Victimhood to Victory: The mindset shift that changed my life

For years, I had a victim mentality. I could articulate with ease all of the societal ills, unfortunate events, and interpersonal relationship failures that prevented me from attaining a truly glorious life. Particularly as a black American male, I developed a thorough understanding the systems that were put in place to hold me back. And I spent a lot of my time indoctrinating myself on how I was the equivalent of a second-class citizen.

The problem is that this mindset put me on a road to despair, cynicism, and self-limiting beliefs. It made me assume the worst in people. Yet, despite all of the potential realities and challenges out there, my own mindset is what held me back more than any other person or system or institution ever could.

Now as much as I would like to say that I am a unique case, the truth is that the victim mindset has become quite ubiquitous across all walks of life. I have observed a noticeable trend in which its becoming more and more common to blame some sort of external factor, or group of people, or government for the various hardships that we may be facing in life.

However, by doing this, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to live genuinely fulfilling lives.

Victimhood vs Victim Mentality

This article is not intended to gloss over wrong-doing that has negatively impacted us. Of course sometimes we are victims of other people’s actions. Sometimes we are victims of our own actions. But I want to make it clear that there is a notable difference between being a victim and having a victim mentality.

A victim is defined as “a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.” At one point or another, most of us have likely been victims of either minor or heinous acts.

The victim mentality, on the other hand, is the result of a subjective interpretation of life where we persistently assign negative values to the interactions and experiences that we have with individuals or society as a whole. It is a decision, conscious or unconscious, to err on the side of negativity, rather than productive thoughts that help us better ourselves. What’s most interesting about this mindset is that that it can be attained even when one has not actually been victimized. In short, the victim mentality is a figment of the imagination irrespective of the reality that we live in.

A similar analogy can be applied to the concept of the “loser’s mentality” vs losing. The former is a mindset in which we interpret our interactions, outcomes, and experiences in a way that is perceived as failure, even when that may not be the case. It sets in place self-limiting beliefs that manifests losses, even when said losses may not have otherwise occurred. Conversely, the latter involves losing a game, a job, or failing to accomplish a specific feat. Yet one can lose many times without possessing a losers mentality. Michael Jordan lost 366 games in his NBA career, but I’d argue that he does not posses a loser’s mentality.

The victim mentality (similar to the loser’s mentality) is, in fact, a social construct. Why would we purposefully assign negative connotations to life in a way that makes us more miserable? We do this because it is a form of learned helplessness which is cultivated in our minds by cultural influences that create dissonance with our evolved psychology.

Society teaches us to go far beyond acknowledging past misfortunes and finding a way to overcome. Instead society has normalized victimhood as a sort of personality trait that we have no control over.

Why are we encouraged to adopt a victim’s mindset?

Society, the collection of people, businesses, governments, etc has a motive to sell us victimhood because it feels good and it absolves us of both responsibility and accountability for taking control over our lives. It gives us a free pass to put the burden of “fixing” a situation on some external entity (another person, a government, a corporation, etc.). It also taps into our need for validation from others in the form of sympathy and attention.

Self-victimization is also a cheap source of dopamine which not only makes us feel good, but also gives us the motivation to remain in a victimhood state in perpetuity. In a sense, the victim mindset can become addictive.

Victimhood is a hot commodity, it is a high-demand product, and there are many who stand to gain profit by selling us our own form of victimhood. There is more to gain in telling people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. This principle is reflected in advertising, talk shows, higher education, in news media, and many other communication forums. The “someone else has done you wrong, and you are not responsible” storyline is a hit, and therefore it is packaged and shipped off into our society in all shapes and sizes because there is financial incentive to do so.

Unfortunately, this mass-manufacturing of victimization is harming us, not only on the societal level, but also at the individual level. And the consequences are dire as we continue to fall more susceptible to chronic the helplessness, anger, and overall negativity that self-victimization results in. Furthermore, the proliferation of victimization has led us to become less self-reliant and more dependent on external forces for positive outcomes in life, ultimately preventing us from pursuing lives full of joy and fulfillment.

Victim culture holds us back from achieving greatness

The victim mindset puts responsibility of our life situations on other people. This makes it such that, in order for our lives to improve, we must depend on other people to do the right thing and take actions that are in our better interests. This lead us down a path of disappointment and feeling helpless to change the outcome because most of the time, people will not make the decisions that are in our best interests. They are going to make the decisions that are in their best interest, and that is honestly not the most unreasonable thing to do.

Life just isn’t fair

Let’s look at the lion vs gazelle dynamic as an example. If a gazelle spends its days harping on how unfair it is that the lion is stronger, faster, and more ruthless than he is then he may not last too long in this world. The lion sees the world very differently than the gazelle. In the lion’s world, eating the gazelle is the right thing to do. He will never change his ways to accommodate the gazelle’s best interest because he has no incentive to do so. The gazelle that acknowledges this reality and instead focuses his energy on remaining more alert, stronger, and more nimble than the rest of his peers is far more likely to avoid the lion and live a relatively long life.

We can learn a thing or two from this….

Fairness is a well-intentioned social construct, however unfairness represents the natural order. We are born into better or worse situations. We are taller or sorter, faster or slower, more or less attractive, richer or poorer. We get lucky, or we run into misfortune. We take advantage of others, and others take advantage of us. We harm others, and others harm us. While it is great to play the game of life with all things being equal, it is not a given that life will work out this way. Misfortune will occur.

We cannot expect that the world will change to cater to our beliefs, values, feelings, or thoughts. In some cases, society does make collective changes to cater to whole groups. For example, the Women’s Suffrage and Civil Rights movements in the US saw a collective shift in attitudes and policy in an attempt to create more fairness. These collective societal shifts are great when they do play to our favor. But sometimes they can go in the other direction as well. But at the end of the day we are only in control of our own navigation through this world no matter which direction the winds blow.

Learning to acknowledge and navigate an unfair world empowers us to be proactive in shaping our lives to our own liking. It alters our mindset to be less bothered by wrong-doings of others, and instead to be more self-actualizing and solution-oriented in our thinking. We devote less of our energy to justifying why past decisions and actions of others have led us to where we are today, and instead we devote our energy to identifying the actions we need to take today to shape our futures more favorably.

What are the signs of a victim’s mindset?

There are many signs of a victim mindset to look for within ourselves, but they center around four main characteristics.

1. Moral superiority which is the belief you hold the moral high ground over everyone else, and society seems to act in a manner that causes harm to you

2. Lack of empathy which is the inability to acknowledge the suffering of others due to over-emphasis on one’s own perceived misfortunes

3. Lack of agency which is the belief that one does not possess control over their actions, and the tendency to attribute life outcomes to external factors

4. Seeking validation which comes from the approval and favorable treatment receives in the form of sympathy

For example, if you’ve ever used phrases like:

“I can’t lose weight because of my genetics,”

“I’m not rich because I didn’t grow up with privilege”

“I’d be happier with life if only everyone treated me better”

"All men/women are terrible people"

“No one understands me”

then these could be signs that you are playing into the victim’s mindset.

The unfulfilled life of perpetual victimhood

For the longest, I spent a lot of my mental energy pointing out the wrongdoings of individuals, government, and private enterprises which have, in a roundabout way, had some sort of negative impact on my life. Let’s not even worry about whether I was correct in my suspicions or not. Instead, lets consider how having an obsessive focus on other people’s actions may have impacted me more than any actual harm that may have been done by anyone else.

• Focusing too much on the negative aspects of society prevented me from having room to be happy

• I imposed self-limiting beliefs on myself which discouraged me from taking decisive action

• My negative energy rubbed off on other people and repelled people away from me rather than attracting them towards me

• I experienced myopia by focusing on the “bad” while missing out on the opportunities to experience all of the pleasures of life

It has taken me a lot of internal reflection and confidence-building to break out of this mindset, but doing so has changed my life for the better. Challenges in life such as unlucky turns of events or being the “victim” of someone else’s wrongdoing no longer leaves me dwelling in the past about what “could have or should have happened.” Instead, I see them as proof that I am alive and kicking, as well as opportunities to build character and prove to myself how badass I really am. I do not wish for misfortune, but I now welcome it when it arrives.

How did I shift from victim mindset to victory?

Over the past few years, I have taken many steps to move away from the victim’s mentality, but it all boils down to three major courses of action:

Radical Acceptance: I acknowledged the experiences that were beyond my control. Rather than try to wish away circumstances that I did not enjoy. Radical acceptance grounded me in reality, and prevented me from counterproductive and deluded thinking. This helped me to take an accurate survey of the land, and set the stage for developing a workable path forward.

Extreme Ownership: By taking ownership over all situations in my life, I instantly became more empowered. Even when someone else was at fault, I had full ownership over my reactions and the subsequent courses of action. By taking extreme ownership over my life I proactively reshaped my environment, my relationships, and my daily habits to align with the mindset of a winner rather than existing in perpetual victimhood.

Societal Value Creation: I focused less on what people and society was doing to hold me down, and instead I began to ponder on what I can do to lift others up. This shifted the conversation away from myself, and gave me a greater purpose than simply improving my own life. I no longer had the time to contemplate the negative aspects of life since I became preoccupied with injecting more positivity into the world.

Call to action

This is my call to action to everyone reading this, including myself, to regularly audit your life, and take note of where you may be falling into a victim’s mindset. Take note of blame and anger that you may be placing on other people, and think about what it is that you need to do to take control of the situation.

In a world where the victim mindset is prolific, adopting principles of radical acceptance, extreme ownership, and value creation will set you apart from the masses, and put you on a trajectory towards a life of accomplishment and fulfillment; one that few people will ever have the pleasure of experiencing.