Helen Keller
How do you react if something in your life doesn’t go as you wish?
Well, at first you’ll probably feel pain of some sort.
But what happens after that? What do you do after the initial pain?
Do you think of yourself as a victim, as someone with little or no control or power?
Do you slip back into a familiar headspace where you feel sorry for yourself and where you feel like someone – or the whole world – is against you?
I used to get stuck in that destructive and self-esteem sucking way of thinking quite often. And I know that many people get stuck in it from time to time.
Or more often than that.
So this week I’d like to share 3 steps that helps me to move out of that headspace and replace it with something better.
Step 1: Recognize the benefits of the victim mentality.
The victim mentality can be pretty beneficial in the short term and for instant gratification. A few benefits are:
Attention and validation.
You can always get good feelings from other people as they are concerned about you and try to help you out.
But it may not last for that long as people get tired of it.
You don’t have to take risks.
When you feel like a victim you tend to not take action. And so you don’t have to risk, for instance, rejection or failure.
Don’t have to take the responsibility.
Taking responsibility for your own life can be hard work, you have to make difficult decisions and it is just tough from time to time.
In the short term it can feel like the easier choice to not take personal responsibility.
It makes you feel like you’re right.
When you feel like the victim and like someone else is wrong and you are right then that can lead to pleasurable feelings.
In my experience, by just being aware of the benefits I can derive from victim thinking it becomes easier to say no to that whenever such thoughts start to creep up and to choose to take a different path.
Step 2: Ask yourself what the long-term consequences of this will be.
The benefits above can be quite addictive.
But what will the long-term consequences of getting stuck in victim thinking be?
- How will it hold you back from doing the things you deep down dream about in life?
- How will it affect your most important relationships?
- How does it affect your relationship with yourself?
Be honest with yourself and get motivation to change by seeing how destructively this will affect your life over the next 12 months and over the next 3 or 5 years.
Step 3: Replace the victim thinking with something more helpful.
To not create a vacuum where all those thoughts about being a victim used to run around for hours upon hours you need to replace the negative thought habits with something more useful.
Like for example:
Gratitude.
After that initial pain is gone – or smaller – you don’t have to create more suffering for yourself.
Instead, tap into gratitude.
I sometimes do that by asking myself this question to zoom out on my situation and to gain a more level-headed perspective:
Does someone on the planet have it worse than me right now?
Learn and take action.
After tapping into a more grateful frame of mind my mind also becomes more open to getting an optimistic answer out of my next question.
It’s usually something like:
What is one thing I can learn from this situation?
Then I follow that up with:
What is one small step I can take to move forward or out of this situation today?
Ask yourself: How can I give value to one person in my life right now?
Help this person out in some way by being kind, by listening or by doing something practically for example.
By doing so you’ll feel more powerful again. You’ll create more happiness for the other person and you’ll feel better about your day too.
Forgive.
I really like this quote about forgiveness from Catherine Ponder:
“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
You don’t have to forgive just because it is something you “should do”.
You don’t have to do it to be the better person either.
You can do it just for yourself. For your own well-being and freedom.
Release yourself from the agony and focus your limited time and energy on things that will make you happier.
Henrik Edberg is the creator of the Positivity Blog and has written weekly articles here since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Gothenburg and has been featured on Lifehacker, HuffPost and Paulo Coelho’s blog.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Love the article, it’s so true- so much better to be grateful :)
I had been a victim of victim thinking. All the points mentioned here are great. Other things that really worked for me was that I started listening to motivational tapes. When I heard them for the first time I felt really great, and to this day I listen to motivational tapes within 20 minutes after I wake up in the morning. And I also got into reading books and I read “Man’s search for meaning” by Victor E. Frankl. The book changed my life.
This is a really good article! I used to suffer from the ‘victim mindset’ from time to time, but after a while, it just felt pointless because it wasn’t helping me improve my circumstances. Now, there is no more feeling sorry for myself – I am the captain of my life and am steering my own ship. If I can do it, anybody can. Transform from victim to victor!
Henry helpful and I am excited to share with my friends on FB and twitter
I really enjoy the positivity blog emails, they brighten up the day and they provide very helpful tips.
This was very helpful, thank you!
This article is spot on. Living in gratitude is really the best defense against living as a victim. I feel a lot of frustration because I have been trying to help my mother-in-law who is extremely well versed at playing the victim (perhaps her whole life). She constantly throws up all sorts of excuses to prevent her life from forward progression yet is stubborn to accept help from others. How does one help someone who always plays the victim? How can you get someone to recognize their victim pattern without being rude? I’m plain tired of the “pity party”.
Having spent the entirety of the last few years with my ‘victim mind’ on, this is a short yet extremely effective article about what it is to have that mindset but to also step above it. This article came to me in the right time; it’s so easy to be sucked down into that mindset time after time again. You’re mind and body become so accustomed to it… but you have to set yourself above it because some part of you still always refuses to feel so crappy all the time.
The quotes you’ve included have now become my most favorite quotes, I’m taking them with me always.
I appreciate how it can be difficult to shake a victim mentality when someone has been subjected to a great travesty. But I also know that forgiveness is the only way forward!
Oh…beautiful…u r very brave n determined….only few people have this much strength to overcome the hardships n to inspire others….u r a precious gift of god….!!!
Very motivative words thanks alot
This is going to seem like a weird and random request, but it follows up on this article quite a lot. Sometimes that victim thinking is caused by someone known as a “malignant narcissist” and there’s a lot of really good information out there to identify one and how they operate. They make you feel like it’s always your fault and it’s not til much much later that you realize the failings weren’t your own but a manipulative effort by the narcissist. Could you write a piece about how to cope with one?
Awesome Article! I can’t even begin to explain how many times I’ve seen these steps work in my life & the lives of those around me. Always grateful. Always learning. Always moving forward!!
The stuff in this website is really very helpful and easily applicable in daily life.
People OFTEN confuse forgiveness with acceptance. It has become a buzz word thrown about by the masses – “forgive” and all will be healed. Very very few people ACTUALLY DO truly forgive – because it is damn hard, and some acts should NOT be forgiven.
Acts of evil, acts by unrepentant sociopaths – should be fought against and NOT forgiven. But then looking forward and focussing energy elsewhere ISN’T necessarily forgiving is it? It’s accepting!