Pain Is a Condition. Victimhood Is a Posture

Do you know people that play the victim all the time? Do you play the victim? You know what that does? Welcome to the show. Tired of the hype about living the dream? It's time for true.This is the place for tools, power, and real talk. So you can create the life you dream and deserve your ultimate life. Subscribe, share, create. You have infinite power.Hey there, and welcome to your ultimate life. This is a very serious topic today. Funny and at the same time quite serious. So this is victim mindset.Now, remember we said that the swamp was learned helplessness, addiction to mediocrity, and victim mindset. And in the last couple of episodes, we covered two of those.And in the first of this series of six, we covered what the swamp actually is and why it matters so much and why it's so harmful to our lives and to getting the ultimate life and getting what we want. Today I want to talk about victim mindset. And this is a very. Like I said, this is an important topic.So the purpose of this episode is to sort of con, confront or identify clearly this entrenched element of the swamp. Now, the swamp, remember, is this place where we live, where we think we have no control.It just kind of becomes normal life and we sort of get along, but not happily. It's the. It's not the opposite of the ultimate life, but really it is because it's settling for like a millionth or a tenth.I won't exaggerate a tenth of what you could have in your life, in purpose, prosperity.And I say that and wiggle my fingers here, the cash thing, because so many people think that all this conversation about mindset only has to do with how you feel and doesn't translate into the real world. And it does hardcore, straight up cash. So let's talk about this.We need to separate here suffering from identity, and we need to restore your agency, my agency, without blame, okay? Without, you know, getting on people or any of that kind of stuff.So nothing that I say is an attack today on me or you or anybody, but I am identifying something that's powerful, clear, and smashes us in the face and knocks us down. And then we stay there. And that's the sad part. Okay? So the first thing I want to do is acknowledge pain. Pain is real. Suffering is real.Injustice is real. Abuse, betrayal, poverty, illness, they're all real disadvantage. All kinds of things are real life. And they play a real role in what we do.Trauma leaves marks. Systems fail. People stuff falls apart. Humans harm each other. Sad but true. Okay, now that we've got that.Clearly, this is not about denying pain or struggle or the scars that are left.I tell a story often about a dog that I had who had a accident when he was a puppy, and because of that accident broke some of the metatarsals in the one of his paws. He had a limp later. And so that accident when he was just a few months old, five or six, affected him the rest of his life.But he didn't in any way, shape or form allow that to shape his enjoyment and rambunctiousness and joy.And yeah, it limited a few things that he could do when it got cold or he ran around too much, but it didn't affect his enjoyment and the pure joy of his being. So here's the thing. If we're not denying pain, then what are we saying?We say victim mindset is one of the huge problems of getting to your ultimate life. Okay, so here's what I mean. Pain can either be an experience or it can fester, mold, or harden into an identity.So pain is an experience, and if we don't understand what happens, it can turn into an identity. And that's where the problem comes. Pain is something that happened. I fell down, I got hurt. Identity goes to who I am.Oh, I'm clumsy, I always fall down. I'm stupid, I'm whatever. And so then we turn it from just an experience into an identity. So it's a. I got a funny story on my. I was in.On a trip where I was speaking three or four weeks ago, just three weeks ago, and walking through the hotel room, I bumped my knee on the corner of, you know, one of the pieces of furniture, and I bumped it right on the. Right below the kneecap and that little soft part and right on the corner. And so it cut it.And so I bled for a while, and I needed to leave right away to get to the event, so I had to have a makeshift bandage and Polysporin and stuff like that. And it, you know, it bled a little and bled on my pants inside a little and everything else. But it finally was okay, right? So.So that was an experience. And I was frustrated for a sec and then took care of it.Here we are three weeks later, and this computer that we're working on today has been in the shop for about three weeks or a month because the CPU went bad and it was under warranty. So I had to. Maybe three weeks, I had to mail it to intel, and they were great. And they sent me a new one back after they checked it.And Et cetera, et cetera. But the bottom line is the computer itself, sitting on the floor right down there.Yesterday, I stood up after I was busy reinstalling software and everything, like you do when your CPU crashes and you've got to reinstall stuff. I first thought it was the drive, so I had to reinstall Windows and everything. Anyway, I got up, and guess what?I hit my other knee, right below the knee, right in exactly the same spot on the other leg. Sure enough, cut through the skin on the. On the corner of the computer, right? That sharp metal corner, and it's right down there over there.And so there I am. Now I have two. And the one that I did in the hotel room is not healed yet all the way. There's a hard little scab right on top of it.And this one bled, too, and got blood on my pants. Now, both of those caused pain, and it lasted for a few minutes or, you know, a while.And then there's little blood and little band aid and this and that and the other. Now, it's a silly example, but I could say, well, I'm a clumsy clod and I didn't pay attention.I knew the computer wasn't slid in all the way because I'm not quite done, you know, messing with components and things. So I left it out and sideways. And that's a silly example, but you know what I mean. What I'm illustrating, I could make a story out of that.So here's the. Here's the trap, okay? Pains, a condition. Victimhood is a posture. Hear that? Pain is a condition. I had twice. One knee and then the other knee.Victimhood is a posture. It always happens to me. Why the frick is everything against me? It's on. It's always on me. Everything. The universe is conspiring.You know that kind of language. And so what it does is it changes the lens through which we see the world. And that lens is dark, okay? It cuts off opportunity.It cuts off possibility. It cuts off joy. It cuts off growth. Because we live every moment afraid when the next shoe's gonna drop, the next thing's gonna hammer us.And that's a sad place to be. So here's a trap. We always have agency Night and have agency about the fact that it hurt. I cut my knee and then my other knee.I don't have agency about the fact that it hurt. It hurt. But then the filter comes up, so we're done with my knee. But just think about examples in your life.One of the first questions is who did this? Whose fault is it? Who did this to me? Kind of feeling. Right. And then the next sentence could be, why does this always happen to me?Right, so I've got the mirror here. Why does this always happen to me? Another way to say the same thing is when we have an opportunity or an invitation. Excuse me, an invitation.Well, I can't because. And we've always got a ready because. And it's a limitation. And now that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate conflicts. Right.There's trips that Joy and I wanted to take over the last five years. And we've been taking care of her mother. And sometimes we can get care and sometimes we can't. So that has affected our ability.And so I can't because is a real thing. But you'll know and you'll feel right away when it slides into victimhood. I can't. I always.There's always something in the way, you know, that kind of feeling. Another way to think about that is they won't let me. When we generalize today, you know, sort of globalize.The they out there, though, they won't let me. They, they, they. That is a. A big symbol of a mindset that has moved into victimhood. So one of the ways we think about that is external causation.There's something always outside of us that's causing things. Okay, so here's some of the things, you know, the system, the system, the market, the government, my parents, my boss, my partner, my past.That was a big one for me. I had a lot of fear around my past, thinking I could never get.Escape it or get far enough away from it in order to, you know, be whole and complete and, and show up the way I wanted to. Now, I want to be really clear about this. External forces influence. They do not ever define our response. Now just let that sit.Now we've talked about agency and the right to choose a million times on this show. But here's what a deferral of agency looks like when you put it off. Deferred agency looks like. I'm waiting for fairness. I'm waiting for an apology.I'm waiting for some kind of validation. I'm waiting for rescue. Somebody come and fix this mess. The victim mindset believes my life can begin once somebody or something else changes.And that, of course, is paralysis. Maybe things will change like the weather, the government, the election, the economy, and maybe they won't.But outsourcing our ability to create to that event is. Is really sad. And so another thing is well, I'm trying to.I'm really trying, but all this stuff stacked against me, that kind of feeling and language is. Is damaging and it is habit forming. It's addictive. Okay? So here's a couple other things to think about. Victim identity can feel really powerful. What?Yeah, really. It can feel powerful. Here's some things. A victim identity offers benefits. What? Yeah, it does. Here's some benefits. It gives me some social validation.I get social validation as the victim sympathy agreement. Maybe I get attention, maybe I get some emotional support, maybe get a line up of people behind me that are indignant for me because I got wronged.And then I sit in my wronged state, right? And nothing changes except I make noise and lament about what was done to me wrongfully.You feel seen because you make a noise and you're on the moral high ground. You think, I've been wronged. I'm justified. I'm right. Well, once in a million years, you know, you might need to do something.Something might need to change and serious things, you know, you might call the authorities, law enforcement or something, or you might need to. I've got a friend who was a guest on the show. He sponsored a piece of legislation in Australia. What? Yeah. And it's turned into law.So that was a place where he wasn't a victim, but his daughter was. And so he went to town and created legislation and got the attention of parliament in Australia and so forth.So those kinds of things are real, but they have an end game. In other words, I'm doing this so that. That I'm doing this posting on social complaining. So that one, I feel good.I feel validated so that I can dis them and people will get mad at them. That's nothing. That's empty, wasted effort and energy. And so I implore you, listen to our language together. I have to.You have to listen to the language because that sort of moral high ground where I jump up and down about having been wronged, I just watched. I'm recording this right after the gold medal Olympic hockey game. Now, I live in Canada, but Joy and I are both U.S. citizens and Canadian.And it was U.S. versus Canada, like it often is in the four nations and this and that kind of tournaments because they're the two powerhouses and Canada lost, and you could see it on their faces. But I. I know because I know the level at which these guys play. Nobody's sitting there thinking they were wronged. You might nitpick some officiating.You might nitpick this. That or the other.And it's just a professional thing, and our ability, their ability or yours and mine, to get out of the loss, the failure, the thing that didn't go your way right away. And that doesn't mean you can't have a period of horrifying heartbreak.You could see it on their faces, of course, but staying in that place would affect later play. You. You walk around or skate around, in that case, with a chip on your shoulder.And that sort of righteousness is intoxicating when you can hold up your, you know, your banner of being wronged. But it doesn't help you grow, and it doesn't help you produce. It doesn't help you be better, it doesn't help you be stronger.And it doesn't even change the person or system that did whatever they did. It doesn't do that unless you're sponsoring legislation and you want to go through that.A third benefit that you get is you get some kind of community through this grievance. Right? I've got. We're bonding. We're bonding with someone over shared harm. And you know what? You can see that on social media all the time.Someone will put up a post, angry at somebody about something, and then there's this pile on, and everybody feels righteously connected. And the people that are on the opposite side, they all feel righteously wronged. And none of that changes a thing.It produces a lot of cortisol and negative neurotransmitters. It reduces our creativity, it makes us stupid. It creates negative energy, and nothing good happens. So that's the pain of victimhood.And even though it creates belonging, that mutual recognition without taking responsibility is imprisonment. Nothing grows. Now, it's true. Validation feels good. And responsibility looks heavy. Like what? And that doesn't mean it's your fault.Think of response hyphen ability. Now, I know responsibility spelled with an I, but response ability, meaning the ability to respond, is with you and me 100% of the time.I don't care if what happened to me or you was out of order, not nice or wrong in that sense, but without response ability, nothing changes. And victim identity gives me an explanation, but it doesn't give me or you any expansion. Think about that. There's no expansion. And so that's a.That's a horrifying place to be where what we've got to offer is complaint, negativity, and, you know, bitching about something, but it doesn't create expansion for us. Okay, so then I want you to go with me in this. This path.From victimhood, where moves from, you know, some kind of pain because something happened to an identity, okay? Pain is real and victimhood is an identity. Now let's go a little deeper. Psychologically, when pain becomes identity, a bunch of things happen.Now, you know the confirmation bias idea, when you buy a red car or a red model or a green one or whatever because you haven't seen one and you think you'll be unique and then all of a sudden you see them everywhere. That's confirmation bias. We see what we are looking for, we find what we seek. We really do. Because we are tuned.Our minds and eyes and everything are tuned to do that. So when we start living in this identity, here's some things that happen when pain moves from an incident to an identity.First, every event confirms it. That's like seeing all the red cars or the blue ones or the Ferraris or whatever. All of a sudden. I didn't know there were all these.And they're there, okay? And so for us, as we solidify into a victim mindset from just having a thing or two or ten happen, then every event confirms. See, I knew it.See, I told you so. See, it always happens to me. That happens. And the confirmation bias activates. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.Banging in the red zone on the meter, right? Everything proves, See, it just proves once again, okay?We also then move to interpreting just plain old natural events as hostile and another evidence that the universe or our friends or family or system or whatever is against us. Another thing that happens that I find really damaging is we anticipate harm.Now, when I was learning to ski and I learned later in life, I learned at 45. It's kind of late. You know, a lot of people learn as kids, but I learned at 45.What I noticed right away between my learning curve and my kids learning curve was that they had less experience in life and so they moved with greater ease and grace because they were less worried about falling or getting hurt. I was more worried about falling and getting hurt. So I was trying to muscle through every balance element instead of just letting it flow.And eventually I learned how to do that. But it was hard and it took a long time because why I was anticipating I might fall, am I losing balance? I don't know.And that literally affected my balance and how I moved and felt and everything that happens in everything. Okay, if you write something like you all know, I write books and the book challenges this coming week, it'll be over by the time you get this.But I love helping people write Books. And what I hear often, often, often is they'll say things like, well, it won't be good, no one will read it. And that's all anticipating harm.And I don't know, in some cases I do, but often I don't know what the event or events are previously in their lives that have brought them to a place of anticipating failure. But it's exactly the same thing. And so, guess what? They hold themselves back.They don't write boldly or clearly, and they're afraid and they make it all wishy washy and that kind of thing. Another thing instead of anticipating harm is expecting betrayal.Now, if you've had relationship troubles, either in a partner, life, partner or business, and you've had failures, it's easy to get in a place of anticipating trouble. Okay, I don't live like that. That wasn't a thing that I had. Lots of the things that I've described, you know, I'm the poster child. This one I didn't.Even though I've had relationship failures, I always go in all in full, in expecting everything and give everything. I just do that.And yeah, I've been bashed a few times, but one of the partners I was with also had a couple of failed relationships and they came in anticipating failure.And I didn't recognize it until later, but, you know, kept diaries of notes and lists of expenses and so that they had ammunition later when eventually the relationship did fail, no surprise, pulled out all these notebooks to prove this, that and the other. And that was an expectation of betrayal and a victim mindset. Another way to describe that is we assume limits. Well, it'll only work this good.It'll never be better than that. So we assume, you know, that we're going to be held down. All of those things are identities or indications of victim mindset.And so if you find yourself with confirmation bias of the negative, you're interpreting natural things as hostile. You're anticipating harm, expecting betrayal, or assuming some kind of limits.Those are all telltale signs that you have allowed events in front of you to solidify into a victim mindset. I am at not at cause, I am at effect. I am at the butt end of all the bad stuff that happens.The brain is designed to protect us, the amygdala and all of those, you know, things. And so it, it wants to protect our narrative. And so when we create this victim narrative, your brain's really good at protecting it.So instead of asking when something happens that isn't what you want, we stop asking, what can I build. We start asking, how do I get out of this? How can I protect myself? How am I being wronged? Whose fault is this?And when we go there, our creativity goes down. This becomes our context, and it becomes our idea. Now, you know, I wrote a book called the Book of Context. Context is everything.Everything about life, everything about our achievements, our possibilities, and our failures is all context. And that is the set of circumstances and meaning we place around everything. If you haven't read it, it's a good read. The Book of Context.Not just because I wrote it, but it's really good at helping you identify those context barriers and then eliminate them. Once, once. And I do know this one. Once victimhood becomes an identity, resp. Every responsibility invitation feels like an attack. Hear that?Because that burned me so deeply for many years. Once victimhood becomes an identity, responsibility feels like an attack.Now, I struggled for decades with depression and didn't know it didn't get treated because we didn't talk about or handle those things in those years. You know, one year, man, and two, it was not safe to talk about mental conditions. It's more now. But then it wasn't. And.And so I did believe everything was my fault.And every thing that was pointed out that I could have done or might have done or question that was asked about different doing it different, boy, did that feel like an attack. And I went on into full defense mode and then wondered why I felt miserable a lot of the time.So I'm going to say that once again, when victimhood has solidified into an identity, it's who I am. I'm a victim. And there's lots of ways.We just said about all the possible ways to think about that responsibility felt like and will feel like an attack, okay? And if you're bristling at that, slow down, slow down and think about it.So rather than arguing, you might realize that that feeling of bristling is because you're feeling like it's an attack. Oh, wow. Responsibility isn't blame. It is power. Remember, response. Ability. I have the ability to respond.So here's a dangerous question I want to give you, okay? Instead of saying, who did this to me? Or why does this happen to me? Or, see, I knew it was going to happen again, or any version of that question.The dangerous question is, what will I create from this? Now, that might sound like some kind of Pollyanna stuff, but it's really not. Because the minute I say, what can I create from this?You've moved into sovereign creator mode. You may not have all the bricks and mortar that you want to build, but you have now switched your view from who did this to me.Oh, no, to I'm a builder. What can I build here? What strength can this situation or eventually build in me?I know with my knees, I'm going to be a lot more careful with them because I've got two bruised knees now. And that's a silly example, but it's exactly the same. What clarity can I get from this can this refine? What feeling or outlook can this event refine?Now, think about it. When I'm busy looking about, looking at who did this and whose fault is it?I've got one set of lenses on if I'm saying, what can this event refine in me as a person, as a physical or a spiritual being? Another way to look at it is what boundary can this sharpen? Maybe I had a boundary, but it wasn't enforced.And so coming over, allowing something or someone to come over that boundary resulted in some pain. Instead of saying, I'm the victim, I need to have a sharper boundary. And so I can grow instead of getting angry.Another way to think about it is what wisdom can this produce for me? So wisdom, clarity, strength, what service can this inspire?One of the things I know for sure about all of my books and every single book I've helped someone write is the thesis, the power, the spine, the guts of the books they've written have all come from difficult experiences they have endured and overcome. Then when they have endured or overcome or grown from those experiences, the question that they have begun to ask is, how can I help with this?Instead of, how can I get even about this?How can I help others from what I've learned, help them avoid this problem, stay out of this ditch, or get through it more quickly or more elegantly or with less mistakes? Okay? Pain can be a wound or it can be raw material. And that's the beautiful choice that we have. It can be a wound, and it is a wound.And we don't control what happened. You don't control what happens. But we do control what it becomes. We control how we approach and feel during the recovery process.Whether it's a band aid on my knee or a broken heart or an empty wallet or recovering from an illness or whatever it is, control what it becomes. Does it become a resentful, bitter hole, scar tissue everywhere, or a learning that has mellowed me and made me more powerful, more clear? Right.And more creative? Okay, so here's a fear people, if they're if you've been stuck in a victim identity for a while, there's a fear, a real fear about letting it go.Because when you let go of your victim identity, you can say, who am I now? It can feel like you're betraying your own pain. What am I supposed to do nothing about this? Not at all.If you've been wounded, get the right health, whether the wound is physical, spiritual, emotional, or financial.And in getting the right help, that might, you know, include involving others, depending on how serious it is, it might involve the courts and the law or lawsuits or whatever. But that is getting, you know, redress for a pain that's legit and real.And if you abandon your victimhood, it might feel like you're betraying the pain, but it doesn't have to at all. You can stay in a positive, creative mode while having whatever repairs need to go on over there, and it doesn't consume your life.I know I've walked through that situation too, in my own particular way.And I'm not pretending to know or understand everything that you have or have been through, but there have been circumstances where that has happened to me.And because I was able to set that set of activities over here and participate fully, but not let it, you know, completely control my mind, my energy, and my focus, I was able to have great growth from that thing. So sometimes it feels like we're betraying our pain, and it might feel like we're excusing injustice. It's kind of like forgiveness.Forgiveness sometimes feels like we're pretending things doesn't happen. Not true.In either case, forgiveness is releasing the energetic hobbles, the energetic chains around something, whether it was something you did or something that was done to you, it unleashes your power. It doesn't justify mistakes or conscious or intentional harm. Another thing that giving up a victim story might do is invalidate your story.Because if you have created a story that centers around how you are victimized, you're going to have a weak story, or you're going to get all the social validation and petting and everything.But your ability to be creative and add good to the world is limited because all you've built is a story around this victimhood now, getting redress and getting healing and fixing, you know, putting stuff on my knees or fixing the dog's broken paw, all those are part of process, but it is separate. The pain is separate from turning into a victim, which is a character that we choose to assume.So you can have pain and you can honor your pain and Heal it and get, you know what, do whatever you need to, but you don't have to live inside of it. I'm going to just let you sit with that for a minute. Living inside of it means it's defined me. It's who I am.And that goes to this solidified, calcified, sort of moldy old victim personality, which isn't creative and nobody likes to be around anyway. So ownership says, okay, this happened, it mattered, it hurt, and it will not define me. So write those four things down.Ownership, life ownership says, this happened, it mattered, it hurt, and it does not define me, period. Okay? And we talked in the beginning about the swamp and the meadow.The swamp is a place of learned helplessness, addiction to mediocrity and victim mindset. Those things limit our creativity. They reduce our effectiveness. They make us not a lot of fun to be around.But more than anything, they ignore your divine heritage, they ignore your infinite potential, and they put a damper on all the good we can do. So if we crack open the victim mindset, it's the final layer of the three in the swamp.When we crack it open, then ownership of your life becomes possible. And like we said, ownership says, this happened, it matter, it hurt, and it won't define me. What can I create from this? What wisdom? What boundaries?What, you know, benefits can I create for me and add into the world? So we don't control what was done to us, but we do control what is done through us by who we choose to become when those things happen.Now, the next episode we're going to talk about is in the meadow. We're going to move to the meadow and we'll talk a little bit in the next episode about what that is.And I use the metaphor of the swamp and the meadow because I've been in both, so have you.And learned helplessness, addiction to mediocrity, and victim mindset is the name, are the names of that soul sucking, clumpy, you know, sloppy swamp that sucks the life out of us and takes away our creativity. The meadow is a liberated, beautiful, sunshiny place where we are creative, collaborative and productive.It's the place where we create purpose, prosperity and joy. And once the blame releases, authorship, true life authorship can begin. And so next time, we're going to talk about fierce life ownership. I love you.I love everything that you're doing that's good and adding good to the world. And I'm grateful to you. I'm also absolutely certain that you have the ability to start right now, no matter where you've been.No matter where you are on the path to move forward with joy starting today and create your ultimate life. Right now. Your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you.Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything. If you want to know more, go to kellenfluecigermedia.com if you want more free tools, go here.YourUltimateLife CA Subscribe Share Stand with your heart in the sky sky and your feet on the ground.