Do you sometimes feel like a prisoner of your own life? Do you find yourself constantly think about what you would do if you didn't "have to" do X, Y, and Z?This past week, I found myself slipping into a victim mentality based on some unexpected things happening in my work life. Because I realize I'm always preaching AGAINST victimhood mentality, I decided to take my own advice!Check out the podcast/vlog or the typed summary below to hear what happened and more importantly, how YOU, right this moment, can start taking control of your life:For the full audio, please check out the podcast on iTunes and Soundcloud.

[podcast]

Vlog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmusJwsf_jg

Summary:

Escaping a Victim Mentality

As shown in the video/stated in the podcast above, I was inspired to do this post from mygeneric airport hotel room because randomly I got called on an impromptu business trip. It was a last-minute work assignment that (like all last-minute work assignments) came at an awkward time basically ruined all of my personal and side-hustle plans for the week.As if the impromptu-ness of it all wasn’t bad enough, the trip that was only supposed to be a few days long ended up stretching to 8 days. For 8 long days, I was trapped working 12-hour days (including weekends!) at a strange office in a strange city, only to come back to my sad little hotel completely exhausted in the evening.Now, even though working for 8 straight 12-hour days definitely stinks, I readily admit that out of all the things that could have happened, a random business trip (even one where I was made to work like a slave….) is a minor thing to be bitter about.Nevertheless, it still put a major cramp in some of the things that I had going on – I had to reschedule some personal and side-business projects because of this trip – so it was all to easy to find myself slipping into a victim mentality.Normally when I get off work, I can’t wait to jump into my personal and business projects but by about Day 3 of this trip, when I would get off work, all I wanted to do was order pizza to the room, goof off on my iPad, mutter to no one in particular how messed up it was that “they” weren’t going to let me go home, then fall asleep with all the lights on. (Which is exactly what I did…)After about 3 days of this wildly productive display (Not!) finally I was like, “Um, this is not going to work, I need to snap out of it.” Since I couldn’t ignore my own hypocrisy any longer as I was acting in the exact way I preach against, I decided to take my own advice and stop being a victim of my circumstances.I’m note sure what your situation is - maybe you've been working at a dead end job for a really long time, or maybe your financial situation is a certain way, or maybe school isn’t going how you’d like, or maybe you find yourself feeling resentful because you have to take care of others. If you’re in a situation where you feel like there's really nothing you can do to change your circumstance, I want to encourage you with three simple lessons to help take back control of your life:#1 – Honor the Power of ChoiceThis is going to sound a little harsh but remember I say this in love – I literally say this to myself – never forget that remember you are an adult.Girlfriend, you are grown, and as a grown woman, you always have the ability to make a choice.No matter what is going on or what the situation looks, remember that you have a choice. Unless they have a gun to your head, really, no one can “make” you do anything. In serious! In the words of my father, “I don't have to do anything but pay taxes, stay black and die.” (Thanks Dad!)It definitely feels easier to insist that others our circumstances are making it so that we “have” to do certain things, but I realized that when I thought that way, I was actually giving my own power away.For instance, yes I got called on this work assignment. But in truth, I didn’t have to go. I chose to go because, as an adult woman, I weighted the consequences of not going (getting fired) and decided I would rather endure the trip than risk losing my job. No matter how you slice it, that was my choice.I think we fear taking responsibility for our situations like this because we don’t want to admit that we had something to do with creating the circumstances we find ourselves in. However, if we hate our current situation, taking back our power by admitting that we’re the one who made the choice is the only way we can get out of our circumstance. In other words, if you had the power to get yourself in to something, you have the power to get yourself out.When you acknowledge the power of your choice, you can make a different choice - you can start to strategize a different game plan for your life. However, if you insist on playing the victim and you say things like, “Oh, I have to be here, or I have to be at this job, there are no other jobs, the economy is bad, etc...” then you’ve just locked yourself in and removed all other options from the table!In the short-term, not taking responsibility protects your ego in the short term, but it removes your options in the long-term because when you keep telling yourself, “Well I don't have a choice, they're making me do this.” When you think this way, you will never consciously come up with different ideas or strategies to get out of your situation.However, if you are a grown up and take responsibility making the choices for whatever is going on in your life, yes it stinks and it hurts your ego, but once you get past that, you reclaim your power to do something about your situation.There is power in acknowledging your choice!#2 – Remember Bitterness is the Opposite of GratefulnessWhile I was in my little funk, I had to realize that being bitter was preventing me from being grateful for what I had.And this was a big deal not just from an emotional level – bitterness and happiness are pretty much mutually exclusive – but from a practical level. Mentally speaking, you cannot see ways to improve or change your situation if you are in space of being so negative about what you have.What I mean is, if you are recognizing that even in the midst of whatever is going on, you have resources, you will begin to see ways to use those resources to create the future you want to have.In other words, if you're always in a space of bitterness, then you won’t recognize what you have right in front of you. For instance, a person who doesn’t make much money but is extremely grateful for what they have will come up with creative ways to better use what they have. They will see things a bitter person will never see.#3 – Stop Making It So Hard aka Have Some FunWhen we become victims of our situation, we hold ourselves back because we make up all of these rules about what we think we need to have in order to move forward.For instance, part of the reason why I was bitter was because I thought I wouldn’t have the time or energy to post on this blog. I had made it up in my mind that everything I produced needed to be this very detailed, long, drawn out post without even realizing that I could make it so much simpler on myself by just creating a video instead. (Which is what I ended up doing.)Are you making things unnecessarily hard on yourself? Maybe part of the reason you feel like a victim is because you’re creating rules for yourself you don’t even need to follow.For instance, maybe you want to write and publish a book but you are bitter about the fact that you don’t have a lot of time and money to get it done.Instead of believing, “Oh, I have to find this big-name publisher and I need someone to teach me how to write a manuscript, etc” Why not make it easy and fun by saying, “Every evening when I get home from work, I’m going to put on my favorite music, get a glass of wine, and for 30 minutes, I’m just going to write.”No matter what you want to do in life, ask yourself if you’re making it unnecessarily hard.

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When do you find yourself slipping into a victim mentality? Share your experiences in the comments below: