"Assess your role in failure before blaming outward After his life unraveled and he found himself alone in a hotel on Sunset Boulevard, Franklin resisted the urge to point outward. Instead he sat with a harder question: "Here's what I did to contribute to where I am. Here are the lessons. Here's how I'm growing." He frames self-assessment as "the fundamental tool of personal development and growth," arguing that people who habitually criticize others are usually avoiding this internal audit. The discipline is to run the inward analysis first — what did I do, what did I learn, how do I apply it — before drawing any external conclusions. Source: Devon Franklin, Undefined (RC & Friends style interview podcast), Devon Franklin Episode"