huge mistake. Practise the Ownership Replay on small things. After your next training session, find one moment where something did not go perfectly. Run the three steps. Acknowledge, Ask, Act. Write down your one actionable lesson. This is how you start taking ownership as an athlete. This is how you take back control of your career.