Are you a victim?
I’m not talking about PPI insurance. I’m talking about any area of your life in which you feel stuck and resentful. Maybe you’ve got a boss or a client you can’t stand. Perhaps you hate your job or your business isn’t growing as you’d like it to. Maybe you feel frustrated that you’ve never got enough time or money.
Inside every one of us is a victim. The victim sees their situation as the product of outside circumstances. I’m not happy but it’s not my fault. It’s because of Brexit/house prices/Trump/my boss/client/colleague/mother-in-law/childhood/being in debt/being too busy/climate change/my back problem/Uncle Jim who does my head in!
Because it’s not your fault, there’s nothing you can do to improve the situation. All you can do is lament and worry.
There may be some truth in the victim’s perspective. Maybe house prices are putting you under more pressure or your boss really is very unreasonable. It can be very helpful to acknowledge that.
But what’s not helpful, is the same negative repetitive thoughts going round and round your head, keeping you awake at night with anxiety and a paralysing from taking action.
The victim is great at excuses and scepticism.
“There’s no point talking to them about it, they won’t listen.”
“It’s just so difficult to make money in this sector at this time.”
“I haven’t got no time to exercise.”
This keeps you stuck, frustrated and unfulfilled.
For a long time I felt like a victim in with my business. I was losing money because I didn’t have enough clients, a stage almost every business goes through. But instead of being proactive I wallowed in blame. I believed it was because it was too difficult to find clients or that I just wasn’t good enough at sales.
I felt that whatever I did try to improve the situation probably wouldn’t work, so I was better off doing nothing. I felt a lot of anxiety about the situation but did very little to change it.
For me it was clear that I needed to bring in more money so that I could work my way out of debt. I also felt frustrated that I had the ability to help people to transform their lives and I wasn’t using it.
My turning point
I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen for ten years and told her what I was doing with my business. For the first time, that led to me admit how much shame I felt about my financial situation, and I became the most committed I’d ever felt to turning it around.
It’s the feelings that you have about this situation in your life that are really keeping you stuck in victimhood. To stop reliving them and reinforcing them, you need to stop giving yourself a hard time and accept with openness and kindness to yourself the fear, frustration or shame that you feel. Remember that these are all perfectly normal human emotions that everyone experiences in their life.
Focus on what you want
Another thing that keeps the victim stuck is focusing on what they don’t want. Once I started focusing on how good it would feel to pay off my debt, the holidays and retreats I wanted to go on, the house I wanted to live in, what my ideal clients would looks like and the difference I could make to them, my whole mentality shifted to a much more positive one and I could start making progress towards it.
Take consistent action
The victim is the king of procrastination. But to change an area of your life, it’s not enough just to know what you want, you’re going to have to take weekly if not daily action towards it.
In my case, once I started spending at least half an hour every day on sales and marketing, I shifted into a much more proactive mentality and the opportunities gradually started to flow, both from the things I was doing and from many unexpected places too.
The moment you take responsibility for everything in your life, is the moment you realise you’ve got the power to change it.
Call to action
If you’re feeling stuck, I’m offering five free coaching sessions in November to help build your confidence so that you can transform that area of your life.
Email me to book a time and start the transformation.
