Imagine you're in a hole. What do you do?
The victim's answer: continue digging
The problem solver's answer: build a ladder and climb out
Unless you love digging holes you probably have realized you cannot live victim mode. This is a vicious crazy eight of emotions where nothing changes.
Crazy Eight
The crazy eight involves unproductively cycling through a high and low emotion. As a victim you may oscillate between anger/resentment as the high emotion and sadness/depression as the low emotion.
The only way out of this mode of thinking is understanding your power in a situation which is the true definition of problem solving. Once you see your power you can elevate out of the vicious cycle.
This sounds simple but it can be hard to see and do.
How this played out in my life
I divorced at 26, the same time that many of my friends were getting married (talk about pouring salt in a wound).
The victim in me saw everyone else as whole and desirable while I was broken and undesirable. I seesawed between sadness and anger until I decided to focus my energy on the things I could control. One such thing was continuing my education into graduate school. I made it my mission to apply, get accepted into and graduate from Georgia Tech's MBA program.
Something happened along this journey. I started to gain confidence and even began seeing myself as whole again. I was healing myself.
Your Turn
I'm going to make some sweeping assumptions:
You have feet that can walk you out of any situation.
You have a phone that can contact anyone and research anything; this creates options.
You have a heart that's beating. That same heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood through your body each day. If your heart can do this just think of what your brain is capable of accomplishing.
Note: I do believe there's a time to be a victim. This is right after something emotionally jarring occurs in your life. Some of us need more time than others to cocoon inside ourselves and lick our wounds. Honor this time, if you don't you can wreak more havoc (the emotional equivalent to running on a broken leg). I wrote about this previously and wholeheartedly believe in this form of healing.