Not exactly as Oliver Norvell Hardy would have said it...

Anyone, who have had the pleasure to see any of the many films that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Laurel and Hardy, as they are commonly known, or for that sake Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy, if we are to stay with the names they were originally given) made together, will have met the almost proverbial sentence, which Hardy happily subject Laurel to at almost any given occasion:

Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.

And I think it is a very normal reaction, which is so close to us: when something goes wrong, we start looking for outer reasons, through which our own innocence has been led so badly astray.
But I think there is a much better way to do things: rather than looking for the reasons outside of ourselves, we should look for inner reasons instead. Not to say that we at all costs should find an explanation in which we ourselves were the reason why something happened, but usually, there's always something that could have been done better - if nothing else, it is always interesting to delve into the question: what could I have done differently to avoid things going as wrong as they did.
Hereby, we indirectly get to use our observations constructively. They are not to be used to point fingers at oneself. On the contary, they can prove invaluable when striving to avoid repeating unfortunate situations.
(Translated from Ikke lige som Oliver Norvell Hardy ville have sagt det..., originally published May 24, 2009)