Top 10 Ways That Playing the Victim Robs You of Your Life

Playing the "victim" gets a bad rap in pop psychology circles. We have all been truly victimized in our lives at some point or another, but playing the victim is different from that in that it means that we're looking outside of ourselves and are helpless in the face of the answers that come our way.

The opposite of playing the victim doesn't mean blaming ourselves instead of someone else; it means looking at ourselves and the choices we have available to us and being responsible for picking the best ones we can. It can mean having the courage to look for choices we may not even be able to currently recognize are available to us and doing the work to find the learning.

To use an oversimplified example, I got into a minor fender bender the other day. I could play the victim and really build up a good story about why it's the other guy's fault, or I can try to learn from it. I can strive to be much more careful the next time I go through that particular intersection. I can check my automobile insurance and make sure I'm adequately covered in case of a more serious accident. It happened in an intersection I know is prone to accidents, so I could even go so far as to contact the agency in charge of that intersection and make my case for some changes to improve safety there (especially for the pedestrians that need to cross that street). And I can keep asking myself "What else can I learn from this?"

I don't necessarily believe that it makes anybody a bad guy to play the victim, but there are some powerful reasons to root it out of your life and to be less tolerant of it in the lives of the people you love. Here are my top 10 reasons why I believe it robs you of your life:

1. You lose your power.

Every time we play the victim we're essentially telling ourselves that someone or something else had greater power over the situation than we did. The problem with that isn't even whether or not that's true; there are many things in this world that we can't control. The problem is that it keeps us from looking for the things we do have power over; it stops the learning. What we're willing to be responsible for we have power over.

2. It beats you down.

Harry Palmer believes that our happiness as human beings lies in our power to change things. Every time we play the victim it diminishes our belief in our own power to change things and slowly but surely beats us down. Being "enough" is a fundamental human struggle for most of the planet; every time you affirm that you are the victim you are beating yourself down, however slightly.

3. It drains the life out of your hopes and dreams.  

For every inspiring story of someone achieving their dreams in the face of overwhelming odds, there are countless numbers of people who've talked themselves out of even going for them. In some ways choosing between being the victim or being responsible is about choosing the kind of experience you want in life. Do you want the predictability of having a life where someone and something else is always going to come out on top and is offering proof that your dreams are foolish? Or do you want the adventure of spending your days discovering new areas and levels of your own power and being challenged to dream even bigger?

4. It destroys your self-esteem.  

Michelangelo created the statue of David by removing everything that wasn't David. Part of our job in life is to remove all of the things that keep us from fully expressing our own essence. Unfortunately, playing the victim chips away AT that very essence. Our essential natures are powerful, loving and confident, the opposite of victim-hood.

5. It damages your credibility.  

It's unlikely that the people around you are going to tell you when you're damaging your credibility; they're unlikely to even understand that's what's happening for themselves. I think you would be hard put though to find any highly successful business man or politician that got that way playing the victim. It costs you other people's respect.

6. It becomes a barrier in your relationships.

Some of the natural outcomes of playing the victim are things like resentment, frustration and anger. Pointing the finger and laying it out for people how they're to blame is almost never an effective way to build relating. Even when it works, it doesn't tend to work for long.

7. Makes you smaller.

Every time you play the victim you're also saying "that was bigger than me". We can only become diminished in the face of our addiction to being the victim.

8. It drains your vitality.

It sucks to be victimized in life. I don't think anybody has ever sat down and daydreamed about growing up to be a professional victim. It may not be easy to look for the ways that we're responsible in life and how we have power over things we'd rather feel victimized by, and it may take incredible courage to stand up and look for how we're responsible, but in there is a vitalizing force in being responsible that gives us the energy jump up and say "I can do it!"

9. It narrows your future.

Whether you consciously realize it or not, every time you play the victim you're building yourself a narrower and narrower vision of your possible future. After all, if you're not enough to have THAT happen, how on earth can you make a bigger vision happen?

10. You give control away.

Playing the victim puts the control outside of yourself. I believe that our truest adventure in life is being the true and uncontested author of our lives, and the only way to get there is through responsibility.

Your partner in saying 'YES!' passionately to life,
Tracy Phaup
http://www.tracyphaup.com