Let's talk a little bit about victimhood.
Victimhood is something that I'm very familiar with personally,
Because boy was I a victim.
I went through years of just blaming everybody else,
The universe,
Other people,
For things that I never took responsibility for.
And the thing that's interesting about victimhood that I read recently,
We have a rational and thinking part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex,
Which sits kind of in the front.
And what that does is it rationalizes and thinks things.
So one of the reasons why we know that things are bad,
Like say murdering somebody is bad,
We know that in our prefrontal cortex.
That doesn't mean that we don't have the ability to do it,
And we have the urges to do it,
But it means we stop doing it because the prefrontal cortex comes online and goes,
No,
This is a bad thing.
We don't want to do this.
And when there's damage to the prefrontal cortex,
Our urges come up and we have no ability to say,
That's not appropriate.
That's not right.
That's not good for me.
That's not servicing me,
My body,
Or anybody around me.
So our prefrontal cortex is what comes online when we are present and we are rationally thinking and we can make better decisions.
Now what happens with the prefrontal cortex,
It goes offline in a lot of ways.
It can go offline when you're drinking.
It can go offline when you're doing drugs.
It goes offline when we're in our animal brain or lizard brain or monkey mind,
Whatever you want to call it,
Where we can't rationally think about stuff.
So what happens that's interesting is we have fight or flight,
Which is the sympathetic nervous system that comes online,
Which makes us feel like something's chasing us,
A bear,
But then we also have freeze,
Which is where it's so traumatic that we think we're actually going to die.
And when we're in those states,
We're in that lizard brain.
We're in that brain where we can't rationally think about something,
Where we can't look at something and our intuition's offline and everything that we're seeing,
We're doing it from an old archaic part of our brain.
So the interesting thing about victimhood is when you are in the world or you're looking at politics or you're looking at your job,
Your boss,
Your spouse,
Any of these things,
If you're being triggered like that,
You're the victim of this person doing this thing to you,
Then your prefrontal cortex goes offline and you can't rationally hear the words or see the things or understand where this person's coming from because you're not present and you're not able to better understand the situation,
Like ask questions as to why they're saying that to you,
Like separate yourself.
One of the really great things I remember hearing John Mayer say,
And I've said this before,
Is one of the greatest things you can do as a human being,
If you could do it,
Would be to separate from yourself for 24 hours and just watch how you act in the world.
Man,
That would tell a lot.
And if you could just look at yourself objectively,
As in looking at it,
And instead of subjectively,
It's saying outward where you're like,
Oh,
They can't believe they did that to me,
Where instead of going,
Well,
Why did they do that to me?
That's weird.
And maybe ask questions and say,
Well,
What did you mean by that?
Instead of taking it so personal and feeling like it's against you go,
Well,
I don't feel that way about myself.
Maybe you can explain better as to why you feel like I'm acting that way.
And to me,
That's such a powerful tool to be present and be more mindful and be in the moment to understand that,
Okay,
I'm offline.
I'm noticing now that I'm a victim.
And the best way to overcome victimhood,
There's many ways,
But through meditation,
Of course,
Where you can then get your,
What I call the mindfulness muscle to be stronger,
Where instead of reacting to something,
You take a moment and pause and ask questions like,
Well,
Why is it that way?
But one of the really great ways to do it is awareness.
And that really is what the mindfulness muscle does,
Is it makes us more aware of what's happening around us.
And it makes us really aware of our reactions.
And the only way that we can change a behavior is to first become aware of it.
And when we're aware of ourselves being victims,
We can say,
Oh man,
I took that really personal.
And oh man.
And you'll oftentimes,
You can find yourself sitting there and with a spouse or whatever,
And you're just complaining and complaining about how somebody treated you.
But then if you step back and go,
Wow,
Why am I complaining so much about what they did to me?
Maybe there's something in there that I need to look at as far as,
Well,
Why did they do that to me?
And that's the only way to do that is to get out of fight or flight.
And we do that with meditation,
Growing our presence and our awareness.
And then once we get into the awareness fate of this victimhood,
Then we stop taking things so personal.
And we start looking at the world and going,
Wow,
That's interesting that that happened to me.
I wonder why that happened.
And a lot of the times we can move into a place of not suffering,
But in a place of questioning and understanding like,
Wow,
If that person said that to me or did that thing to me,
Maybe there's something I can learn there.
It made me feel weird,
Made me feel funny.
Maybe I need to understand why it happened.
And then when you get into that space,
You finally can feel the love and the forgiveness for somebody that may have done you wrong or may have hurt you or said something or did something to you that made you feel really horrible.
And then you can make a decision from that place and you can say,
Wow,
Well,
Why did you say that?
And then you have an actual conversation with somebody.
And now you're conversing.
You're not reacting,
Reacting,
Reacting.
And you can get to the root of what that was and why it threw you offline and caused you to go into a victim mentality.
Why do I think that everything's out to get me?
It's just a heads up.
It's not.
Everything is happening for a reason.
And that reason is for you to learn from it.
And there are so many ways that you can learn from it.
If you get your prefrontal cortex online and you let go of that victim mentality and go,
Well,
Why did that person do that to me?
Why did that person cut me off?
Why did my boss say that to me?
You know,
You have to step back and really analyze it and know that as soon as you are in victim,
Your intuition goes offline.
It's like a light switch.
Your thinking goes offline,
Your intuition goes offline,
And all of a sudden you're just in this reactive phase and you can't look at it from an intelligent perspective and go,
Wow,
That's not adding up.
They're saying this thing and they're gaslighting me.
They're saying this thing,
But they're acting this way.
And you don't have the ability to understand that they're lying and they're telling you one thing,
But doing something else because your prefrontal cortex is offline.
And I think right now in this world,
One of the main things that is being bandied about is this sense of victimhood.
And that gets us nowhere.
Victimhood gets us nowhere because it doesn't mean we're allowed to think.
It means we're not allowed to be intuitive.
And it means that we're not allowed to make choices from a more mindful place and a more emotionally intelligent place.
So meditation is wonderful.
And the next thing I would say is really start to get yourself aware of where you're starting to feel like the victim.
And when you're getting reactive,
When you get into that fight or flight zone and you're you're reacting and you're not asking questions about yourself,
About what's happening in that moment,
Because that's when you're going to be able to calm that brain and calm that mind and allow that dimmer switch to come on for your prefrontal cortex and your intuition and go,
What's happening here?
This is interesting.
Let me look at that.
As opposed to,
Can you believe they did that to me?
If that sounds familiar to you,
I urge you to take a moment and just journal,
Do some meditation and just start looking at your life as to where you feel like you're being wronged because there's something to see there,
I promise.
And it's going to make your life even better.
Peace and love.
