Leigh D Wilson
⦁ Are you aware that acting as a victim will only serve to compound your INNER STRUGGLES
⦁ Unwanted or unpleasant things happen inevitably in life and you will find life easier if you simply accept this fact
⦁ Some people act as if they are at the mercy of everything and everyone, blaming others or the world in general for any misfortune they experience – the ‘poor me’ view of the world
⦁ By doing this they are surrendering control of their own lives
⦁ If you believe that circumstances beyond your control are constantly dictating your fortune and that fate is contriving against you, you are disempowering yourself and taking away your opportunity to take control and direct your life in the way that you want it to go
⦁ It’s a bit like looking at the glass as being half empty rather than half full
⦁ The reverse point of view is to take responsibility for all that happens in your life, which then gives you power and control over it and the things that happen to you
⦁ Successful people come in all shapes and sizes, nationalities, faiths, creeds and gender, but one characteristic of successful people is that they take full responsibility for their lives and all that happens to them
⦁ By doing so they believe that they have a better chance of influencing the outcome of life’s events rather than abdicating that power to others or to fate
⦁ By suggesting that you take full responsibility for your life I’m not asking you to find another way of blaming yourself if something goes wrong. I’m not asking you to say, for example, “I caused this, so I must be bad”, but rather “I caused this, so what can I learn?”
⦁ Blame has no place in your thought processes: it is a destructive and disempowering emotion that contributes nothing.
⦁ The whole of life is really a matter of trial and error. We learn by trying something and looking at the results that we obtain. Using this feedback, we might vary our approach somewhat and try again. So when things don’t work out, we don’t regard ourselves as having failed. We have simply had a go at something and are now receiving and analysing the feedback.
⦁ Blame would actually cause one part of you to treat another part of you as a victim and so you would actually be reinforcing a victim mentality, which is the exact opposite of what is intended.
⦁ Your attitudes can reveal themselves in very simple ways. Perhaps you sleep in and start the day late. You then burn your toast when you’re making your breakfast, and because you are running late for the train you miss it and arrive even later for work. Because of this you miss an important meeting. What would you say to yourself “Nothing is going right today – this is a terrible day and I bet nothing goes right for the rest of the day”?
⦁ What do you think would happen if you said this to yourself? Of course throughout the day you be looking for things to go wrong to support this belief. Without doubt things would go wrong, because that is the way you’re thinking that is the bias you’re putting on things. How differently your day would go if you said to yourself “Ah well, a couple of things are gone wrong for me today so I guess the rest of the day will go smoothly”?
⦁ You can become familiar with this by taking note of the language used by those around you – did they speak as victims or are they speaking from more powerful positions, as people taking responsibility for their lives?
⦁ Once you start looking for it you’ll find that you become very aware of people who are speaking as victims. You might even find yourself moving away from them, preferring the company of people who see themselves as masters of their own destiny.
⦁ So think carefully about the language you use, because this will often reveal whether, at an unconscious level, you think of yourself as a poor victim of circumstances or not. Weed out any language that could suggest that you’re not taking full responsibility for your life and you’ll find that you start coming from a much more powerful position: you will feel stronger and more confident.
⦁ There are people who have had incredible misfortune in life but who refuse to dwell on it, accepting their misfortune as simply being the cards they were dealt with. They then get on with living their lives as fruitfully and successfully as possible, despite any limitations they might have, refusing to use their disabilities as an excuse for not doing so.
⦁ You only have to look at their athletes completing in the ParaOlympic Games to see wonderful examples of that.
⦁ I talk more about this in my book “Overcoming Financial Stress – How to Conquer Your Financial Fears and Create a Better Future ” available on Amazon and on my website.
⦁ If you discover that this is a problem for you and would like some help with that, then perhaps we should chat.
