“Reacting to our reflections in this world is what true insanity is.” ~ Michael Brown

We may not think we have a victim mentality, but we don’t often clearly see the very things that are limiting us. We all let past stories affect our present, and it often can ruin our lives. We all have things in our past that have caused us pain. Often we react to things that happen to us without a thought as to why they’re happening. We lash out in anger or retreat into self-pity, and we don’t stop to reflect on what’s really happening. We don’t stop to ask why events are bringing up the same emotions again and again.

Everything that happens to us is just a reflection of our own beliefs. If being a victim has become our story, we’re going to continue to create similar stories that will continue to mirror that belief again and again. This is what the victim mentality does to people.

How I Changed My Victim Mentality

I recently went on an ayahuasca journey where I was forced to face some traumatic childhood events. I was given the choice to purge these events out of my system for good. It was incredible to me how much I wanted to resist. I realized how much of an identity I had created based on the “story” of what had happened to me. If I let it go, who would I be?

Of course, I did let that story go and realized I didn’t have to carry that baggage anymore. I felt my heart surrender to complete bliss and love just by letting go. I started to see my life as a movie on a screen and how many situations I had created to maintain the role of the victim. I thought that if I was a victim, I didn’t have to take responsibility for my own life.

“I am here to tell you that no matter what someone else “did” to you, no one owes you anything. In fact, they came into your lives to give you a gift, but because you are attached to being the victim, you can’t see it.
Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me.” – Corrie ten Boom

Once we let go of the story, we see the lessons our souls were supposed to learn, and we can emerge in our own light. The hurt that we feel doesn’t go away until we start taking responsibility for our own lives. We can only do that by setting ourselves free from the things that happen to us. Our truest, deepest, most beautiful inner self can’t be affected by anything anyone else can do to us. However, it can be affected by our thoughts about it, by our refusal to let it go, by our resentment and our lack of love—because this lack of love is really a lack of love for our own self.

Next time you perceive something as happening to you, try a new response. Go deep into your feelings. See what feelings are being triggered. Figure out why they’re being triggered. And love that part of you that feels hurt or betrayed. That’s the only way you can change what happens to you.

We really do experience life according to our mindsets. Some people get irate about being stuck in traffic. Others realize they’re also traffic and use the time to listen to an audiobook, a podcast, or to create a to-do list. It’s the same traffic, but one person has a victim mentality while the other realizes that they also cause traffic, and choose to make good use of the time.

Everyone has conflict with others. Some people use the experience to wrong the other person and express anger and resentment, while others use it as a practice to show love to the other person and to learn more about themselves. Some people blame things on the system. Others choose to rise above it.

The way we experience our lives really is up to us—100 percent. What kind of experience are we going to create? A victim mentality or a creator mentality? The choice is ours.

Author: Valen Dawson

Editor: Evan Yerburgh

Image: Flickr