Something happened Friday morning that blew my mind. I discovered I have been playing the victim in a critical area of my life. I have been blaming external factors for my lack of courage in achieving my dreams.
I'll be the first to say that I hate the victim mentality.
Ever since Mr. Christian's 8th Grade Life Skills class when I first heard the words, "Don't play the victim." I have adopted that mindset... or at least I thought I had adopted that mindset.
The Victim Mentality
Yesterday morning, I opened an email from Jose Anya. It was a forwarded email from Brendon Burchard to Brendon's newsletter subscriber list, inviting aspiring "high performance" coaches to attend his certification course.Brennon is one of the most successful life coaches in the world. His name comes up all the time in my life coach studies.
Here is the ugly truth about my relationship with Brendon Berchard ... I'm jealous. He looks like he's about my age with a ridiculous amount of success. He's doing EXACTLY what I want to do professionally. The first time I saw him, I thought, "Holy crap! He is my future self!" ... And frankly, it crushed me inside.
This jealousy kept me from following Brendon's podcast, blog, newsletter, etc. This is ridiculous because I'm actively studying life coaching.
Jealousy is a bitter enemy that pretends to be a friend.
There is no comfort in jealousy, only poisoned dreams.
Going back to the email. I read the email, watched the video, read the invitation letter and knew in my heart that I was meant to attend a certification conferance like this. Especially because this is a direction that has been clearly affirmed within my life.
Immediately, without knowing, my victim mentality crept in. If I were to give it a voice, it pretty much said, "April would never go it. It's ridiculous to cash in the 401k. And you'd be a bad husband to dump vacation time into a work conference. You can't even guarantee the results you might be getting. Even if you did go to this training, April would want to go with you. Then you would half-ass the conference blowing thousands of hard earned dollars."
I responded to Jose's email. I dressed it up, saying that I was blessed to have a wife in my life that keeps my decisions rational.
Do you see what happened there? Jealousy and the victim mindset were triumphant.
Fortunately I have a conscious too. I felt bad for sharing my assumptions about my wife with Jose. So I talked to April about it.
She was crushed (in a bad way). She told me that I am the only one holding myself back, not her. Ouch.
She even went a step further to say that I need to press into the opportunity and explore my thoughts and pray about it. Wow.
Mind Blown
Nothing like the truth. It's the best weapon against jealousy and the victim mindset. It's as if the truth was flipped upside down to display all the muck, bugs, critters and victim mentality underneath.3 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Now
A victim mentality was keeping me from my dreams and now the truth has set me free. Here are a few questions that can help you uncover a victim mentality lurking under the surface.1) Why am I not getting to my major goals faster?
2) What are the biggest roadblocks that I am I facing? Why are they there?
3) Is there anyone (famous or not famous) that I am jealous of?
KEY:
Questions 1 & 2:
If your answer is rooted in something that is outside of your control, you probably have a victim mindset.
Question 3:
If your answer is, "Yes," you may have the victim mindset.For me, my mind is blown away at the realization that I have been harboring a victim mindset in this critical area of my life. What are your thoughts?
Share with me on Twitter. Or leave a comment below.
Inspiration Credit: I want to give a special shout out to Nathaniel Kohfield for sharing with me about the Friday morning inspiration from Lauren Nagel at CreativeMornings Oakland. If it weren't for Nathaniel telling me about the importance of humility, I may have kept this entire post to myself.
Photo Credit: Maria Ly / CC BY / Quote added
This is a great blog post. Thanks for your honesty. I remember something that was said to me during an interview for a training position as a Director of Nursing. The interviewer (who was my soon to be boss) asked me how I would feel if my Assistant Director of Nursing was more knowledge than myself. I told her that I wouldn't mind, but really I thought to myself that it would make me feel jealous, inferior, inadequate and that they might try to steal my job. Then she said to me, "The best thing that can help you advance in leadership as a Director is if your assistant is smarter than you AND you accept it." The natural thing to feel is jealousy, which can be destructive for yourself. If you overcome those jealous feelings and then use that person's strengths to better yourself and help you acheive your goals then you can only succeed. I have never forgotten that and since becoming a Director of Nursing I have embraced the strengths, knowledge and expertise of the nurses I employ to help improve clinical systems. I have LEARNED so much by doing that and I think it makes me a better leader.
ReplyDeleteThat's such a cool story! Thanks for sharing Anna. It's really neat when we can partner with more people and progress in our lives at more rapid paces. I love it!
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