Throughout my life I’ve been a list maker. Various times in my life I’ve had immediate goals, yearly goals, five-year goals, and life goals.
Look at your life? Do you have goals? Are they productive, positive goals that will lift you up, lift others up? Are they goals to tear down? If you have goals that are meant to harm someone else—question your motives.
How is your life going? Do you consider yourself a success? Do you blame others for your failures? I’ve decided to go back to school and when I’m through I will have a master’s degree in Christian counseling. I’ve been reading a lot lately about goals and about the victim mindset. We all have moments of self-pity, but someone who lives in a state of perpetual victimization dwells in their self-pity. I couldn’t imagine living like that.
Every single one of us has our own cross to bear. Whether it be from a painful childhood, a bad relationship, or whatever else that was handed to us that is out of our control. But the difference between those who rise above it and meet their life goals are those who don’t dwell in that victimization. They take their life by the bootstraps and say, despite this happening, I can become a success; I can make a success of my life.
One person comes to mind with this victim mentality. She won’t take any part of the blame as to why her marriage failed. She won’t take responsibility that she committed adultery—that she was an abuser—mentally and physically. She lays all the blame at the feet of her ex. As they divorced, she chose to give up her home, she chose to live like a filthy pig, and ruin the house by letting cats and animals piss all over the house and not clean it up. The house was so bad that men in haz mat suits had to go in and remove the carpet, remove the drywall halfway up the wall, and make it fit so that people could actually enter into the home. It was condemned by the county. It was her responsibility to keep it up and habitable, but she didn’t. Yet, it wasn’t her fault; it was somebody else’s fault.
She has had seven years to go to college and was given nearly $100K in money to do so but she has yet to complete one full year and it’s someone else’s fault. She lost her grant money, but it wasn’t her fault, it had to be someone else’s. She took all of her alimony and spent it with nothing to show for it, yet it’s someone else’s fault she’s broke. She chose to sell a home with thousands in equity, yet it’s someone else’s fault that she became homeless. She chose to run up thousands of dollars of credit card debt, but it wasn’t her fault, it was somebody else’s. She can’t pay her bills, but it’s not her fault she can’t get more than a minimum wage job, it’s someone else’s. Do you see a pattern here?
Or she talks about a deadbeat father not having a relationship with his poor innocent daughters. How quickly has she forgotten how many times he reached out, the lengths he extended to have them in his life, yet rejection at every turn. They are adults. They made the choice. Not him. They know how to contact him if they want a relationship. He didn’t reject or divorce them. They rejected and divorced him. He asked for forgiveness and none was extended. It’s not like they are poor innocent children, they are grown adult women who have made their decision. It was their choice not his. One supposedly was on her deathbed and he rejected her. I don’t know how he could reject an ill child if he was never even told she was ill. Then again, she is an adult and not a child. How is he supposed to know? Is he supposed to check the hospital rosters everyday to see if someone he knows is in the hospital?
