Don't Be A Victim

In this episode we discuss how to avoid falling into a victim mentality, steps to take to avoid this and more appropriate ways of dealing with difficulties.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hello there.

Welcome to Life,

Laughter,

And Lessons.

Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with Glenn Ambrose.

Wow.

I'm brain dead today.

Starting off good.

Starting off good.

What is it?

Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter.

Yes.

Yes,

With Glenn Ambrose.

That's me.

And I'm here with Dave DeAngelis.

Hey,

Everybody.

So Dave is going to be kind of filling in,

Stepping in for Ben Barber today.

Yep.

So he's going to be my go-to man.

I'm going to try.

When I get that glossy blank stare in my eye,

He's going to step right in and save me.

Hopefully.

All right.

Today we are talking about being a victim.

The show's called Don't Be a Victim.

So I mean,

I think this is an issue that we have a lot.

We all play the victim at certain times because we do what works and we get something out of it.

A lot of times if this thing's going wrong in our lives,

Then if we take responsibility for it,

Then we have the responsibility to change it.

And that's just a big pain in the butt.

So it's so much easier to just rationalize why it's not our fault.

And one of the favorite things that I say,

And maybe we'll do a whole show on this,

Is that life happens to you.

Life happens for you,

Not to you.

I'll get rolling.

So whenever I notice myself falling into that victim mentality,

I'll remind myself of that.

It's like,

Wait a minute.

Life is happening for me.

It's not happening to me.

So if I shift my perception and look at the situation this way,

Then how does it look from there?

And it's helpful.

Sometimes that's a big jump though.

When you're really living in that victim mentality and you're really settled in there,

And then somebody goes,

Well,

How is this for you?

Sometimes you have to duck because things are thrown.

But it's that mentality that I think for me,

And you can look at this,

There's been many positive thinking books out there that talk to this point.

And it's been proven.

I mean,

Scientifically in every other way,

That thinking positive enhances your life.

And you can believe it just from a factual point.

You can believe it from a spiritual point.

It doesn't really matter,

But it works for everyone no matter how you come at it.

For me,

I come at things from a spiritual point of view.

So I'm thinking that if I'm really feeling like a victim and I have to get down to the core of my belief systems,

I'll think that,

Okay,

My creator is in control of what's happening.

So why would my creator just slam me for no good reason?

That kind of goes against the whole principle of creating.

You don't create things to torture them.

So I want nothing but the best for my son.

I wouldn't do that to him.

I wouldn't just throw miserable things at him just to make his life more difficult.

It goes against my human nature.

It goes against my spiritual nature.

So therefore,

I think it goes against my creator's nature.

So that's kind of where I center myself in there.

I go,

Okay,

Well,

It's not an attack on me.

It must be happening for me.

And then if I can shift my perspective to that and start looking for why,

What could be the silver lining?

What could be looking to emerge in this situation?

Michael Bernard Beckwith says that.

What's trying to emerge in this situation?

And a lot of times,

If you look at it,

You can see things like something that's trying to emerge is always going to be something good.

So you can look around at a difficult situation and say,

What's trying to emerge in this situation?

Could it be love?

Could it be forgiveness?

Could it be strength?

Could it be a way for me to let go of my pride and my ego?

Could that be what's trying to emerge?

If I'm looking at this as the forces of nature out there are trying to better my life,

What could be trying to emerge in this situation?

So it's one thing.

And you're thinking this in hard times?

I'm trying like heck,

Yeah.

That is tough.

Well,

That's when,

You know why,

I'm obviously not perfect at it.

But if I'm really caught up in something,

What I try to do is really use that as a red flag to go,

Hey,

Glenn,

You're really caught up in this.

You know that life is good.

And there is happiness to have.

That's what I truly believe in.

And I experienced it.

So coming from how do I get myself out of that victim mentality and look at this in a light that gets me back on track?

And at the real difficult times,

Sometimes I get sucked into them just like everybody else.

But even the real,

Real difficult ones,

I'd say maybe it might last a day or two that I'm really kind of caught up.

And I don't think I fully let myself fall into it.

There's always that part of me that's going,

You know this is for you.

It's not happening to you.

So don't completely get sucked into it here.

You know that things are going to be OK.

And yeah,

I think if you're going to live this way,

Doing it on the times when things aren't too difficult,

That's kind of easy.

And it's a wonderful place to start.

But really,

Why are we working on ourselves?

If we want real happiness,

Then we need to be able to implement these things in the most difficult of times.

Because that's when we drop the lowest.

And I don't like dropping real low.

My whole point of living this way is so I don't live on a roller coaster.

I don't like the low lows.

So if I can just bring those low lows up a little higher so where I don't get fully sucked into it and I can kind of pull myself out of it and back up a little bit quicker,

Then that's a success for me.

It's a big deal to,

I mean,

As someone who considers himself fairly negative,

What you just said was totally right.

Recognizing these things is great.

That's dandy.

But it's the true colors show when you do have a hard time.

Can you implement this?

And for me,

It's usually like I'm going to sit here and say to you,

Oh,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

It's terrible to be the victim.

I don't want to do that.

That's right.

Life happens for me,

Not to me.

And then when I leave here,

Something bad is going to happen eventually.

And I'm going to be like,

Why does everything happen to me?

And I feel like that's something that you have to realize that you're,

In a way,

I mean,

Everyone's special,

Obviously,

But in a way,

You need to realize that your situation is not totally unique.

And thinking that life happens to you is kind of selfish to me,

Right?

Because it's like,

Oh,

Are you the only one that's suffering right now?

It's like people are suffering in all ends of the spectrum.

Absolutely.

At all times.

And it's like everyone hurts.

And to think that the creator or the universal power,

The thing that kind of makes things spin around in this world,

Is going to take time to come over and punish you for no apparent reason.

You specifically.

Yeah,

That's kind of like,

Wow,

Are you really that important?

Yeah,

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it's,

You know,

If that same creative force can come over and lift you to make the whole unit work better,

Well,

Then that would make sense.

But just coming over to punish for no apparent reason,

Because if your life gets worse,

Then it's probably going to impact other people in negative ways.

So it's not just you that he's punishing.

You know,

It's the idea behind it.

And that's one of the things you can do is follow it all the way through.

Follow that line of thinking.

Okay,

Well,

This happened to me.

Well,

There's no good that can come from it.

Okay,

Well,

Then what's the bad?

Follow the bad all the way through.

Okay,

Well,

My life gets worse and then I crap on other people and then I guess that's it.

And people don't want to be around me.

Yeah.

Okay,

So basically your theory is that the creator that all sages and spiritual and religious people who have ever studied it believes that it's a loving force decided to just crap on you for no apparent reason.

I mean,

You can also believe it if you have no beliefs.

Oh,

Yeah.

Of that.

I mean,

You can just literally just break it down to this bad thing happened to me.

What's going to happen if I continue to be the victim?

You're going to hurt everyone around you.

Right.

So even if you don't think that there's nothing behind it,

It's pretty much the same thing.

Exactly.

And that's why you see that's like when I opened,

I mentioned positive thinking books have been proven to work.

And you don't have to come at this from a spiritual point of view.

And I'm glad you brought that up so we can hit both sides of it.

It's just what's the benefit of being the victim?

All it does is keep you keeps you stuck in the problem.

That's all it does.

It doesn't it doesn't help you.

You know,

They've proven scientifically that like when you get angry and frustrated,

Your mind shuts down and it doesn't think as clearly.

So therefore,

You're less capable of finding the solution.

You know,

So if you just sit and accept acceptance and be like,

Okay,

This this happened,

And you don't take on that victim mentality that it's a personal attack on you,

You know,

Then all of a sudden you don't have that emotional charge that goes on,

Which which brings up the anger and the fear and the frustration and shuts down your mind.

All of a sudden,

You're just sitting there.

You're looking for the goodness situation.

And if you look for something,

You're going to find it.

You know,

I mean,

That they do that with,

You know,

Again,

Getting away from the spiritual angle.

You know,

They do that with magic.

I mean,

You know,

Yeah,

Distraction.

You know,

What do I want them looking at?

I want them looking over to the right while I do something on the left,

Because they'll never see it.

You know,

I saw this this one magician on TV.

He he was doing a trick with people and he had them focused on a trick.

And somebody kept walking behind them and they changed the person that was doing the trick mid sentence to these people.

And they didn't even notice that the person it was a different person standing in front of them doing the trick.

Wow.

And I mean,

They took a hat off the guy.

They put a hat on.

I think they brought a dog in.

They pulled the dog out.

And this was all in the middle of a conversation about showing somebody a trick.

And the people never even noticed anything.

It was amazing,

You know.

So it's what we're looking for is what we're going to see.

So if we're looking for the problem and trying to stay in that problem because we need to prove that we're a victim and it's not our fault.

Yeah.

Well,

Then that's exactly what's going to happen.

Right.

I think that's a big that's another big point of this topic is that not only do people who I don't want to say play the victim,

But feel like they're a victim.

Right.

They kind of end up,

You know,

That's their go to.

And they're like,

It's almost like there is no other option.

So in a way,

They kind of like it's almost like a drug.

It's like it's like you kind of like you kind of like like that.

You're like,

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you want to find every possible reason that you can find to to explain to people and to to back up why you think life sucks.

Right.

You know.

Oh,

Absolutely.

It's it's because the more you can prove that it's not your fault,

Then the less you have to do to try to fix it.

And you can see how bad it is and how worse it gets as time goes on with these with these people.

It happens to me.

You know,

I've noticed it.

It's really like it's it's almost the same way that you can learn how to look in the good.

It's kind of the total up like you just fall into that habit.

Right.

Of finding every problem that you can.

It is.

And this is,

You know,

This is we just stumbled upon yet another reason why we need to try to live consciously.

Pay attention to what we're doing.

Just stop for a minute and look at what's happening and and,

You know,

Call it for what it is,

Because when we look at this stuff,

It's really not that stretch of an imagination to say,

Oh,

Yeah,

I do that and I can see why it's not benefiting me.

So I think I'll try to do this,

You know,

And and then you just start heading in that direction like it's not,

You know,

Another big aspect of this as well as a lot of the things I talk about is not beating yourself up over this stuff.

Like I mean,

I've I've had like a difficult situation like last week.

And honestly,

A part of me felt like a victim.

It did.

And I didn't like it.

And I and I tried to shift it.

And I did my best to handle things properly.

And but it affected me for a couple of days.

I was able to get myself out of it and move on.

Now,

One of the reasons I was able to get myself out of it and move on was the fact that I know that I know that I just lived.

I didn't live perfectly the way that I preach on these shows or the things that I believe in.

I've worked really hard to live this way.

And and I love living this way,

And it's brought me lots of happiness.

And it's it's a huge part of my identity and how I walk around and all that stuff.

And it would be very easy for me to go,

Oh,

Glenn,

You failed.

You failed.

You got sucked into the negative.

And,

And,

You know,

Who do you think you are?

You've got this podcast about happiness and stuff.

And here you don't even live it.

I mean,

How easy would that be for me to beat myself up?

But what does that do?

It doesn't help me.

It doesn't benefit me.

I have to look at it realistically and go,

Yeah,

Okay.

Well,

That one got you a little bit.

Well,

It's still work to do.

Okay.

You know,

Don't beating myself up is just another way of me playing a victim.

And it would pull me back into it even deeper.

And you know,

But if I can just look at it and forgive myself and say,

You know what,

Glenn,

You tried you fell a little bit short that but but you know what you did better than you did,

You know,

Two years ago.

You know,

Even every once in a while,

I'll do worse.

I'll do worse than I did in a situation two years ago,

Or at least it looks like that from my perspective.

But I need to forgive myself,

Let it go and just move on and say,

Okay,

Where am I take stock and where I am now,

Realistically,

Where am I,

And then look for the solution from there.

You know,

Let go of that emotional charge,

Let go of feeling bad for myself,

And let go of looking at the problem.

If I stop looking at the problem or stop creating new problems,

And feeling like a victim of them,

Stop that and then just start looking for the solution.

Well,

What can I do right now?

Well,

I could find something to focus on that makes me feel good.

Okay,

Well,

What's that going to do?

Well,

It's gonna make me feel good.

That's one and that's all I have control over.

This particular moment and that's one of the ways that I pulled myself out of that.

You know,

Because my mind wanted to grab on to the problem and play it over and over in my head and over and over.

And you know,

A lot of times every time you play it over in your head,

You get a little bit more righteous.

And the other person gets a little bit more negative.

You know,

Pretty soon you tell a story out loud and you're basically bucking for sainthood.

And they are basically the devil.

So,

You know,

It's just your perception kind of,

You know,

Makes it more of a dramatic difference so you can feel more victimized.

You know,

Because then you can back up and you can justify why you're so miserable.

Right.

And that's been wronged.

Right.

And that's a big part of it is we think that like,

If we can prove how the other person is wrong,

Then we'll prove that we're right and but then what?

Yeah.

Like,

What does that get you?

The right to feel like a victim.

Or even if there's not someone,

Even if it's just a situation that's happened to you.

Sure.

It could be anything.

This happened to me.

This happened to me.

So I'm the victim.

I've been victimized.

I've been victimized.

Okay.

Let's say that's true.

Now what?

Yeah.

What would you do?

Yeah.

What do you get?

Like,

What do you get?

That's a big part that I think no one ever thinks about.

Like,

What now?

Yeah.

Because you're right.

The brain shuts down.

You get cloudy and you can't,

It's like a record.

Like it's like looping.

It's stuck.

Exactly.

You keep saying the problem.

You can't even,

It's hard to even move on from that one thought.

Yes.

Yeah.

It gets a hold of you.

In a positive or a negative way,

It's just,

It's hard to even move past the fact that like I can't believe this has happened to me.

Right.

Like why is this happening?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's,

It is,

It's true.

We get,

It gets caught up in that loop and every time,

You know,

What we're doing is we're building up a resentment.

Oh yeah.

And so,

So what a resentment means is I think it comes,

Well,

Re means again,

Obviously,

Consent is like from Latin,

I believe it's like sentire or something to that and it means to feel.

So a resentment is to refill or to feel again.

Yeah.

So when we're,

When we're looping that in our mind and we're proving to ourselves what a victim is,

As it's going through our mind,

We're reliving the experience.

We're refilling that experience and all the toxins that are going through our body are fired through again.

We're re-experiencing that negative experience over and over and over again.

And it's just like,

I mean,

Let's just not do that.

I mean,

You know,

That would enhance your life dramatically.

Just stop doing that.

Just stop beating yourself.

Just stop reliving a negative experience.

I mean,

We're the only creatures that beat themselves up in this form and other forms over and over and over again for the same situation.

You know,

I was explaining this to my son years ago and I was,

I was saying like,

You know,

If you've got a cheetah,

Like chasing a antelope or something in the wild and,

And you know,

The thing's breaking right and breaking left and then,

And the cheetah is chasing that and then all of a sudden the antelope gets away and the cheetah runs behind a bush.

Now do you think that the cheetah is sitting back there going,

Oh my God,

I'm such a stupid cheetah.

I can't believe I let him go away.

I knew I should have broke left when he broke right.

And I mean,

He always breaks right and I knew he broke right,

But I'm such an idiot cheetah.

You know,

Like,

No,

He's not doing that.

Now the,

The,

Anything with a mind can probably look at the past and assess what they may have done differently.

You know,

We can learn from our past without reliving it and beating ourselves up over it.

You know,

So.

Well,

Isn't that more of like the cheetah's thinking of instinct.

It's like it learned.

It's like,

Right.

It just,

It's like a sub.

I don't think,

I don't know if we know if it's reasoning that much,

But it's like,

All right.

Well,

It's the same way that a dog gets trained.

Yes.

It learns to adjust.

Right.

The next time.

And that benefits that animal because it,

If,

If an animal beat itself up over what it didn't do right.

It would starve.

Yeah.

It wouldn't learn from it.

No.

It would just be caught up in the problem of it.

I'm such a crappy cheetah.

I'm probably going to starve because I suck at this.

You know,

What kind of cheetah am I?

I hope none of my cheetah friends were watching.

No,

But that's,

It's funny because that's,

But it's true.

We zero benefit,

Zero benefit to that.

Right.

You know,

So it's zero benefit for beating ourselves up.

It's zero benefit for in this case,

Beating ourselves up by replaying it and reliving it and refilling it because it's,

You know,

It literally is us just,

Just sending negative toxins through our body and reliving that whole experience over and over and over and over.

And that can be in a five minute period,

You know,

Because that record player loops so quickly.

Right.

So yeah,

Staying in that mentality of the problem,

It doesn't get us anywhere.

So the,

You know,

The first thing that we need to do to break out of that is just get back into the present moment because we're stuck in the past.

Right.

Just keep looping the past.

So the first thing we need to do is just stop and just realize where we are and what we're doing.

You know,

Be present.

You're like,

Okay,

Well,

I'm,

I'm sitting down.

It's not happening right now.

Right.

Everything's going to be okay.

Eventually,

You know,

Just broad thoughts like that.

Yeah.

You know,

Take some of the fuel out of the fire and stop feeding it and just be like,

Okay,

All right.

Now I'm a little bit relaxed.

You know,

Don't,

Don't try to jump from problem to solution,

Go from problem to present.

And then maybe you can start finding the solution.

Maybe you need to just drop it for a little while and go to a solution later.

You know,

It's,

You know,

The different situations cause for different,

You know,

Different things.

But it's,

Once you start shifting from this is happening to me and I'm the victim and poor me.

And can you believe that this happened?

And you know,

And start looking for the solution.

Then you might find it,

But you're not gonna,

You're not gonna find like,

Like let's say that there's something beneficial for you to learn out of this situation.

Let's say that there's forgiveness trying to emerge in this situation.

And if you were to forgive,

Let's say somebody did something to you and you're caught up in what they did.

And if you forgave them,

Then your relationship would enhance.

Um,

The,

You would enhance as a person because you would have new experience in your life,

How forgiveness works and how you can be happier through forgiveness.

What if that's trying to emerge and you just stay stuck in a problem?

Then it's not going to emerge.

You know,

The only way that can emerge is if you stop,

Get out of that record player and then maybe start asking yourself other questions.

You know,

How can I benefit from this?

One thing I learned very early on was don't pray for patients because you'll get something to be patient about.

So a lot of times,

You know,

Um,

A lot of times we've got to be careful for what we ask for.

You know,

There's times when I'm tired and,

And I'm like,

I don't want any lessons today,

You know,

Please,

Please teach me my lessons easily.

Yeah.

I've been through enough trauma lately.

You know,

Right.

I think that,

I think another big thing though that you said that I think that,

Uh,

Is something important for people who do get stuck in the problem to remember is that there really,

You cannot,

You cannot,

As much as you want to,

You cannot sit down and expect it to be fixed like that.

Right.

And as you just said,

You really can't just go problem solutions.

Right.

And I feel like just,

It's when you're stuck in that mode and you're like,

I just wanted to be fixed.

Yeah.

I just want to be,

I just want to be happy now.

I want to be happier.

I want to know exactly what's going to happen.

And you don't know exactly.

No.

And you really have to really just,

You have to really take it one step at a time.

Yeah.

And pause.

And I think you're showing that just pausing before you react.

Yeah.

There's space.

We need to create space for something good to come into.

You know,

If like,

If you,

If you think of,

Um,

Of your mind or your consciousness,

Just of like,

Uh,

Only has a finite area.

So it's,

It's got a record player of negativity looping.

It's going,

I can't believe this.

This sucks.

I'm out of this and it's,

I'm a victim and blah,

Blah.

And it's where's the solution going to fit in there?

It can't,

It can't squeak in.

Yeah.

You know,

It doesn't have any room.

I do the same thing with,

Um,

With working out,

You know,

With my clients,

Like I'll say,

Um,

Just tell yourself something in your head.

So the negative thought can't get in.

I can do this all day.

This is easy.

I'm just gonna,

I'm just going to keep moving.

Boy,

This,

This isn't that hard.

I can do this all day.

If you keep telling yourself that then there's no room over and over.

It doesn't even matter if you believe it.

It's just,

If you keep your mind occupied with positive thoughts,

The negative can't squeak in.

Oh,

This is heavy.

This is no problem.

I can do this all day.

And then the negative tries to squeak in and it doesn't have any room.

So you,

You know,

You can use that as a tool the other way.

Loop the positive,

Get a looping positive record,

You know,

To,

To keep,

Then the negative can't squeak in,

You know?

So it goes both ways,

But that,

You know,

Pausing for a moment,

Jumping from negative to positive is very hard.

So it just pause for a moment and leave a little bit of space for other options to come in.

You know,

I'm a victim,

I'm a victim,

I'm a victim,

I'm a victim.

Well,

Where's the space where maybe I'm not a victim.

Where does that fit?

It doesn't,

You know,

You have to.

It pause for a moment to try to open up a little bit of space for maybe just maybe I don't believe this crap yet,

But maybe I can look at this another way.

Maybe.

And then that's enough.

That's a start.

Yeah,

That's it.

That's where it starts,

You know?

And then you can start looking maybe for the positive once,

Once the blood pressure goes down,

You know,

And the capillaries stop being contracted in your brain,

You know?

Definitely.

Yeah,

The one way I like to say it is people spend a lot of energy defending their right to be unhappy.

Yes,

I do.

Yeah,

Defend it to the ends of the earth.

Oh,

Yeah.

No,

Let me tell you why.

It's like all you're doing is proving to me that you are bound and determined that you want to stay unhappy.

You don't have to really prove that to me.

You can sit there and be unhappy all day you want.

That's your choice.

You know,

You have the right to be unhappy.

And you know,

I mean,

This is what I try to do with people in that situation.

I just want them to try to get that it's a choice.

Yeah.

It's a choice.

If you choose,

You have 100% right to be absolutely as unhappy as you want to be forever.

You have that right,

And I will never take that right away from you ever.

I'm incapable of taking that right away from anyone.

You know,

So you can have it.

And all I'm trying to do is say,

Let's try looking at things from a different perspective and see if it makes sense.

And if we can kind of lighten up the situation by looking at it a different way and maybe take you towards some happiness.

Now,

If that doesn't work,

You have 100% right to go right back to your own happiness.

It's sitting there waiting for you.

It's not going anywhere.

You didn't you did not lose the right to be unhappy by entertaining the possibility of looking at things in a different way.

You know,

And if that when people are so you know,

They're so caught up in that defensiveness,

That defending No,

You don't understand.

I'm the victim.

You have to get that I'm the victim.

It's like,

Well,

You get to believe you're the victim forever.

If you choose.

I'm not trying to take that away.

I'm just,

You know,

Offering that we might be able to look at it a different way.

Let's discuss that for a little bit.

And then once we discuss it,

You make your own mind up again,

You get to choose happy or unhappy at the end of the conversation,

You know,

And that,

Honestly,

What that usually does is a lot of times it gives it creates enough space.

Because I'm not saying I'm trying to take anything away from you.

Or I'm not trying to say that you're not the victim.

I'm just trying to these feelings aren't valid,

Right?

Your feelings aren't valid,

Anything like that.

So I'm just trying to say,

Let's entertain looking at it a different way for a little while.

And then once we're done discussing it,

Then you can go,

You got freedom of choice,

You go back to whichever way you want to look at it.

And most of the times that creates enough space for them to relax a little bit,

See it in a different light.

And then they go,

Oh,

Yeah.

Yeah,

Okay,

I guess that.

And then what's cool is,

Once you're in control of yourself again,

And you're looking at things realistically and you're not caught up in that record player and that victim mentality,

99% of the time,

Even people who are really caught up in negativity,

Negativity on a daily basis,

99% of the time,

They choose the happier way.

Nobody wants to be unhappy.

If they know they have a choice,

If you go happiness is on your left and unhappiness is on your right,

Which way do you want to go?

Well,

If they know that it's their choice,

Most people are going to go towards the happiness.

Most times,

Unless they're really feeling sorry for themselves.

And they'll just be like,

Screw you.

Okay.

Well,

Congratulations on your free will.

You may go be unhappy now.

I will be in another area of town.

Sure.

So what do you think about them apples?

It's good stuff.

Yeah,

It was a good talk.

I think we're,

Uh,

We got to wrap up.

Yeah,

That's okay with you.

Yeah,

That works.

That works.

So I guess to,

Uh,

To recap,

You know,

It's that victim mentality has a very strong draw to it.

And when we're in it,

Um,

It's,

It's difficult to look at really,

Uh,

With a healthy perspective.

So the first thing you need to do is just try to stop and relax and just get yourself back to the present moment and just kind of,

Um,

Reset.

And then you can entertain,

You know,

Different,

Uh,

Positive outcomes or,

Or talk to somebody about it or,

You know,

There's,

There's different avenues you can go from there,

But you need to just chill first,

Just catch your breath and get out of that record player loop,

You know,

And then go from there.

And,

And,

Um,

Just try focusing on a solution,

You know,

Is,

Is there something that I can do to make this situation better?

Sometimes there is,

Sometimes there isn't,

You know,

What's trying to emerge in this situation.

If,

If I were to assume that life was happening for me,

Not to me,

If I assume that life coming from that perspective of life is happening for my benefit,

What could I learn from this situation that would enhance me as a person moving forward?

Hmm.

You know,

And when you start contemplating things like that,

All of a sudden you start getting the lessons.

And if you don't get the lesson,

You're destined to repeat them,

You know,

So,

So really this is such a big thing about bringing happiness into your life because,

You know,

If,

If you play the victim all the time,

You never learned a lesson that you were supposed to learn with that situation.

So that means there's going to be another situation look just like it and another situation look just like it.

And what does that do to the victim?

It gives,

Just gives them more ammunition to say,

See,

Look,

Look at all these bad things that happened to me.

Yeah.

Well,

Yeah,

They keep happening to you because you refuse to learn the lesson.

If you just learn the lesson,

Then maybe life would stop dropping cars and houses on your head and you could just move on and stop re-experiencing the same type of situation over and over.

I don't know.

Nice.

Oh my God.

So profound.

No,

It's,

I like that.

Yeah.

I enjoyed that part.

You've taught me.

You've taught me today.

I've learned something.

Very well,

Grasshopper.

I've learned this lesson in my life with some laughter.

With some laughter.

Nice.

So where can people find you?

They can find me on life-enhancement-services.

Com,

Facebook,

Life Enhancement Services,

And my personal page on Facebook,

Glen Ambrose.

That's me.

Fantastic.

Two N's.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have to say that.

That was traumatic when I was a child.

I think I talked about that before.

Yeah.

And I could only find Glen with one N on those little license plates when I went on vacation.

I'm 46 and I'm still scarred from that.

Yeah.

And all I needed was a Sharpie.

To add it.

That's right.

That was a perfect way to end.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks,

Dave.

And we're out for today.

This podcast is presented by New Shore Productions,

Executive producers,

Glen Ambrose,

Benjamin Barber,

And David DeAngelis.

Reviews

This is actually very helpful, I feel relieved that most people get into this kind of toxic victim mindset, and then re-live the negative emotions and experience, in order to justify why things aren’t working our way.
We only see what we want to see, if we choose to see problems, then we will only see problems.
And sometimes the easiest way is to get distracted by focusing on something else - a hobby, or work, exercise etc. to pull ourselves out of it and train our brain to do this less and less.

I am really enjoying all your podcasts on victim mentality- you gave real solutions- I got the most out of this talk today

Your view on life works very well for me. Thank you.

Really funny and insightful. Thank you I found it helpful.

Glenn (nn) this is profound. I like the part “I’m not taking away your right to be negative “ . This has helped me a lot with my life. Well done 👋👋

OMG,you re really good! I Will Tell about u to every damaged person I have like friend!

Thanks for another thought inspiring podcast! Tell Ben he was missed in the podcast.

Great info! Thank you!

Needed this today! Thanks

Thank you Glenn, this was a great talk to listen to 🙂x

Great talk! Thank you so much! Helped me put some things into perspective.

What an amazing talk. A good laugh and some deep thinking all in one.

Awesome! Always feel uplifted after listening to these talks, definateky puts things into perspective when you're on the path of self healing! Thankyou! 🙏🕉💕💛

Real Life Info, Thoughts & Experiences; all laced up with Humour - Awesome, Thanks!

Very informative.

Without a doubt it was a really good pod. Thank you.

Loved this so much!!! It's a gift to know that you can move on from victim status in any situation! Every day negative events can be conquered so easily! Grace and peace to you!

Exactly what I needed! Miracles happen. Thank you 😊