One’s mental outlook is crucial. Your mental attitude, regardless of your ultimate aim, can either help you arrive there or elsewhere hold you back. A victim mentality is one of the many detrimental mental attitudes anybody can embrace.
A victim mindset is what?
The attitude of a victim is a destructive one. It ascribes external causes for internal distress, such as other people or external events.” A “point fingers out” situation, if you will.
Those who adopt a victim mentality see the world through a distorted, negative lens, attributing all of life’s misfortunes to forces beyond their control. No time is ever given for introspection. To claim victim status is to absolve oneself of responsibility. They are never at blame for anything. Those that take on a “poor me” attitude do so because they thrive on the attention, sympathy, and reinforcement they get when they act the part.
When we allow ourselves to become victims, we stop seeing our strengths and start seeing only our weaknesses.
While no one is inherently predisposed to a victim perspective, nobody is immune to acting the part, either. One may find everyone from sweet elderly grandparents to loving, well-intentioned parents to youngsters to the so-called “spiritually awakened” living in this land of defeat.
In truth, everyone living today has acted as the helpless bystander at some point in their life.
Victims want to be ready for the worst case scenario, and unfortunately, individuals who live in victim-hood are more likely to engage in self-defeating behavior when things start to go their way, since they believe that “disaster will be just behind the next corner.”
How can one overcome the negative, “poor me,” gloomy outlook that was likely formed and embraced in childhood?
Your self-concept is the starting point for everything else. How would you characterize yourself, a victim or a survivor?
Those that manage to stay afloat do so by just going with the flow. They are fully present and proactive in their life. They realize that whatever happens is entirely their fault. They understand that by taking charge of their own life, they have the ability to make positive changes.
On the opposite hand, victims indulge in self-pity while fighting and arguing with existence. They live in the past, certain that they can do nothing to alter their current situation. Because they believe they have no control over their circumstances, they constantly put up barriers and refuse to go forward.
Having a victim mindset is expensive. It has devastating effects on one’s personal life as well as one’s career. Those who wallow in self-loathing and a sense of victimhood because they have given up are the ones who really are failures.
The first step in overcoming a victim mindset is admitting that one has one. What we don’t possess, we can’t alter. Our mindset has to change, and we need to remember that “change depends on me.” We must accept the need of taking action in order to survive, no matter how tiny or trivial it may appear at the moment.
Additionally, we must quit putting ourselves down with demeaning “I’m unable” or “I won’t” comments and thoughts and replace them with uplifting “I can” & “I will” affirmations.
And we need to adopt the finest of attitudes: appreciation. It’s important to pause each day and think about what makes us happy and what’s going good in our lives. The victim mindset may be overcome by constantly redirecting one’s attention to the bright side of things.
At the end of the day, we have to treat ourselves all the same dignity and affection that we show to others. Then, and only then, can we stop seeing ourselves as victims and start acting as survivors.
We may not be able to influence the conduct of others or the events that occur in our life, but we are in charge of our responses. Being victims is not inevitable. It’s your call. Nothing that occurs or occurs to us can be used as anything other than a challenge.
Trying to find someone who can help you overcome the victim mentality that keeps playing in your head? Try joining a gym in your area. One of the greatest ways to combat negativity, beat victim mentality, and put yourselves on the fast route to feeling physically, intellectually, and emotionally well is to challenge yourself physically and get your blood flowing as your “happy, feel-good” chemicals kicked in via exercise.
“You deserve your affection and devotion as much as anyone in the entire universe.”