Don’t stay a victim
Imagine you’re sitting on a horse, and you want it to go down the paddock and turn left through a gateway into a more interesting area. By the way in this illustration the ‘horse’ is an analogy for your ‘life’.
So here you are sitting cross legged on top of your horse in a lotus position (remember I said ‘imagine’) mentally willing the horse to do what you want it to do. Will that get your horse to go where you want it to go? … No, it won’t. So now you get angry and yell and swear at the horse. Will that get it to go where you want it to go? … Again, no it won’t. Ok, another option is you hand the lead over to someone walking past and ask them to take you. That may sound alright but now who’s in control of your horse (life)? So how do we get our horse to go where we want it to go? We do it by picking up the reins and learning to work it ourselves. The saying, ‘It’s choice not chance that determines our destiny’ is a good life guiding principle.
One of the best ways to disempower our life (to let the reins go), is to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions. When I blame someone or something for my predicament I limit the ability to accept responsibility for my own life, and with that, the power to make any needed changes to improve it.
The problem here is, when we claim victimhood, the very person (ourselves) that can do something about the situation has decided not to.
To be honest, there can be benefits in labelling ourselves as a victim. Benefits like, I’m not responsible for my lot in life, … it’s not my fault, … you should feel sorry for me, etc.
When we place blame on people or events we disempower ourselves from getting the reins back of our own life. In doing that we restrict the opportunity to look honestly at what we might be doing to contribute to the situation we are finding ourselves in.
Blaming others disempowers us from being able to make the personal changes needed to improve ourselves. Blaming others can also be a way to avoid facing the truth of how I contributed to the situation I’m now in. We may succeed in making someone else feel guilty, but the price we pay for that is to disempower ourselves from taking responsibility for our own life.
Until we become willing to honestly face the things we are doing that are contributing to our situation we will continue to remain stuck. The sad thing here is this attitude can flow down to the next generation.
Accepting responsibility for my own life is a recognised hallmark of character and maturity.
The big step in seeking to start getting back the reins of our life is when we come to the place of realising ‘to become a victim was not my choice but staying one is.’