We’ve all been there! Victim mode, lurking behind every conversation, argument, interaction, message, waiting in the darkness for it’s time to strike. It sneaks up on your like a nasty surprise, blind siding you like a mugger and hijacking your plans.
Whether you’re having a bad day, week, month or even year, the victim mentality can consume you if you let it, affecting all area’s of your life, relationships, finances, and outlook.
Even something simple like being given the wobbly table at the restaurant, or getting stuck in traffic or worse still trapped behind two slow walking people blocking the pavement so you can’t get by, whatever your frustration, once the victim mentality rears it’s ugly head you need to put a stop to it asap with key strategies that you can put in place to keep it well away for good!
In this post I want to share with you my Top 5 Steps to rid yourself of this parasite once and for all. Even when you think it’s too far gone, too hard, too difficult and just not worth it. Trust me, I have been there, when everything feels like it’s going wrong, and it keeps on spiralling like a bad dream that you just can’t seem to wake up from.
If this is what you’re experiencing right now, don’t panic. The good news is that there is a way out, but it takes commitment on your part to listen, engage and put into action the steps that follow. You need to learn self defence against this destructive pattern of behaviour and this my friend is the dojo. Welcome to karate for the mind.
If you’re ready to move up a level, not to settle for victim mode which is getting your nowhere and likely making the whole situation worse, if you’re ready to take charge of your life and responsibility for how it got you to this point, then read on…
1. Lion Mindset
The number one thing you must take control of when you’re feeling like a victim is your mindset. As I like to call it having a lion mindset is one step further, this is achieved by controlling what you are reading, what you are feeding your mind with, the thoughts you are having, indulging and promoting on a ‘show reel’ inside your head.
‘What You Think, You Become’ “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve,”
- Napoleon Hill
A lion mindset is courageous, it controls the content that goes in to ensure that it is nourishing excellence and promoting the thoughts that some who’s about to go out there and crush it would have.
After all, how can you expect to win control of your mind if all you’re feeding it is garbage, bad news, depressingly sad stories, mindless gossip and nothing of basis?
Reflect on this for a moment, is the content you consume on a daily basis across social media, in magazine, on TV, is it pushing you to be the best version of you you can be or is it degrading your mindset and taking from you like a thief in the night?
The way to quiet those doubtful, negative, downright awful thoughts is to gain control of your mind and that starts by feeding it content that nourishes it.
This can be achieved in a number of ways, start with informative, developmental, inspirational and podcasts littered with wisdom. I recommend Tony Robbins, Mastin Kipp, Orpah’s Supersoul Sessions, Jay Shetty as a good place to begin.
Reduce the intake of YouTube and Instagram content that isn’t produced by the thought leader themselves, cut it out, it is designed purely to keep you watching, scrolling and clicking, wasting your time and not filling you up with goodness. Much like a meal, stick to the organic whole grain foods and you’ll be supported from the inside for the long term.
Next, get reading — I recommend books like Jen Sincero’s You Are A Badass and Manifest Now by Idil Ahmed to kick start your mindset reset. Embrace the techniques and philosophies that are contained within these books, let your mind be open to learning new ways to handle stress, problems and power on through. You will not regret it.
A Lion mindset is disciplined, now this is key. If for second you indulge that negative voice, that nagging doubtful thought process, bring yourself back to the present moment to centre yourself. Do this by taking some deep breathes, try to focus on world in front of you, look at the detail, the quality.
Don’t go down that dark tunnel of thoughts that the mind can so easily create. A person with a lion mindset is disciplined enough to stay away from scary negative doomsday thinking and keep in the present focused only on what they can control. Take ownership of your mind right now, don’t let it be the boss of you. If you need to, go for a run, go boxing, cycling, dancing, meditate, whatever gets you from the negative thought state to the positive, open, abundant and light state.
In summary, the lion mindset is courageous because it is feed, nourished and supported because you commit to stay away from gossip, trash TV, Netflix instead of going for that run or listening to that audiobook, treat your mind as you would you time, it is the most precious commodity you have.
2. Get Moving
Outside of having a lion mindset the second step to ridding yourself of the victim is to get moving, the reason that exercise is so important and vital to living a healthy happy life is because it boosts your strength, immune system, endorphins, it is a reflection of progress physically, and it boosts your morale. If someone or something is ‘doing your head in’ or you can’t stand to be around a certain individual, limit your time with them and rather than spending your precious hours venting or gossiping to your co-worker behind their back (which feels relief for a second but then leaves you feeling frustrated) hit the pavement or the gym, take a dance class or a boxing lesson. By learning to remove yourself from situations that don’t support your goals, lion mindset or greater good and instead channelling your frustration, victimhood, anger into exercise you get a double benefit, firstly you protect your environment from mediocrity and raise your own standards of excellence and second you do something good for yourself.
Things, people, situations are always going to present themselves and come up from time to time as problems, hurdles and issues, this strategy is not about running away it’s about having an appropriate outlet for stress so that you can support your long-term wellbeing in a healthy way and cultivate an even stronger lion mindset.
3. Remember The World Is Always Changing
Nothing and no one is fixed in life, it’s important to remember this because companies close, job disappear, opportunities that were never really there in the first place go away, people change, life is always moving forward by its very nature.
“Change is the only constant in life.”
- Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher
This can help you quit victim mode because whatever you are going through, whatever has happened the moment you take responsibility, focus on what you can control (which is your thoughts, your mind, your attitude, how you show up everyday and the decisions you make) then you can adapt to the changes that are inevitable.
Say for example, you’ve been fired or you got turned down for a role you really wanted, instead of blaming the outside world, take responsibility for it, own that outcome and work with it. This approach leaves no room for victimhood.
the thing is victimhood cannot survive unless you feed it and by owning the situation and figuring out where to next, you give the victim no source of power on which to live.
If you expect change you can learn to anticipate it, and therefore when things don’t go the way you would have hoped or aren’t happening for you, you’re able to understand and have awareness towards the fact that this is your journey. It was meant to be this way so that you could take on an even greater opportunity.
This is also the same for building yourself during times of adversity. It is only through pressure that growth happens. just like with the body where Muscles are grown by breaking them down and letting them rebuild. Being humbled in this way by life leads to an ego death which means that you are more resilient, more dependable and more resourceful. By going through austerity, hardship and adversity it makes you tougher.
David Goggins, former Navy Seal refers to this as ‘callousing the mind’. If you don’t mind adult language (a heck of a lot of it) and want to know more about what it takes to go through BUDS (Training to become a Navy Seal) then read Can’t Hurt Me, by David Goggins.
“It’s so easy to be great nowadays, because everyone else is weak. If you have ANY mental toughness, if you have any fraction of self-discipline; The ability to not want to do it, but still do it; If you can get through to doing things that you hate to do: on the other side is GREATNESS ”
– David Goggins
4. Find Your Tribe
This goes back to the Lion mindset, if you spend your days surrounded by people how are victims, blame everyone else but themselves and are afraid to take responsibility, then the truth is you’ll likely end up taking on a portion of these or weakening the person you have the potential to become.
“You need to associate with people that inspire you, people that challenge you to rise higher, people that make you better. Don’t waste your valuable time with people that are not adding to your growth. Your destiny is too important.”
- Joel Osteen
Who you work with, who you marry, who you date, who you hang out with on a regular basis is phenomenally important.
Take a look at the people that you typically come contact with in a regular week, do they inspire you? Are they leading a life that you would want to live? Are they an example? How do they tackle problems? Are they pushing you to be all that you’re capable of? Are they investing in themselves? Are they trying to give, to be more for their families?
You must make sure you’re around people that push you forward, to want to ask more from yourself, people that face problems and adversity head on rather than flee.
Finding your tribe is one of the most important drivers you have when it comes to getting yourself out of a rut. And to do that you need to take a look in the mirror and examine who you are.
Who in your life do you admire?
Why do you admire them, what qualities do they possess?
Who do you want to become?
What would need to happen for you to be that person?
Start acting like that person today. The quickest way to move yourself from a negative spiral is to start doing the work, by this I mean acting the way the person you admire would act if they were in your shoes. I also mean showing up for yourself and doing whatever it takes to move yourself along the path. This could be leaving inspiration notes all over the house in random places, doing affirmations morning and night in front of the mirror, setting reminders on your phone that pop up and keep you motivated. Whatever it is that you need to do make sure you operate as the person you want to become today, get after it.
5. Get The Basic’s Right (Put First Things, First)
By this I am referring to eating nutritious food, sleeping right, exercising right, prioritising healthy relationships, making time for your purpose, drinking enough water, feeding the mind, the list goes on. As much as you might not want to feel like a victim and you might be stuck in its negative cycle of self-sabotage and it’s got its claws right into you, part of moving on from being the victim to full on A grade player is about getting the simple, basic, routine stuff done right. If you’re not sleeping right, and you’re up at all hours of the night, your body and mind will experience slumps in motivation, finding harder to make effective decisions and be more likely to indulge the victim mentality.
To counter this, focus on nailing a consistent sleep pattern, consistently supplying your body with good foods, consistent training, improving and working out at the gym. This gives you something to operate by, your body and mind knows what’s coming up and you start to get control over the little things that means you can tackle the bigger things and have the emotional intelligence, bandwidth and grit to go into battle against the problems themselves.
Establishing a routine also takes the guess work out of it and gives you a benchmark to operate by that can be dialled up and improved once you ready for to take it to the next level. Most importantly, don’t compare where you are at to others, or what you are trying to achieve to others, because this is a race that can only be won by you, no one else. Keep your ship tight and on course and you will get there.
I know it is hard right now, I know you want to moan, and tell the world why it’s not fair, and how you were wronged, but that is not going to help you. The best thing you can do in this situation is to accept that you have the powered to change the future and how it plays out is only up to you!
Thanks so much for reading, please share if you found value in this post and think someone else might benefit from it.
Tim
