Everything that goes along with being a victim is in direct conflict with what you need to succeed. When you see yourself as a victim you are helpless, hopeless, depressed, self-pitying, blaming, negative, and unlovable.

Other than that, it’s a gay old time.

Definition of a victim: a person to whom life happens.
–Peter McWilliams

We’ve all been through times when we felt like the victim. I still have times where I throw myself a pity party. Because even though victimhood holds us back from moving forward to the success we want, it also holds rewards for us.

It’s a lot easier playing the victim than taking responsibility for our own life and working hard to achieve something. It can also be a great excuse.

• You are not expected to do much of anything, certainly not work hard and succeed.
• You have no responsibility for what happened to you.
• You have a right to be depressed and angry.
• You are entitled to a bottomless pit of sympathy.
• You have a right to be rescued.
• You may win millions of dollars in a lawsuit.
• No one can question you or they are “blaming the victim.”

But that small pleasure and avoidance of working on fixing our problems comes with a huge cost.

Once you believe you’re a victim at the mercy of circumstances, what’s the point in trying? You are not in control of your own destiny, so why put in the hard work it takes to change, grow, and achieve what you want?

If you have no power to change your life you’re doomed to whatever life, other people, chance, or fate does to you.

Gee, sign me up for that life. That sounds super.

Victimhood is Self-Sabotage

When things aren’t going well for us it’s easy to play the victim:

Divorced three times? Your parents were bad role models.

Didn’t get the job? The boss must be racist.

Lost your job because you keep showing up drunk? It’s not your fault. You’re an addict.

Didn’t make the sale? The customer hates fat people.

You might be thinking to yourself right now, Greg is a moron. Some people really are victims. Sometimes it’s really not their fault.

And you know what? You’re right (except for that Greg’s a moron part). Sometimes you are a real victim of racism, or fatism, or sexism, or whatever other -ism you can come up with.

But even if you are a true victim, how is being a victim going to help you make your life better? It won’t. It can’t. So it’s up to you to say, No matter what has happened to me in my past I am not going to let that become my future. I am not going to let anyone or anything have the power to ruin my life.

That doesn’t mean all the pain and depression will go away overnight. But realizing that maintaining your victim status will do nothing to help you overcome your current situation is absolutely necessary to getting you back on the path to success.

Circumstances, event, tragedies, and what people have done to you do not have the power to make you a victim unless you give them that power. You get to decide. Your responses, your attitude, and the way you frame things in your mind can help or hurt you. What will you choose?

Action Steps:

1) Realize that believing you are a victim, regardless of your situation, will not help you reach your goals.

2) Change your mindset to an internal locus of control – where you believe you are in charge of what happens in your life. Your past and current circumstances don’t control your future, you do.

3) Reframe everything in your past in the most positive way you can.

4) Choose to make everything in your past part of what is making you stronger and better. Believe it’s helping make you who you need to become to create the life you want.

Let’s GO!

(If this post resonated with you, share it with a friend and check out my book, GO! How to Find and Pursue Your Passionate Purpose, available in paperback and audiobook.)