In order to bring about meaningful change, we first need to create the awareness for change to take place. How do we do this?
I believe if we can bring awareness and consciousness to the multiple ways that we play out the role of the victim, then we can begin to usher in meaningful change.
Here are some of the characteristics of the victim mindset. See if you recognise any of them being played out in your behavior or in the behavior of those around you.
- Driven by fear: much of the victim mindset is driven by fear. Fear of what? Fear of the unknown, and fear of the undeniable fact that we think there’s something wrong from which we need to escape. This fear creates the majority of our suffering.
- Defined by ego: The victim mindset is created out of the separate self-sense or the ego. It’s the “I”, “Me”, “Mine”, “Myself” that is the story board on which the victim mindset can play out its narrative of “You don’t understand me.”
- Physical & Psychological contraction: at the heart of the victim mindset lies this uncomfortable feeling which we try to push-back against so as to get rid of it. Our muscles tense-up, our breathing quickens, we get nervous or anxious initiating the fight or flight response.
- External projection: in the victim mindset we tend to project onto an external cause for our suffering. It’s normally the other person or circumstance that makes us feel this way; “It’s not my fault.” There’s no ownership of feelings involved.
- Breakdown in communication: because the victim mindset is always projecting onto others for the way it feels, it never communicates authentically. It communicates by way of mixed messaging which means that it struggles to have its needs met.
- It goes in circles: because the victim mindset always pushes back, there can’t be any room for whole hearted participation or cooperation. It goes in circles trying to find a solution in the external environment to which it clings, leaving us more angry and frustrated than before. Meaning our behavior gets more pathological too.
As we bring our awareness to these traits, to either our words, our behavior, or other people’s words and behavior, the more likely we are to be able to transform resistance and dissolve the victim mindset. This allows room for growth, development, and more expansive and authentic ways of thinking and communicating. Give it a try!
Most of us I think, would like more focus, precision and clarity in the way that we work. So what prevents us from acting and working within such a state of consciousness?
Let’s take a step back: what are the predominant ways of thinking in our current work contexts? Are there parameters and guidelines that we need to follow? Have we taken the time to understand what these are? How do the parameters in which we work enhance our work and how do they define or limit the value we can create?
I ask these questions, because only by letting them in can we begin to show up more authentically with the work that we do, play to our strengths, develop our weaknesses and channel our focus.
I have put together some of my own guidelines with regards to building more focus at work and would love to know what you think. Here they are:
- Understand the parameters, the guidelines, the rules and regulations of the systems and structures you’re working in. How do you relate to these particular structures? How do they best serve you?
- Instead of pushing back against the systems in which you work (against ideologies or modes of production), try to observe them. See where you push-back. Let in your fears, anxieties or frustration. Where does this lead you?
- Once you are relaxed, investigate the areas where you excel. Where do you find that sense of meaning? Where can you channel your focus for more depth in understanding to get the results you’re looking for?
- When you’re relaxed, hold your intention very lightly. What do you want to achieve without pushing back? Keep your focus sharp while lightly holding your vision. Observe whatever results you get.
- Journal your recordings. Note where you felt tension or frustration through push-back. Then note where you were more relaxed, more calm and focussed at the same time; how did this influence your work, and in what way? How did this feel?
The parameters of the structures in which we work shouldn’t in any way hinder our focus or diminish the way we feel about ourselves. Learning to understand the parameters without pushing back against them, gives us the clarity and focus we may be looking for.
How do we step out of our conditioned selves in order to live with more purpose? Why is it that in the daily grind we simply forget about living with a sense of purpose?
Much of it has to do with our mindset - the way we have been shaped, together with our beliefs, ideologies and patterns of thinking. So, how do we begin to shift our mindset so we can live with more purpose?
- Spend more time with your passions: if you are spending more time doing what you love doing, your purpose will slowly reveal itself to you again. Our interests are often linked to our purpose. What we enjoy doing is where we gain our sense of self, our sense of meaning.
- Cultivate your natural abilities:spend time on your craft, on honing your skills in the area where you excel. Mastery is a lifelong process. However, often we think, if I just achieve that goal only then will I be happy. This isn’t necessarily true. Spend time on the process and get your joy out of working with the glory of your craft.
- Learn from the experts in your field: a great way to align with your purpose is to gain knowledge from the people that have gone before you. Whether it be through being taught, coached, through reading, writing or an apprenticeship or just observing, there is such a wealth of knowledge out there that we can tap into.
- Observe your push-back: Notice the times when you feel anxious, fearful, or angry and observe your behavior in relation to these feelings. How do they inhibit you from moving forward to living with more purpose? Often you will find just with more awareness and perspective these restrictive states of consciousness will not be such big stumbling blocks.
- Feed your flow: What do I mean by flow? It’s where your challenge and creativity meet. You are challenged enough to have to really apply yourself, but at the same time you are in your zone where your creative abilities are honed enough to allow you to move through the challenge. You have the skills, abilities and focus to move through your challenge with ease and purpose.
Living with more purpose is a process that takes time, patience and persistence. If you truly want to live with purpose then these are some of the habits that you can slowly build into your life until they become part of your makeup.
Until we get to the point where at the leading edge, we are grounded in our purpose and we have the ability to apply it effortlessly. After all purpose drives, shapes us, defines us.
Much of the evolution of human consciousness has been driven by the need to escape suffering.
A lot of this has to do with the idea that we need to find a final solution to any one particular problem. For example, if I make x amount of money then I can buy a house, or if I get a promotion then everything will be okay. Perhaps it will, but only to a point.
The primary driver of human behavior has been the idea that there’s something wrong from which we need to escape. Fear, a sense of limit in the world and pushing back against this uncomfortable feeling has really defined this state of consciousness.
Enter the Game Changer: people no longer want to live and work this way. We now have a subtle intuition that perhaps there’s another way.
It’s only through an awareness that we can begin to ‘rewire’ our predominant ways of thinking and behaving that have taken us thus far.
At the heart of it lies a deep awareness that we’ve been pushing back for most of our lives in order to get stuff done. This is because the very logic of the systems that we’ve created reflect this particular mindset: systems built on fear, scarcity, limit and resistance or control.
As soon as we realize we’ve been playing the role of the victim all along in our current modes of production, there’s a deep relaxation of the fear and anxiety that’s consumed large chunks of our being.
The sooner we can learn to observe ourselves playing the role of the victim, the sooner we can learn to relax the need to control, the sooner we can start utilizing our skills and talents, playing to our passions and making a difference, as opposed to just business as usual.
Through conflict and competition we have built the structures in which scarcity exists today.
But are these scarcity structures currently serving our needs? Their parameters and functions only seem to feed the machine that is exponential growth through the built-in debt cycle.
Do we need more products, goods and services? Do we need more hotels, shopping centres and highways?
Scarcity models have been driven by conflict, competition and exponential growth almost to the point of destruction. How then do we bring about more innovative ways of thinking, interacting and cooperating?
We need to work together to find new ways, logics and systems of thinking that lead to healing, playing to our unique talents and natural abilities to make a difference thereby giving our lives more meaning and purpose.
Are we looking at a new cycle of creation in the evolutionary context in which we exist today? One not so much driven by the violent forces of conflict and competition. But one more driven by cooperation and the moulding of our unique talents into something new.
On a deeper level, are the forces of bondage inherent in scarcity structures separate from the forces that seek to be free from them? In a sense I don't think they are. They are one and the same. One cannot exist without the other.
In the same way life cannot exist without death, pleasure without pain, God without no God. Are these not all one in the same? The world is neither moral nor immoral, but just amoral. It is neither for us nor against us. We determine the future.
At the heart of the expansive mindset lies a state of consciousness that is relaxed and interested at the same time. A great way to connect oneself with this state of consciousness is through one's own story.
But what does this mean, the idea of your story? What actually goes into the concept of your story and how can you use the various components that make up your story to help you achieve your goals?
Well I believe that in order for us to engage and resonate with our story, there are 4 key elements that we need to connect with.
1. Identity: Who am I? This is a big philosophical question, but need not be overwhelming. However, I think it’s important for us to keep asking ourselves this question because we are forever changing. Related to your identity are your morals, your value or belief systems, your ideologies, your background, your talents, and your influencers (people who have played significant roles in shaping who you are).
2. Purpose: This is also such a big question, but so relevant to our current context because I think so many of us have lost a sense of our purpose due to being endlessly shaped by the systems and structures that mould us from day to day. So, a good question that links you back to your purpose is: “What am I here to do?” or, “How can I make a difference?”
3. Interests: I think our interests or our passions evolve over time, but I also think that it’s important to dig into these ideas or passions we have because they pave the way for purpose. Have you ever heard someone speak of something they’re really interested in? You can’t help but be captivated by their knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm on the subject. So much so that you want to find out more about what they do. Your passions are your fire! Rekindle the fire within you if therein you find mere smouldering embers.
4. Challenge/Motivation: We all need challenges in our lives because the very concepts that challenge and engage us, at the same time help us grow, develop, learn from failure, and ultimately be better people for it. No doubt in some way your story is linked to your challenge. What motivates you in the morning when you get out of bed? What challenge lies before you that you can take the steps to overcome and grow in the process? Have you ever overcome a great challenge? Climbing a mountain, running a race, writing a book, or got someone to see your point of view? Challenges shape us, they give texture and substance to our stories.
Imagine getting up on your cardboard box and telling your story. How would you tell it, who would you communicate it to, and how would these components shape your narrative? Would people want to hear more of what you do and the value you can provide through the ideas in your story?
No man can long occupy a position for which he is not fit.
If the age of ascent and that of the separate self-sense is indeed starting to draw to a close, we need to now start working to align ourselves with our gifts.
By gifts I mean that which gives us meaning and purpose, which gives us a sense of belonging.
The age of Ascent has almost totally disregarded community in its search for the “next big thing.” This age has been signified by the commoditization of goods and services. But as we are now starting to see, the availability of new goods and services to commoditize is starting to run thin. Where does this leave us?
I believe it leaves us in a place where instead of spending years and years in work environments that don’t enhance our skills, passions and interests, we should start working on our own psychological development as well as forming communities where our natural gifts can be more readily utilized.
This, in itself can be a messy process as future generations will find out. It’s a process of discovery, of exploration, of mastery, of learning from the people that have gone before us. But, I believe the process is fundamentally necessary if we are to start working with more efficient ways of aligning with our gifts.
I live in Johannesburg in South Africa and whenever I drive through the suburbs I just see these massive walls and inside these massive walls are huge chunks of compartmentalized concrete that we call complex living.
Everyone is shut off from everyone else and this negates our true nature. Our nature of community, giving, sharing of ideas, cooperating and working together to form small businesses that provide real value, fostering environments of learning and development, building apprenticeships and mentoring future generations.
Perhaps it's time that we start looking to history to be more of a guide to where we need to go. To the time before industrialization and the endless commoditization of goods and services.
This is not to say that we need to stop evolving. On the contrary, we can use the advances we’ve made in technology to better serve the growth of local communities, to connect with people with similar interests, to find people who carry the same values, or speak to people who need our gifts.
What is anger? What lies inside this word that we use to express an emotion that gets us all worked up?
Often ones anger is caused by some provocation. Someone provokes you through some word or deed and this then triggers a chemical reaction which sends a signal from your brain to your limbic system that you experience as anger.
At the heart of it lies an uncomfortable feeling. However, where we deviate, is the way we respond to the feeling.
Because it has been provoked, we tend to think that it’s the other person's fault for our anger. We then project our anger on to the person or circumstance where it was provoked in the 1st place.
Projecting your anger means you’re not owning it but merely pushing it away or burying it within you resulting in further damage down the line. In relationships, this type of disownership results in miscommunication, mixed messaging and breakdowns in the relationship itself.
So, how to take ownership of your anger so it doesn’t negatively affect your relationships? A good place to start is to observe the uncomfortable feeling at the time of its provocation without reacting blindly to it.
One thing meditation teaches you is to keep your mind clear, still and calm so if you do get provoked, you are able to deal with the situation with maturity and skillful means.
Lets take the analogy of the sky and pollution. You’ve seen the sky when its crystal clear, bright blue, right? The sky is always like this. But when we see pollution in the sky, this alters our image of the bright blue sky. Now the mind perceives the sky as being altered, dark, and different due to the pollution.
But this is not the case. Even with the pollution the sky remains crystal clear blue. When the pollution passes, we see again the clear blue sky.
Its the same with our mind. The nature of the mind is clarity. But we allow ourselves to shape our behavior through the various circumstances of life, such as the provocation of anger.
We have to learn to 1st observe the feeling of anger and trace that back to our mind and the constant chatter that's reflected through our irrational behavior. Then we can begin to own our feelings and be better placed to handle more complexity with greater maturity and skillful means.
We are either engaged with life, living it from our core, living our passions, our purpose, aligned with and seated in our identity.
Or, we survive, make our way through life, we get by, we make do, we compromise who we are in order to be a part of the system, going through the motions, we pay our dues to get where we want to go.
The 1st part is about being in your flow, designing your life, and working and cooperating with people who resonate with your story and value your work while pushing you and challenging you to remain true to yourself, making your life more authentic, engaging and exciting.
The 2nd part struggles to find meaning and purpose in what it does. Connection to inner self has been lost through or numbed by the predominant systems and structures in which they work. Therefore, you are fundamentally shaped by the systems in order to stay afloat.
Neither is right or wrong. You have a choice. You can choose to live in the contracted realm, pushing back against yourself as well as the systems and structures you find yourself in. Or, you can choose to live in the expansive realm where you have the skillful means and the maturity to deal with increasing complexity while developing your passion and purpose.
I wonder how many of us would be willing to stand by the value we provide with our products or services by letting the customer determine their monetary value?
After having included all the costs into the price, we then normally go and add vat on top of our markup.
What if instead, we charged the customer the amount to cover our costs and then let them determine the value of the service or product in question?
The “recommended value” would then be the amount determined by the customer according to the value they perceived they gained from the good or service you provide.
If they paid you less than the “recommended value,” wouldn’t then this be a great opportunity to enter discussion with your customer as to why they perceived the value as less the “recommended amount,” so you could develop something better moving forward?
Isn't this more part of a growth mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset that fixes value through a determining price for our goods and services? The scarcity mindset perceives competition and therefore, in its adversarial way, tries to coerce its customer into paying the price for the good or service. It tastes bitter and feels contracted.
Is this a good way to build trust and good working relationships with your clients? And does it serve your business model moving forward in retaining that client?
These, I think are all valid questions, if we are to move away from scarcity models in doing business.
The question is: how many of us are brave enough to implement these gift type payment systems into our structures and ways of doing business because ultimately you open yourself up to transparency. Something I think people are crying out for among the coercion, corruption, theft and fraud that seems to have become all so common place. There’s no longer anywhere to hide with such a system in place..
What happens to you when you are faced with rejection, be it business or personal, on the level of mind, body and emotions?
The natural tendency is to tense up in the face of rejection. This has a profound effect on the way that we think, act, behave and feel.
If you are not relaxed enough to let in your rejection, you will ultimately have a difficult time in transcending it.
Your body/mind contracts, you may encounter stress or anxiety, or perhaps even generate an anger within.
This is due to the fact that the contraction that you just experienced at the time of your rejection, if you end up pushing back against it, fuels the Victim mindset.
The words: “I’m not good enough,” or “Can’t you see how hard I tried,” or “It’s not my fault,” may start to circulate in your mind.
The more constant this chatter becomes, the more you end up playing the role of the victim which can have negative consequences on your behavior.
It may have a crippling effect on you going for future business opportunities, it may breed a lack of self confidence, or you may begin to harbor the belief or assumption that you will never make it, or be successful in achieving your goal.
The rejection is given the power that now controls your actions and behavior as well as your thinking, thereby limiting your opportunities for future growth and development.
If however, you allow yourself to feel the pain of rejection fully, as opposed to trying to push it away, you can begin to give yourself the opportunity to learn from the experience and bounce back even stronger.
The purpose of the victim mindset is to allow the rejection to shape behavior through the means of trying to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling generated by the rejection. Trying to control this uncomfortable feeling can drive a wedge between you and your goal.
Next time you’re faced with rejection, be it personal or business, instead of pushing back against it to try and get rid of it, try let it in and observe it and see what happens. Do you get different results?
Scarcity, anxiety, tension and competition can be the results of adversarial or a contracted type of thinking.
This is the result of perceptions of limit that have been built through years of conditioning by the systems, structures, ideologies and beliefs in which we operate. The separate self perceives limit and therefore seeks to divide and conquer all in its path for a certain vilified self satisfaction.
There’s nothing per se that is wrong with this type of thinking, although it is a bit limited now and we need more expansive ways of thinking and engaging with the world at higher levels of consciousness. It did however, serve a purpose in our evolution.
But beneath this lies fear. The more this fear grows the more it takes hold of our minds and the more it effects our behaviour.
If we are experiencing high anxiety we normally experience a challenge at a higher level, but we are low on the skills to be able to deal with and handle the challenge we are faced with.
We are faced with the challenge of an evolving context in which the current systems and structures are no longer useful due to the underlying belief or perceptions of scarcity on which they have been built.
So, how best to deal with these challenges? Well, one way would be to push back against them to try and give us some more breathing space in which to operate (as seems to be the case with our current financial systems). But the effort of pushing back only serves to create more anxiety and tension.
Another more expansive and abundant way would be to increase our skills in the mental realm to be able to control our anxieties to be more relaxed in the way that we approach our challenges. Out of the relaxation can then emerge an interest or an arousal to get involved - to learn, develop, and grow new systems, that serve us and our environment holistically better.
At the space where these 2 meet - through interest and the paradox of relaxed control - we begin to find our sweet spot, our flow, our abundance, the place where we are imbued in our optimum level of life experience.
I watched a TV program this past weekend that got me thinking. The name of the program is called, The Secret Millionaire.
A film crew follows a millionaire into a struggling community where they spend a week or 2 helping out as a volunteer.
In this particular episode, they filmed a businessman who spent the week with a basketball coach and his wife who provide coaching and training for underprivileged girls.
The coach and his wife provide an outlet to the street life which involves drugs, gangs, violence and prostitution.
With very little money, but through sheer passion, determination and love for the work they do and the help they provide, the coach and his wife have managed to keep this community going.
As an avid basketball player and fan himself, the businessman is so taken aback by the great work of this couple, that at the end of the week working as a volunteer, he reveals his true identity and also gives the community $30k and the coach himself $25k.
What struck me about the program was the personal nature of the giving. The businessman didn’t just donate his money to some charity, but actually went into a community that was aligned with his own interest and engaged with it before giving money to the coach and the community.
Not only that, he’s also made lifelong friends with the coach and wants to play an active role in the shaping of this local community. The businessman has realized that he has enough money to live comfortably and chooses to engage with and give back to this particular community.
Together with the fostering of community, there’s development of raw passion, skills and talents. And the coach gets the recognition he so rightly deserves. I wonder if the development of such local communities through the natural process of giving by people in positions to do so, could affect the world we inhabit today?
