Keep the quality of your thoughts in check!
I want to talk to day about the insidious nature of having a victim mentality, why we so often end up with one and how to break free from it.
Welcome once again everyone! It’s so great to have you here, and to be able to be of service to you thought my words. Today’s blog on victim mentality was inspired by a conversation I had, over on the Money Savage Podcast with host, George Grombacher.
We had a really great chat about this, in detail and with lots of really great examples; so please check out the episode here:
Why do so many of us end up with a victim mentality then?
I should preface this part by reiterating the point I’ve made a thousand times by now: that our subconscious mind is like a Terminator. It’s a perfect, executing machine. It operates at a level so fast, that we can’t possibly hope to compete on a conscious level. The only influence we can have on it, is in what we feed it.
We can’t out pace our subconscious, but we can drip-feed it with new programming. In fact: we must drip feed it, because if we don’t do so deliberately – circumstances will dictate the input instead. Random in: random out!
By owning the fact that we’ve never actually failed at anything, that we’ve just succeeded in creating undesired outcomes; we can then better understand how to move forward.
So when it comes to how so many of us end up seeing ourselves as victims; a lot of it comes down to what we have chosen to pollute our environment with. I’m pretty sure that most of you (who live in Western, democratic countries anyway) are aware of just how much people blame external factors, for their lot in life?
Whether it’s our upbringing, where we went to school, who is holding political office, any physical ailments we may have etc… There’s always something to blame and you can see this reflected in just how litigious we’ve become. Whole multi-billion dollar industries exist, with the sole purpose of identifying a grievance and then exploiting it under the guise of “owed compensation”.
Now ok: I don’t wish to get dragged into the moral-ills (perceived or otherwise) of society. That’s really for you to decide. What I wish to point out though, is that this has a massive influence on what our subconscious read on the situation is!
If you’re not careful, the constant message of compensation culture will make you hyper-aware of every grievance you can lay claim to. Unwittingly walking you into a Victim Mentality.
I’m sure we’ve all remarked, however benignly, that someone might trip on a protruding piece of sidewalk paving unless it is repaired by local authorities. Or maybe that a ‘warning: wet floor’ sign should be put down to avoid an accident. All of course with the tacit implication (or outright assertion) that responsibility for said action lies elsewhere.
“But Daniel” I hear you cry “you can’t possibly be suggesting that we engage in…dun dun dah….victim blaming!!”
I’m not suggesting that we blame anyone, necessarily. But we do have to take full responsibility for creating our experiences. So say someone trips on a broken sidewalk, goes head over heals and lands awkwardly causing themselves an injury of some kind.
The modern collective agreement would seem to suggest that, that person couldn’t possibly be held responsible. That the accident would never have happened, if the paving was level or at the very least: a warning sign had been placed there. Yeah…but, it wouldn’t have happened if they were looking where they were going either!
But we are so used to thinking in this way, that it probably feels like something of an anathema to flip it round like that. But try and catch your thoughts/emotions when responding to a suggestion like that. Are you really serving yourself by always identifying a victim and outsourcing your responsibility like that?!
Therein lies the problem. We have allowed our subconscious narrative to be informed by grievance/victim culture and then indulged liberally in the resulting abdication of responsibility. This, frankly; lamentable tendency these days, is stripping people of all their agency. Inculcating them in a victim mentality that keeps them down. I don’t think people would, if confronted with the full weight of what this really means, carry on allowing this for themselves.
If you find yourself on the one hand pointing the finger at every available opportunity, yet complaining about your lot in life: it’s time to put two-and-two together!
You are giving away all your power through your victims mentality! Of course you can’t create your dream life. And if this sounds harsh to you, that’s probably because your subconscious if riddled with exactly the kind of disempowering garbage that I’m talking about! Why else would it offend you?!
It’s time to get real about how we see ourselves and who we want to be!
As I teach in Stepping Beyond Intention and in particular through my Flow Funnel (please check out my recent blog series on this, if you haven’t already): we start with Gratitude. Well…we actually start with Listen, but gratitude is the first step to creating what we want.
Why gratitude?
Because it is the emotion we most want to associate with our desired outcome. Remember when I said about how, in being bombarded with messaging about filing for grievances; you start becoming hyper-aware of everything that might possibly be considered one? Well, if you start practicing gratitude instead, you’ll begin introducing that into your subconscious. In turn you will become hyper-aware of all the things in your life to be grateful for!
Pretty soon, you’ll be reminded continuously of just how much there is to be grateful for in your life. This will also go a long way to making you more resourceful! Instead of seeing only lack and powerlessness in your life, you’ll see all of the ways in which you can improve your own situation.
What we choose to focus on, we will see more of. That’s just a function of our reticular activating system. It’s designed to help us focus and filter out non-pertinent information. The upshot of which is that we can often miss things that we don’t believe are possible.
So how can we practice gratitude, in order to break free of our victim mentality?
Well I offer lots of free resources, many of which come with practical guides on how to do this. I won’t go into the minutia here, you can see for yourself, but suffice it to say: we need to start eliciting the emotional response we have, when we are grateful for something.
I’d encourage you to close your eyes and recall a time when something happened for you, that you were truly grateful for. Really make it real for yourself in your mind’s eye, then pay attention to the physiological response that results. You might get butterflies in your stomach, for instance.
Really get to know the feeling of gratitude. Get to the point that you can easily recall the sensation in your body.
This is why I call it ‘practising’ gratitude.
You want to approach it in the same way that a Stanislavski method actor uses sense memory. Deliberately choose it on a regular basis, and before you know it; you’ll find yourself slipping into it without choosing to.
That’s when you know, your subconscious has gotten the message! That’s when you will know that you are reclaiming your power and breaking free of a mentality that keeps you held back, in a state of victimhood.
Decide for yourself today: is the short-term comfort of being a victim and not being responsible, really worth the long-term pain of a life without agency or fulfilment? If the answer is ‘no’ then you’ve just unlocked the leverage that you need over yourself, to begin making the shift.
For more on this, or to delve further; please check out my best-selling book: Stepping Beyond Intention.
Thank you so much for reading this blog, from the bottom of my heart! If you enjoyed this, I produce regular Do It With Dan blogs, podcasts and videos. I have three books published now: Stepping Beyond Intention, The Dreamer’s Manifesto and From Time-to-Time (a really great book on time mastery). All of these are here to serve you and make you part of the journey as well.
For more guidance on how to change your internal programming, to attract greater abundance and experience greater freedom: please click on the link below for free access to my…
