Do you play the victim?

Famed American author, Richard Bach is known for his bestselling novels during the 1970s. Besides his popular books, one of the fantastic nuggets of wisdom this writer offered us was a statement he made regarding life and accountability. He said, "If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim." The hard reality is that life is what we make it and what we accept it to be. We can only grow and succeed in life when we start becoming accountable for our own actions. Thus, if you always play the victim, this means that the common denominator in your failures is you. You are only the victim if you choose to be one.

"Joan Marie, are you saying that I have created all of my problems???" No, I am not saying that you are creating all of your problems. What I am saying is that you need to hold yourself accountable for the choices you make. For instance, if your inner voice begs you not to invest your hard-earned money in some fly-by-night scheme promising you millions in returns, but you do anyway; and then you lose all of your savings -- the ball lands at your feet. In this case, you have fallen prey to your own ego. You cannot claim to be a victim when you do not listen to your intuition and you actively make the choice to pursue a venture that seems too good to be true. The sad thing is that many of you will become defensive and angered at the fact someone may be calling you out on your own vices. The truth hurts sometimes.

Still many of you may play the victim to your own emotional baggage of the past. Do any of the following statements sound familiar to you?

"I will never be able to love again."

"I cannot succeed no matter what I do."

"If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all."

I understand life teaches us both negative and positive lessons. Some of these lessons are more difficult to digest. But if you continue to chew on those lessons over and over again, then you start to form a bitter flavor in your perception. Suddenly, nothing new seems appealing to you. In fact, anything you encounter just appears to be the same old stuff from long-ago. Guess what? You have become a victim to your own past. Don't be that person. Again, you have the choice to learn from your history and grow from it, or the choice to relive it for the rest of your life.  Ultimately, you make the choice to live a happy and prosperous life.

Are you the forever-damsel-in-distress victim? You are the person (male or female) who wants to succeed but what you really want is someone else to do it for you. It is easier to send distress signals rather than trying to create success by your own initiative. When you start taking responsibility for your own actions, you start motivating yourself to achieve goals. The hard truth is, you cannot always play the victim to get what you want. In the end, it will still be up to you to plant your own seeds to grow the life you want. No one else can do that for you. The choice is yours.

Joan Marie Ambrose -- Author, Creative Writer, Motivational Speaker

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