From Victim to Victor: How to Take Back Your Life

If you have had adversity in your life (and who hasn’t?) you may have a victim mindset without even realizing it.  But living life as a victim is crippling.  It is a powerless life lived under the control of others.

Do you have a victim mindset?

If you have a victim mindset, you live from the position of helplessness.  Victims are acted upon.

Victims live as receivers and live defensively rather than offensively.  Victims have things happen “to them,” rather than designing their own lives.

Does this sound familiar to you?  Perhaps someone has done something that hurt you, or perhaps you have had difficult situations in your life, and those experiences reach up to the present and still powerfully impact your life in negative ways.

There is no doubting the fact that some people have had very traumatic things happen in their lives.  But why is it that some people emerge as survivors and others as victims?

It has to do with mindset.

When you have had a hard situation in your life, you have two choices:

• You can give that event or person control over you

OR

• You can refuse to give up that control.

The decision you make will determine the course of your life.

You see, you may not be responsible for what happened to you in your past.  It was not your fault.  You did nothing to deserve it, to earn it or to cause it.  But you are responsible for how you respond to it today.

By holding onto a victim mindset and desiring pity for yourself, and letting that event be the excuse for your mismanagement of life, relationships and work, you are essentially saying to that event or the person who wronged you, “I am giving you power over my life.  You are in control of me.  I am submitting to you and becoming a slave to you.  You may rule me.”

I know these are hard words, but do you really want to surrender to that person or that event?  If you are living with a victim mindset, that is what you are doing.

But you don’t have to.

You can also fight.

Rather than be a victim, you can be a victor.  You are stronger than your past. You are now stronger than that event or that person.  You can choose to rise above it, take back your life and truly live.

You just have to want it badly enough to make it happen.

In your mind, look at that event or that person and say, “What happened is bad.  And even though I cannot change what happened, I can, starting right now, change the way it impacts my life.  I will not be controlled.  I will not be manipulated.  From this point forward, I control how you impact me.  I control the effect you have on me.  And I choose to leave being a victim behind.”

This is exactly what survivors do.  Survivors choose not to be controlled by the actions of others or the circumstances of their lives.  It’s a choice.

Is it easy?  No.  But doing the hard work of trading victim-hood for victor-hood will lift you up from despair and paralysis.  It will energize you and set you on a path toward freedom and self-direction.  Leave behind the past.  Walk away from it and run toward wholeness, stability and dignity.

Take back your life, starting now.