Reacting to our reflections in this world is what true insanity is. -Michael Brown
You may not think you are someone who has a victim mentality, but we often don’t see clearly the very things that are limiting us. All of us are letting past stories affect our present, and it often can ruin our lives. We all have things in our past that have caused us pain. We often react to things that happen to us without even a thought as to why they are happening to us. We lash out in anger or retreat into self-pity, and we don’t stop to reflect on what is really happening. We don’t stop to ask why events are bringing up the same emotions in us again and again.
Everything that happens to you is just reflecting your own beliefs. If being a victim has become your story, you are going to continue to create similar stories that will continue to mirror that belief to you again and again. This is what the victim mentality does to people.
How I Changed My Victim Mentality
I recently did an ayahuasca journey where I was forced to face some traumatic events that happened to me in childhood. 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 that go, who would I be?
Of course, I did let that story go and what freedom to realize that I didn’t have to carry that baggage anymore. I felt my heart surrender to complete bliss and love just by letting that story 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 if I was a victim, then 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. Yes, that’s right, a gift. The gift is realizing that no matter what happens to you, that you have the freedom to create your own life and to own your power. No one or nothing can take that away from you. You have the power inside of you to heal what has happened and to choose to shine love in pain’s place. Only a complete love for yourself and for those you have perceived to have caused you pain can heal what has happened.
Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, only to find out that the prisoner was me.”-Corrie Ten Boom
Once you let go of the story, you will see the lessons your soul was supposed to learn, and you can emerge in your own light. The hurt that you feel won’t go away until you start taking responsibility for your own life. You can only do that by setting yourself free from the things that happened to you. Your truest, deepest, most beautiful inner self can’t be affected by anything anyone else can do to you. However, it can be affected by your thoughts about it, by your refusal to let it go, by your resentment, and lack of love. Because this lack of love is really a lack of love for your own self.
Every time we are emotionally upset,we are deliberately being set up to clear our blocked emotions. We may not want to acknowledge this at the time our setups occur, but we will know it to be true. (This is why it seems the same scenario comes to upset us again and again!) Until you clear the emotions, you will keep finding reasons to be upset. – The Presence Process, Michael Brown
I urge you next time you perceive something as happening to you to try out a new response. Go deep into your feelings. See what feelings are being triggered. Figure out why they are being triggered. And love that part of you that feels hurt or betrayed. That is the only way you can change what happens to you.
You really do experience life according to your mindset. I know people who get very angry about getting stuck in traffic. I know others who realize that they are traffic and use the time to listen to an audiobook, a podcast, or to create a to-do list. It was the same traffic, just one person had a victim mentality while the other person realized that they, too, were causing the traffic, and chose to make good use of their time.
I’ve also known people who have had conflict with people. Some people used the experience to make the other person wrong and to express anger and resentment, while I have seen others use it as a practice to show love to the other person and to learn more about themselves. I know some people who blame things on the system. I know others who choose to rise above it. The way that you experience life really is all up to you. 100 percent!! What experience are you going to create? Victim mentality or creator mentality? The choice is yours to be made.
If you need help changing your victim mentality, schedule a Skype session with me, and I can help you change your story. Send me a message at [email protected] and let’s create something different!!