People often ask me what it means to Be the Boss of Your Life. A lot goes into this statement that I have chosen to be the theme of my personal brand. I have written numerous posts on what it means to Be the Boss. Here is one thing that it doesn’t mean.

You cannot Be the Boss of Your Life if you continue to play the victim.

Victim thinking is the opposite of personal responsibility. It is the type of thinking that continues to move you backwards and never forward. Victims always search for someone or something to blame when they should simply just look in the mirror, take responsibility and move on.

Now just to be clear, I am not saying there are no victims in the world. There certainly are victims of so many tragedies. There are victims of abuse, disease, accidents, violent and non-violent crime among many other things. But just because you may have been a victim doesn’t mean you have to constantly play the victim.

We all have the ability to overcome obstacles. We have the ability to choose to be happy. To choose to move forward, to grow rather than decline. Whether you have been an actual victim of something or not, there is no benefit to playing the victim.

Four years ago I got a brand new car. Three weeks later someone ran a red light and totaled the car. I was injured physically and mentally. I had trouble driving after the accident and lost some of my own drive to succeed. Throughout my recovery time I had to go through the dreaded experience of working with the at fault drivers insurance to come to a settlement. Talk about having to play the victim!

Going through that process is what got me to move on because the whole process was built on me being a victim. This was something I just could not do and in the end it hurt my case. My challenge was trying to play the victim as I worked towards a settlement while also trying to recover mentally from the accident. I just could not do this. I wanted to move on and that meant realizing that it was an accident and I was not the victim. I controlled whether or not this accident would impact me moving forward.

I have been a victim in the past as I am sure you have been in some way. You must not let that negatively impact you. You must take control of your life and take personal responsibility for your actions. The more you allow yourself to play the victim the more you will develop the horrible habit of victim thinking. This habit will stunt your growth and you will never Be the Boss of Your Life.

Here are 5 Ways Victim Thinking Paralyzes Progress:

• It keeps you stuck in the past, unable to move on, to forgive and forget. What good can come from this?
• It gives you an excuse, someone to blame for your lack of success when really YOU are the one to blame.
• It closes you off to new ideas, relationships and to the many possibilities life brings. You stop learning!
• It allows you to become lazy, angry and unable to use your gifts to serve.
• It leads to you to feel entitled, constantly thinking of all that you deserve and complaining about all the opportunities you have not gotten because someone is out to get you.

Victim thinking will poison your mind. It will keep you from reaching your full potential. What does victim thinking look like? It’s pretty simple really. It’s saying and believing thoughts like:

• “My boss hates me. I will never get that promotion.”
• “I am the only one who does anything around this place.”
• “We would have won if the kicker would just have made that extra point!”
• “My vote doesn’t mean anything anyway.”
• “Why do I never get anything I want?”

Or really any statement that is starts with WHY and sounds like a whiny little baby!

People who play the victim aren’t fun to be around. Their negativity spreads quickly. They throw pity parties and these parties aren’t fun. They are sad and lonely, trust me!

I am not trying to diminish any thing that has negatively impacted your life. Chances are you have had to overcome something not so good. But the key of course is “overcoming.” I am willing to bet that you would not be on my website if anything written above offends you. If it has, I do apologize and take responsibility for my words and beliefs being offensive. I am also 100% okay if you decide to never come back.

You have a choice to make. Will you constantly play the victim, blame others for your mistakes and misfortunes and fail to take responsibility? Or will you Be the Boss of Your Life?

I recommend that you join me and quit playing the victim. Get rid of victim thinking from your life and start moving forward. Why not just be grateful for the many blessings in your life? Or as Barney Stinson says, why not just stop being sad and Be AWESOME instead.

You are AWESOME. You can press on and become the best version of yourself. You can realize your potential while overcoming any obstacle or what other people say, think or do.

You are not a victim. You are a winner. You are a BOSS.