Life is full of ups and downs. Some things we can influence, others not so much. Many situations will be made up of winners and losers. It’s just the way life rolls.
You might not always be able to dictate the terms of your life, but the one thing you have complete control over is how you deal with the ebbs and flows.
You can either position yourself psychologically as a victor or a victim.
Victim
The blame game
Victim mentality looks for other people or other things to blame for failure. They blame their circumstances, their lack of support, resources, money, time, know-how, their boss, they just blame. Blame helps to make the individual feel better, because it wasn’t their fault. One of the hardest things to admit is your own inadequacies. It’s really hard to look yourself in the mirror and admit you messed up at some point. Your Ego would rather cover up your shortcomings and have you believe the blame is over there, somewhere else.
Excuses are useless
Victim mentality is quick to find excuses for why things didn’t fall right for you, or didn’t work out the way you wanted, and for the same reason as pointed out when discussing “blame”, it’s just easier to do.
Denial is delusion
Denial is another self preservation tactic. Burying your head in the sand and hoping it goes away is a form of self delusion, failing to admit the reality of the situation is another.
Victim mentality is aimed at self protection, it’s a defensive tactic aimed at cushioning the blow. If you admit you were wrong your subconscious sees this as a big deal, cause if your wrong in a life or death situation, you could be toast. Your mind, doesn’t want to admit this could be the case, cause that’s what the minds there to do, keep you safe. It’s better to delude yourself, that way you can move on more quickly and try to forget about the whole sorry episode.
It’s easier to blame, excuse or deny, rather than have to look deeper into where the mistakes really lay, so laziness is part of the problem when it comes to a lack of self-analysis.
Live to be a Victor
If you take a Victor mentality, you empower yourself to really look at what went wrong and why. You might not be a victor of the situation, in that you haven’t won in absolute terms, in fact you’re likely to have lost. But by taking a victor mentality, you can at least learn any lessons that are there to learn.
Negative situations are inevitable at some time in your life. S**t happens, but feeling sorry for yourself doesn’t really serve over a prolonged period. Feel the grief of loss, feel the hurt, sure you should always face it full on and deal with it, but then learn what needs to be learned and move forward. Don’t hold on to the past negativity, just take the lessons forward with you.
Unless it’s a real life and death situation, most things are not that important in the great scheme of things. Money can be earned again, stuff can be replaced. “People”, and “Time are the two things worthy of real grief, and while they are beyond the scope of this article, even they should not be seen as a dead-end that can not be moved beyond. They surely can, with the right “victor” mentality.
The law of opposites says there are always positives in any negative, if you look hard enough and approach from an empowered perspective. Take ownership and responsibility. It’s your job, nobody else’s. Sure use the support of those closest to you to help you through emotionally, but don’t expect them to provide the answers for you, the solutions are within you, they are there, if you open to them.
So instead of playing the victim, blaming, excusing and denying, take ownership, take responsibility and be accountable for the situations you find yourself in, and use them as your strength for improvement and progress.