Stop Playing the Victim: A Guide to Taking Back Control

I’d like to preface this by acknowledging that not everyone starts on a level playing field in life. You may have read the title to this blog, taken one look at me and said “well, you’re white, you’re male and you weren’t raised in poverty, who are you to talk about victim mentality?” That’s fair enough. My reply to that would be, I acknowledge the privilege I have and accept that I couldn’t ever understand the prejudice some groups of people face. I would also say that my life hasn’t always been easy and just as I don’t know the struggles you’ve had, you have no idea what I’ve been through. Put simply, I am just a man writing something on the internet who has worked extremely hard to get to where I am today. I do, however, understand and accept that others face barriers that I simply haven’t had to overcome.

On that same train on thought, I feel it is important that you, the reader, accept that if you’re reading this right now, you are more fortunate than the significant majority of the world. After all, you’re reading this because you had the opportunity to go to school and learn how to read. You also have access to a mobile or laptop with internet connectivity. These are things that some can only dream of.

One final caveat before anyone tries to cancel me. There are some obvious exceptions to the below discussion. The world has, over the course of its existence, seen far too many atrocities. The victims of those atrocities are just that, victims. It should go without saying that this blog is not referencing these events or the individuals involved. It is discussing the every day victim mentality that people adopt in relation to “first world problems”.

Anyway, on with the blog.

Let’s start by defining victim mentality. In my view, victim mentality is when you, an individual, hold anyone or anything other than yourself responsible for all the things that go wrong in your life. That’s not to say that all hardship in your life is your fault. For example, being born into absolute poverty is, of course, not your fault. Being born a certain way and there being prejudice against you is again, not your fault. How the world views you, whoever you are, is not your fault. However you do have a choice in how you react to the environment you’re in.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”” I hear you ask. Let’s think about this simplistically for a moment. If we break life down into its most basic form, it is simply a collection of experiences. We are born, some good shit happens, some bad shit happens and then we die. That’s literally it. We have no control of this fact. Now, you may think that’s morbid, I say you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s anything else. When we drill into it further though, and analyze how we react to the good and the bad experiences, something interesting happens.

Pause for a moment and think about the most recent event that made you feel really good. More often than not when the good shit happens to us, we feel amazing and we never think twice about what caused that experience. Let’s say you studied hard for the grade you just achieved. Perhaps you won the lottery. Regardless of what it is, in all likelihood you’ll pat yourself on the back, say it’s a job well done and move on with your life and revel in how awesome you are. You can think of almost any good experience in your life and the point always holds true. You never attach blame to the cause of an event that makes you feel good. You would never sit there are say “you utter bastard, I just won the lottery and it’s all your fault!” Because let’s face it, you’d sound fucking mental if you did that.

Yet as soon as you flip that around. As soon as some really bad shit happens in our lives, we almost always have the opposite reaction. Think about the last time something really, really shit happened to you. I can almost guarantee that your initial reaction was to point the finger and blame literally anyone or anything for it. We’ve all done it, we’re all guilty of it. Yet, it isn’t any different to when the good experiences happen. The reality is, when these bad things happen, they usually aren’t our fault and it’s usually something outside of our control that causes them, but what we often don’t appreciate or acknowledge is that this is also true for the good experiences.

The truth is, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, we have almost no control over what happens to us, good or bad. The world is chaos and chaos is impossible to control. So to avoid accept that fact, whenever something good happens, it is easier to pat yourself on the back than it is to be grateful for what has happened to you. When something bad happens, it is easier to play the victim than it is to take responsibility.

What you don’t realize is that both of these are barriers to you make the most of your life. Being grateful for the good in your life is a gateway to peace and happiness. Taking responsibility for how you react to the bad and removing victim mentality from your life is how you will grow, move forward and succeed, despite the presence of those bad experiences.

So, if you’ve been reading this and think “shit, that’s me, how can I change?” Try these two exercises and I promise you, you’ll never look back.

1. Before you go to bed this evening, write down three things you are grateful for in your life and see how you feel. Then do it again tomorrow night, and the night after, and the night after that, etc.

2. The next time something shit happens to you, rather than pointing the finger, take responsibility for how you deal with it rather than wallowing in self pity, whether it was your fault or not.

Oh and remember, if you don’t like what you’ve just read and think I’m talking total bollocks, I’m just a guy on the internet who has an opinion and you can choose to ignore it.