​You Aren't a Victim (Stop Acting Like One)

0:00Number five is stop blaming your past for your present. You are not a victim. You're not a victim. And I'll be clear in saying this like, there are some people who have gone through some really, really fucking horrible, horrible, awful, never should have happened things in their life. 100% there are people that I've known heard stories from, talk to, learn from that have just gone through everything horrible you could possibly imagine. And that is not their fault. But as an adult, as a functioning human being in this world, it is their responsibility to move forward, to try and heal, to grow, to learn, stuff like that. Now again, I do think there is about 95% of life. I do think we can grow and learn from about 95%. I think a lot of those are opportunities for growth. We see them as challenges. We see them as helping us sort of blossom into the best version of ourselves. That's what 95% of life is about. We make a mistake or something bad happens.

1:01We learn, we grow, we improve and now we move forward. But there's also about 5% of life that's just so fucking horrible that we don't need a forced meaning from that. And I think that's important. That's a Brad Stolberg idea who's another great sort of peak performance mindset type of coach. And I agree in that regard because there's 5% of stuff that is just so horrible and awful to think about that we don't need to force the meaning of growth from that. But just based on that idea, we cannot blame our past for our present. Because we're just playing a victim and the great thing about being a human being in this world is that we have agency. There's this idea called hope. There's the science of hope and hope has three very powerful ideas. Goals, agency and pathways. We talked about goals or targets, where are you headed? That your current present, right? The future can be better than the present. That's what hope really is and that's what a goal really is. You can be better than you are. I believe in you and you're capable of that. That's what the motion, the progress thing we talked about number one was, right?

2:03And so your past may tell you that you can't be. That's not true. Your future can be better than your present. That's hope. And then you have the agency to make it happen. That's really where this comes into play. You're not a victim. You're not a victim to your past. You are responsible for growing and healing and learning from that because you have the agency and the responsibility to do so. You actually have the moral obligation to do so because you are so unique. And the world needs you here that if you just let your past ruin your life and you never give the world the expression of your gifts, you're doing the world and yourself a disservice. And that's really important to understand that you, the world needs you here, not the past version that you're still living in, but the present version of you that's not a victim that has agency that's taken responsibility of their life, that's, I have a moral obligation to be the best version of myself in greatest service to the world. For me, for my family, for my future family, whatever the case may be is. And so think about hope in this moment you have hope

3:06because you believe the future can be better than the present because they have the agency to make it happen. And you know that you're gonna take as many pathways as possible to make it happen. And so we can't blame our past for our present. We can understand our past, beautiful. And why we act in certain ways and why we have this attachment issue or this abandonment issue or why we self sabotage, whatever the case may be, those are perfectly, perfectly right things to try and understand about yourself. And there's many people out there who talk about those types of things and you can learn from and grow from. But if we never take the responsibility or the ownership to learn from it and we just say, well, that's how I grew up and I'm just gonna say the same forever, you've lost. You've lost the game and you've reduced yourself to a victim when really you're a powerful, capable human being that can grow and evolve and change. And so I think that's really, really, really important to understand. That's what makes humans unbelievable. Is that we have that power to grow and evolve and change and adapt based on our previous circumstances building to our new circumstances.

4:06You're not a victim. You have agency, you have capacity for change and you have this idea of hope. Very important. That's number five. Patreon is the home of our exclusive community where we do bonus episodes, live streams, Q&As and merch discounts and so much more. Patreon is the number one way to support this podcast and to support my mental health nonprofit called You Are Loved.