What is a Victim? Someone who is out of control of their life. The key here is the word CONTROL. I am not talking about crime victims here.

You are a victim when your life stops working for you. When you are miserable, hurt, anxious, afraid to be yourself or not functioning in a manner that is self-enhancing, you are a victim.

As children, we were taught to be victims by our parents. Your strings were being pulled by your caregivers and there was nothing you could do about it. You couldn’t support yourself and if you didn’t like ‘the rules’ there were few alternatives to them. Running away from home proved how helpless you were without the family that had control over your little life.

As adults, sometimes we carry many left-over habits from our childhoods, which may have made sense then, but set you up as a victim now. Sometimes you feel run down by a ‘big person’ and have gotten so used to taking it that you still let it happen out of habit.

To get out of victim habits involves teaching the “old dog, new tricks”. This won’t be easy and like with everything else takes practice.

You won’t always “get your way” in everything that comes along, but living as a non-victim gives you the option of not living your life expecting to be upset, immobilized or anxious about “such and such”. These internal upsets are always self-imposed.

Today, I will show you a good first step toward not being a victim to yourself.

Learn to analyze without being negative or over-thinking situations. You would think, especially for my over analytical friends, that this would be easy for some – but it’s not. You must have your eyes wide open to avoid circumstances which trap you into self-forfeiting actions. What does this mean in plain english? If everytime you go to Aunty’s house, you know she is going to pester you about doing something you don’t want to do. And, in past times of visiting you find yourself keeping your mouth shut, getting angry with her silently and doing whatever she wants just to make her happy, but doing it hastily just to get it over with – and you dread seeing her again…well, you get the idea. Keeping your eyes wide open means not only seeing the big picture but having some alternatives available in your mind, so you can create flexibility in your life.

Whatever your plans, never invest your own self-value in the success or failure, rather shift gears when necessary without being emotionally tied up.

Keeping a good ear to your own thoughts and spoken words is key to accomplishing this first step. Some common mind-sets that are sure-fire traps into self-victimization include:

~I get upset whenever I have to confront people-If you expect this, you will get it.

~I know I am going to lose-Instead decide that you’ll win what you deserve.

~I hope they won’t get upset for me asking-Being worried about their feelings puts “them” in control.

~I’m afraid I’ll hurt their feelings if I do what I want-This is not a license to be an “ass” or a jerk, but don’t let someone run your life with their hurt feelings either.

These are only a few of the thoughts that could float through your head at any given moment. By keeping your eyes and ears open you can work to eliminate self-doubting thoughts, anticipate problems before they occur, be flexible with alternate solutions to reduce everyone’s anxiety, refuse to be upset at the progress you are or aren’t making and most importantly persevere through it. If you adopt this one strategy and work at it; although it will be difficult at first; you will eliminate 70% of your self-victimizations and learn to avoid impossible circumstances in the future.

You never have to be hurt, anxious, depressed, resentful or angry when things go againt what you would prefer, because that is how a victim would react.

Until next time-practice understanding that no matter what the task or goal-whether you fail or succeed, is no indicator of who you are as a person.