I’ll never amount to anything!”; “That is just way too hard”; “I guess I’m just lazy”; ”That’s just my personality”; “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
Have you ever had those thoughts? We all have limiting thoughts at times. It is victim thinking. You think that you’re stuck, and there is nothing you can do about it. You feel like a victim to the economy, or trapped in a bad relationship, or stuck with a terrible boss. You have a story about an oppressive life situation. It is that helpless, defeated reaction to life and business challenges. I can’t. It’s too hard. What’s the use? I give up. Whatever?
I want to propose that those thoughts are garbage, and garbage needs to be thrown away. In this very moment, you can begin to take out the head trash. Your ego will protest. It may mumble and grumble and produce more head trash about the foolishness of false hope and optimism. Are you are willing to fight this crap and choose to clean up your mental environment full of stinkin’ thinkin’? If you are sick and tired of living in a mental landfill, and are willing to go to work, I have good news.
The truth is that your results are not primarily determined by circumstance, but by your response to circumstance. The key to victory is training your mind to confront the head trash and replace it with creative, solution-oriented thoughts and actions. By asking good questions in that moment between the stimulus and your response, you can learn how to identify and reject the thoughts of victimhood and replace them with thoughts of productivity, positive change, and winning. Your feelings and actions will begin to change and follow your new thoughts. The change of attitude and action will produce a better result.
This is a habit that you can learn and practice. It is a simple choice of challenging the victim thoughts of excuse, blame shifting, and denial, and replacing them with thoughts of responsible, reasonable action. “What CAN I do to effect positive change in this situation?” is a powerful question that will send those paralyzing thoughts of resignation to the trash heap and open a world of possibility and positive action.
If you need help learning how to do this, get a good coach. Great coaches specialize in asking transformational liberating questions that lead to better performance and outcomes.
