How To Overcome Your Victim Mindset

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. I put out episodes four times a week, about 15 to 20 minutes long to help you learn who you are so you can grow yourself, so that you can improve yourself, so that you can improve your life. So if that's what you want to do, go ahead and hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any more episodes. Today we're going to be talking about how to overcome your victim mindset that you might be holding on to, that might be holding you back in your life.

0:37And if you listen to this episode, you might have a victim mindset. You might not. You definitely know somebody with a victim mindset if you don't. And if you do have a victim mindset, you might know that you have a victim mindset, but you might also have a victim mindset and not know that you have a victim mindset. And so I can, we're going to dive into all of these aspects of it. I can tell you this though. I can really speak to this because when I was younger, this is something that I really had to work through. I had a very terrible victim mindset. I used to be really good, so good at making myself the victim of all circumstances.

1:16So therefore, I had no responsibility in anything at all. And I would say stuff like, oh yeah, I always have bad luck. People are luckier than I am. Things work out better for other people, not for me. I would make excuses for everything in my life versus taking responsibility and say oh yeah well this person had a better education this person both of their parents were together their entire lives this person grew up in this part of town and I could find an excuse for every single thing to play the victim to not take responsibility and if you want to live your life that way that's completely fine that's your prerogative but the problem is that most people who are victims make themselves to be a victim are not 100 % aware that they're playing the victim.

2:02It requires a lot of self-awareness to notice this within yourself. But the biggest problem with making yourself a victim is it completely strips you of all control in your life. If you make yourself a victim, then you're basically just resigning to the fact that I cannot control my life and I'm the victim of every circumstance. And if you resign to that mentality, you cannot change your life for the better. You just can't because you're a victim. You're not in control. There's something else that's in control and you're just, you know, stumbling your way through life. So if you're somebody who feels like you make too many excuses or maybe you feel like you blame too much, whether you blame other people, whether you blame society, whether you blame circumstance, or you have a lot of trouble stepping up and making real and lasting changes in your life, this episode should help you be able to identify it and help you stop being a victim.

2:57But if also, if you do know somebody who plays the victim often, you should probably send this to them. Maybe they can start to develop some awareness of themselves. And I'll just say like this episode might be triggering for some people because it's going to disrupt some of your false thinking patterns that developed in childhood that are, you think are reality, but in real reality, they're not, they're false. And so it might be triggering. So, you know, let's ride with it. Let's see how it goes because it's going to disrupt some of your false thinkings and some of your patterns. So when you look at a victim mindset, what exactly is a victim mindset?

3:32It's really just an attitude where people perceive themselves as powerless and blame external circumstances or other people for their problems. And the mindset can be complaining. It can be excuses. It can be avoiding responsibility and really what it comes down to is a fixed mindset of I am not able to change my situation. The things are the way that they are and this is the way that they're going to be. And, you know, if you listen to this podcast, you probably don't have a fixed mindset, but you might have a little bit of a victim mentality. And the important thing to realize is that all of life is just things that happen.

4:12There's just circumstances all day long. This is a circumstance, this is a circumstance, this is a circumstance. The thing that we really need to dive into is what is the story that you're telling yourself about that circumstance? Oh, you didn't get the promotion. That's what reality is. You didn't get the promotion. What is the story that you're telling yourself about why you didn't get the promotion? You were cheated on. Okay, well, that is the circumstance. What is the story that you're telling yourself about being cheated on? And so that's really what it is, is we have reality. And this just isn't in victim mindset.

4:48This is just all of life. We have reality. We have a set of circumstances that happen to us all day long. And then what we do is we place a story on top of it. And what we really need to dive into is what is the story that you're telling yourself and then how factual is the actual story. And so when you look at a victim mindset, where does a victim mindset come from? You guessed it. It comes from your childhood. And usually it's a condition that we, a pattern that we pick up from childhood. and it can be either number one a protection mechanism where it was a way of protecting ourselves from other people from parents from whatever it might be so that's the first thing it could be or number two it could be the way that you got your parents attention or you got your parents love and so it's something that we get conditioned through in our life and so there's a couple different parenting styles that play a really critical role when you look at this If you have a parent who is an overprotective parent and everything they do is to try to protect their children, what they are unconsciously saying to their children is that the world is too dangerous and that you are incapable of navigating it alone.

5:58And that's how the child is not consciously thinking this, but it is an unconscious, subconscious belief of the world is dangerous. I can't do this on my own. and so then it creates a lot of helplessness and dependency from the child and then they grow up to be an adult now they're like well what do I do I don't know what to do it's you know and then something happens to them and they realize that they oh yeah well it must have been outside circumstances so it's really interesting because it could be overprotective parents that create this on the other hand you can also have controlling parents where they instill fear and a belief where your actions are always dictated by external forces.

6:36So it's like if you instill fear into your children, then really what it does is it tends to eventually over time take away autonomy and personal responsibility. And if your personal responsibility is stripped away from you, then as you grow older, you're going to start to blame circumstances because you weren't in control in the first place. So those are two things that are just children's behavior that they can pick up from their parents based off of their parents' styles. And there's many different ways. I'm just trying to give you a few examples and maybe one of these will hit home with you.

7:07Another thing that children do is children model the behavior that they see within their parents. And so children might have, you may have had a parent who had a very bad victim mindset. And you can learn by observing the attitudes and the behaviors of your parents. And so maybe your father had a really bad victim mindset. He always blamed everybody else for why he didn't get his promotion, why he wasn't successful, why he didn't get what he wanted to in life. And that is just a learned behavior of going, oh, well, I guess just blame the outside world. You know, and really what it comes down to is like they can, your parents can blame other people for their problems.

7:45They can feel powerless and talk about how they have no power. Maybe they don't take any responsibility for their actions. and if they do then children are likely to at least adopt similar attitudes in that way and so what happens is all of this is kind of a learned behavior in some sort of way from our childhood based off of either what our parents told us or what we happen to see with our parents which develops a victim mentality and so then what happens is we get older and victim mentality because we're unconscious of it just tends to carry into adulthood and one of the most common signs of victim mentality in adulthood is to blame other people for your problems or to blame other people for your failures.

8:29And so it could be like blaming a boss for lack of career advancement. It can be blaming a partner for the relationship issues. Oh, it's all their fault. It could be blaming society because of, you know, where you grew up or what you look like or what your gender is, you know, and blaming society and saying, oh, well, this is their fault because this is what I am. And this pattern of thinking, what it does is it removes all of your individual self-responsibility. And if you really want to change your life, your viewpoint of your own self-responsibility may be one of the most important things because you have to say, I am personally responsible for every action in my life from this moment forward.

9:11And so you really have to adopt the different mindset, which is what we're going to call an empowered mindset coming up and saying like, hey, if I'm going to change my life, I can't blame anybody else. I can't say it's anybody else's responsibility. It is my responsibility. And as I said, the problem with having a victim mindset is it takes away all of your control. And if you think that you're completely out of control in your life, it's going to be really damn hard to change your life. And so more than anything else, it removes the power. It removes the responsibility. It removes the control from your mind.

9:46And really what you need to do is you need to regain it. And so you have to understand that there's only two real ways of looking at life. You can look at life as if life is happening to you, or you can look at life as if life is happening for you. You know, if you're the type of person, which I was this way for probably 20-something years of my life, where I was thinking that life was happening to me, then I have little or no control over my destiny, over my fate, over what life is going to become and what I'm going to do. And you're basically literally believing there's nothing you can do about your life.

10:19On the other hand, if you're the type of person who thinks that life is happening for you, well then you can start to see every challenge that you have instead of making yourself a victim of it, but to look at it and say, you know what, I can actually be the person to change this. If this comes in, this is a challenge for me, then I have to be the person to overcome it. And you know what? When I have a challenge, there's a lesson. There's something that I can gain from it. And I can actually become better through this challenge. That's the difference of, you know, the world is happening to me versus the world is happening for me.

10:47And so, you know, complaining, not going to fix the problem. Excuses, not going to fix the problem. Taking responsibility and putting on someone else, not going to fix the problem. And so let me give you a couple of examples, just kind of real life examples to show you how this can show up in your life. So we have a victim mindset, which we've spoken a lot about. And then we have an empowered mindset, which is like, hey, if I'm going to change, if the world is going to change, if I'm going to have a better life, I have to be the person to do it. And so if you look at like somebody who doesn't get the promotions that they want, a victim mindset might believe that their boss doesn't like them, that they don't like what they look like.

11:23They don't like their gender. They don't like the way that they talk. They don't recognize their hard work. And because of that, I'll never be promoted because he prefers X, Y, Z, right? That's a victim mindset. An empowered mindset would be something like, hey, I'm going to go up to my boss and say, I really wanted this promotion. I didn't get it. Can I get feedback for how I can get better? Can I get feedback in how I can get better in what you're looking for next time? And then I can go, hey, can I improve my skills? Can I look for more opportunities to showcase my work? Those are the things that I can control.

11:58My skill set, opportunities, and finding them and looking for those opportunities. And once I do, executing on them. And so a victim mindset would be like, I can't do anything about this. And that's the reason why I'm not getting promotions. An empowered mindset would say, hey, listen, let me see how I can get better. So next time there is a promotion, I'm going to be one of the front runners for it. If you look at something like your health or your fitness, a victim mindset would say, oh, I can't lose weight because it's in my genetics and diets never work for me. There's no responsibility in there.

12:29An empowered mindset would say something like, I'm going to try to find a nutritionist. I'm going to create a fitness plan. I'm going to make consistent, small changes to achieve my goals, and I'm going to get there. Victim mindset, there's nothing I can do about it. It's just the way that it is. Empowered mindset, I'm going to figure it out, and I'm going to get to where I want to be no matter how long it takes. If you look at your finances, a victim might say something like, oh, I'll never get out of debt because the economy's bad and because this person's president and because I don't have enough income and my boss doesn't pay me enough and he's not giving me my promotions, right?

13:07So that would be a victim mindset. An empowered mindset would say, hey, I need to sit down, I need to create a budget. I need to cut unnecessary expenses. I need to get better at saving. I need to maybe find additional sources of income so that I can manage my debt. Or you know what, maybe what I need to do is I need to develop a skillset, a new skill set or another skill set to make myself more valuable in the marketplace so therefore I get paid more money. Once again, victim mindset, hey, there's nothing I can do about it. It's everybody else's fault. Why don't I have the money that I want? Empowered mindset, I'm going to figure it out.

13:41I'm going to get what it is that I want. If you look at a relationship, right, a victim would say, oh, it's my partner's fault. They never listen and the relationship is doomed because it's all their fault and because, you know, they have daddy issues and that's the reason why this exists in my relationship. An empowered mindset would say, hey, listen, I want to be with this person. I want to sit down with them. I want to have a real conversation. We need to communicate with each other clearly, talk about what we want everything to be in our relationship, what we like, what we don't like, work on improving the relationship, and then make decisions based off of what we come up with.

14:18So once again, victim mindset, nothing I can do about it empowered mindset i am going to be the one to make the change and so empowered mindset is really what we're all trying to work towards right and it's uh it's it's personal responsibility and it's a proactive behavior and it involves us being proactive and maintaining hey i'm going to figure this out it is my job it is my responsibility i'm going to figure it out and so there's a couple things if you are the type of person who says you know what i do want to develop this this empowered mindset, how do I get myself to be there? The first thing, which is the most important thing, you always hear me talk about it, is your self-awareness, right?

14:56It's recognizing, it's acknowledging that I might have a victim mindset. Like I definitely did when I was younger. It was something where I went, you know what, if I'm going to change, I need to do this shit. There's nobody that's going to come and save me. And so it's sitting there, it's looking at the circumstance and it's really like asking yourself, what is the story I'm telling myself about this circumstance. It's paying attention to our thoughts. It's paying attention to our behaviors, our attitude, identifying different patterns that might exist in the way that we think and the way that we act.

15:29It's about sitting down and journaling and mindfulness practices, meditating on the thoughts that we have, the way we think about things, maybe going up to friends and asking for feedback. And so it's really about building that self-awareness to start to notice, do I have this victim mentality and is this something I can work through? Right? The second piece of that is if If you're like, okay, I do have a victim mentality. Well, then I need to blame myself. And this is where it can become triggering for people is because they don't want to take, they don't like to take blame because maybe they were blamed a lot as a child for certain things.

16:01And you have to realize that you play a role in everything in your life. And the way you show up to everything, whether it's work, whether it's your finances, whether it's your relationships, the way you show up changes the way that everyone else shows up. And so we can shift our mindset from like, why is this happening to me? to what can I do about this, right? It's your past, a lot of things that happened to you in your life. I'm not gonna say, when I say blame yourself, I don't mean that your past is your fault. There's not everything that's happened to you is your fault, but it is your responsibility.

16:33It is the cards that you have been dealt in your life. There's nothing you can change about your past. The only thing you could do is change the way that you think and the actions that you take right now. And so that's the second thing is really going, I'm going to blame myself. I'm going to take personal responsibility for everything from this moment forward. The third thing you can do is start to cognitively reframe, which is, you know, I've spoken about in previous episodes, and it's really important for changing negative thought patterns. So when you see setbacks and you see challenges, and we used to see them as like, oh my gosh, there's no way I'll overcome this.

17:07Well, now we can start to say, okay, every single challenge that I have is an opportunity for me to learn and for me to grow. And it involves us actually being conscious of our thoughts, being aware of them, and then replacing our negative thoughts with more positive ones and ones that are more empowering. I always say, I wrote about this in my book, Level Up, is I like to see life like a video game. And if you can see life like a video game, it kind of helps. Because now when I see a challenge, just like in a video game, it's like, oh, here's my next bad guy to conquer. And by conquering this bad guy, I learn more, I grow more, I become better.

17:40And so I like to see life like a video game where it's like, hey, what's life going to throw at me next? Oh, it's going to throw this at me? Okay, this is the thing that I need to work through. Versus being like, oh my God, this is what's happening to me. Why do I always have the bad luck? See your life as a video game. Start to change that and try to get a little bit better with it. And, you know, when you really start to break it down, you really start to see that if you want to create the life that you want, you need to switch from a victim mindset to an empowered mindset. If something is going to change in your life, I am sorry.

18:14No one's going to come and save you. There's no knight in white shining armor that's going to come and swoop you up and put you on his horse and take you into the sunset. If your life is going to change, you have to stop being the victim and you've got to start empowering yourself to be the person to make the changes. Blaming someone else or blaming society will not change your life. You have to be the one to save yourself. There's nobody coming to save you. And so really what it comes down to is notice when a circumstance happens that you might be triggered. Notice the circumstance, but then notice the story that is placed on top of it nearly automatically from your brain.

18:53Take a step back and say, hey, let me look at this objectively and not subjectively. Am I playing the victim right now? And if you are, can you start to change it and reframe everything and realize like everything is happening? everything that's happening to you is the mindset you've had. Is it possible that this is happening for me? Is it possible that I can learn from this? Is it possible that failure is just feedback and I can just, everything's a lesson. I can get better. Is it possible that this thing that just happened to me, I have some responsibility in the way that it was? And what you'll start to notice is that your life is just a set of circumstances.

19:28You're born and you die. And in between, you have a set of circumstances, how you view those circumstances, and the story that you place on top of it is going to change the quality of your life. So that is how you switch from a victim mentality to an empowered mentality. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're interested in learning more about how we can help you improve and get better, we have something called Mindset Mentor Plus, which is a way to take all of these episodes and actually download them more into your brain.

20:02We give out journaling prompts. We give out lesson plans. We give out entire worksheets to help you take these and integrate them more into your life. If you want to learn more about it, all you have to do is go to mindsetmentor.com. Once again, mindsetmentor.com. You can get all the information there. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way and leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.