Changing from a victim mindset to a victory mindset

A lot of people have asked me recently how I changed my life. How I became happy even though I had little. The thing that made all the difference was swapping my victim mindset to a victory mindset.  For years I felt  like a victim.  I used to tell myself that I had an awful childhood, a horrible relationship that had ruined my life, I had been bullied at work, I had no one in life to help me, I would never have any money, and I just saw myself as someone who never got a break. It was me and my kids against the world. Depression and feeling down was part of my character. I had a full on victim mindset, and life just wasn’t fair.  I felt powerless and jealous of people around me who seemed to have easier lives.

After life coach training, I did a lot of work on myself and recognised this victim mentality.  It was like a self fulfilling prophecy.  If I acted like a victim and identified myself in that way, it made darn sure that I would remain one.  My life coaching taught me to only look at the bright points in my life and ignore the dark bits.  It was like envisaging a town at night that might be dirty and run down, but from a distance you can only see the bright lights.

If you take on a victory mindset nothing has actually changed in your life, but you focus on what is going right rather than what is going wrong.  You are more solution focussed rather than feeling sorry for yourself and moaning “poor me, I knew it was too good to be true”.  A victory mindset helps to empower you.  As I slowly changed my victim mentality I became more positive, more confident, braver, more capable, more grateful, more creative, and more resourceful.  Best of all I was more content and happier.

I also started taking more responsibility for my actions and stopped blaming other people.  Only I am responsible for my actions or reactions.  I stopped dwelling on negative thoughts and gave myself a good talking to if I started to go down that road (like when my brother died).  Bad things still happen that I have no control over, but by having a positive and victory mindset  I am not focussing and feeding all the other negativity around me. I shift my focus intentionally and do not get stuck in those feelings. Changing this mindset has played a massive role in me becoming a happier and more positive person than I used to be.

I now believe that I can overcome any challenge and am able to have more control in my life and set myself positive goals and challenges.  By focussing on what I can control and taking positive action, my life, relationships, and self belief  have improved dramatically.  The more I practiced the easier it became to reframe my thoughts.

Journaling helped me.  When I wrote down the negative thoughts that I was experiencing I would flip it and write a list of all the ways that I could replace those negative thoughts.  In the end I didn’t need to write things down as I started to do it naturally.  Eventually the victim mindset disappeared and the victory mindset became part of me. I felt like I could achieve anything. This mindset has also impacted on those around me.

Changing any habit is hard and so it is important to start small and not to expect too much from yourself.  Be patient.  Like when some one is trying to lose weight , they are not going to change 2 dress sizes overnight.  Forgive yourself if you make mistakes, but try to be consistent.  Just recognising when the victim mindset is raising it’s head is a victory in itself.  If you put in the effort you will one day wake up and just realise that you have changed and given that victim mindset the push.  That is when you can start to build your best life.  If you have a victim mindset you owe it to yourself to change it.  Life will be much easier and full of colour rather than darkness. Good luck x