00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 152, "Victim or Hero." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:19 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you here with me today. We're just going to jump right in today. We are talking about victim or hero. So I want to talk about three distinct parts that we create in our lives. We very often when we create our stories, our stories come with a villain, a victim, and a hero. And when we're the victim, there is always a villain in our story. We're always going to have somebody else to blame and we're going to struggle to take responsibility. I think when we look at a lot of our stories, we often see that somebody is treating us bad. Somebody said something that hurt us. Somebody did something that wronged us. That person then has become the villain and we become the victim. 

01:15 

So in this space, when I am stepping into the space of a victim, I am going to struggle to learn lessons. I'm going to struggle to see the possibility that is there available to me. Generally, when I put myself in a victim space or a victim mentality, I'm going to end up being either bitter, which means I just become more angry and more frustrated and dig myself in my hole a little bit more, a little deeper. I become entrenched. Or I'm just going to endure it and I'm going to come out the same. So I'm going to go through all of these struggles and I'm just I'm just going to come out the same or I'm going to become bitter by it. 

02:00 

I know that for the first three years after my divorce, for sure, I was putting myself in the victim mentality and, of course, my previous husband in the villain role. All these things happened because of him and I was so easy for me to see what he had done wrong and how he was still wronging me and all that kind of stuff, right? So it was very easy for me to do that. But then we do have another option and after those three years, I started to learn some things. This is really when I went to the life coach school and started to learn how to take more responsibility for what was going on. 

02:41 

And this is when things really started to shift for me because the other option of my story is that I can choose to be the hero of my story. And when I choose to do this, I start to take 100% responsibility for what I did and what I created and what I took to the situation. And when I'm in this space, I start to look for the lessons that are available to me. What can I learn from this situation? And when I put myself in the hero space, I come out a better person. Whereas, when I'm in the villain space, I come out either the same or a bitter person. When I put myself in the hero space, I come out a better person with a better perspective, a better understanding, greater appreciation for my Heavenly Father, for myself, for the lessons to be learned and actually even for the really tough experience that I had. 

03:51 

So how do we know if we're going to be a victim or a hero in our story? Well, we get to choose that. We get to choose whether to be a victim or whether to be a hero, and it all starts with our thoughts, as does everything. As we talk about this coaching that I get to do with you and how this works in our lives, it's always going to start with our thoughts because our thoughts create everything. I can have any circumstance in the world and turn myself into a hero in that story. Or I can have all the exact same circumstances and I can become the victim. I get to choose which one of those do I want. For me, I way prefer the hero, but I will tell you that there are times that I throw myself into the victim mentality and I don't even recognize it until later. And here's why: sometimes being the victim feels really good. At least short term, it feels good. It feels good to get people's validation and it feels good to be in this space of wanting people's sympathy and receiving people's sympathy. But long term, being the victim always, always puts me in a worse space than I want to be in. It never takes me where I want to go. 

05:22 

I know that for me, when I was overcome after my divorce, I hit a point where I had stepped out of being emotional with it  and I was no longer tied emotionally to the story and I could stand back. But I find that I was still blaming my ex-husband for certain things that were happening. I was starting to see my part. I was starting to see where I had contributed to the pain that I had felt, to the heartache, to the dysfunction, to the disconnect, which for the first few years, I didn't see very clearly at all, but I hit a point where I was starting to see it. But I was still seeing my previous spouse as the reason for a lot of my current behaviors. So for example, I recently started dating someone, and at the first two or three weeks, when we would talk, I would say, "well, I'm struggling with this because in my marriage, this is how it was. And now I don't know, this is what I'm doing because of my marriage, because this is what happened with my previous spouse. This is why I'm behaving this way." And I realized that I was always blaming my previous husband for the things that I was currently doing. So I was still being the victim, even though there was no emotionality there, and even though I was starting to see a lot of the things that I had contributed to the demise of our marriage, I was still blaming my previous spouse for my current behaviors. 

06:56 

If I'm going to be the hero of my story, at some level, that means I have to no longer let him play cards in my game. I have to decide that he doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing now and how I'm acting now and how I'm feeling now. I get to take 100% responsibility for what's going on for me. I choose to act this certain way. And that is an awesome place to start going. I think I look back now and I think, "you know, as I've really intentionally moved into this hero space of my story, I think isn't it amazing that with all of the dysfunction going on in our marriage, I learned how to be strong, and I learned how to stay strong, and I learned how to protect myself emotionally. And I think I'm going to be the hero of my story." I think it's amazing that I've been able to shift my perspective from saying, "well, I'm acting this way because he did this," and still putting myself in a victim space to stepping into the the hero space and saying, "look how amazing I am. Look what I did for myself. Look how I came out the other side of this marriage stronger and better and more prepared to move on in my life and create what I'm creating now." I think that's pretty incredible that intuitively, before I had any of this work, I knew how to do that and I did that. And when I step into my hero space, it allows me to see what's amazing and incredible for me and in my life to see that what happens or happened is happening for me, not to me. 

08:52 

Now, this is a huge shift in what we get to see in our lives, to start to see that everything happening in my life is happening for me. Everything is acting to my benefit. It's not happening to me. I am not a victim. That is the victim mentality. I have no control. There's no good outcome. There's no way that anything can happen that will be of benefit from this situation. 

09:21 

When I'm in that space, thinking that things happen to me, I only see the negative aspects. And this can lead to depression. This can lead to feeling huge amounts of disempowerment. And this is the struggle when we struggle to manage our thoughts. If we are struggling to manage our thoughts, our brain is going to want to go to the victim mentality. Our primitive brain naturally wants to go there. That is part of the "let's protect ourselves" place that our primitive brain is. So if we want to move into our hero mentality, we have to intentionally engage our prefrontal cortex. Here's the thing. Our brain is always thinking, always thinking, whether I'm directing the thoughts or not. If I'm not directing the thoughts, most likely I'm going to go to a victim mentality. If I am directing the thoughts, I can choose to go into my hero mentality, into the thought that this is happening for me. "My life will be better because of this challenge, because of this struggle, because of this experience. I will be in a better place when this is over." That always puts us in a place of control. And we always start to look for a good outcome. I will see the positive aspects of the challenge or the experience that I'm going through. And this is going to lead to feelings of contentment with where I am, even though things are really a struggle and really tough, and I'm going to feel empowered to come out the other side a better, stronger, happier, more content, joyful person. 

11:06 

That doesn't mean that I have to love every minute of what I'm going through. For sure, some of these things that we go through are tough. When I was up to my eyeballs in my divorce, it was tough. It was painful. It was hard. And yet, because in many ways I was choosing a hero mentality at that point, I could see the positive aspects and I could feel contentment and feel empowered in the struggle that I was going through, knowing that as I came out the other end, I was going to be a stronger, better person. So I knew that that was coming. Now, I don't think we're always hero or always victim. You know, I look at that time going through my divorce and there were times that I was definitely victim and times that I was definitely hero. And that's just part of the process of what we're going through is that we're always going to be back and forth. But the more we can start to learn to pay attention and choose on purpose the hero mentality, choose on purpose to look for what how this is working for me. What can I learn from this situation? How am I the hero here? How can I step into being the hero  in this situation? It's a huge empowering amazing place to be. 

12:36 

So there's another piece here that I really want to pull in and this is that when we're going to step into this hero mentality, when we want to do this, a huge part of this for me has been learning to trust in God and learning to be submissive to Him. Trusting that these experiences that I'm going through, He knows and He's aware and He sees and He hears. Submitting myself to say, "if you know what's best, I'm okay with this. If you feel that this is the place for me to be, I'm all in." Believing that all things are going to work together for our good, as we have been promised in the scriptures. All things work together for our good, even the toughest of the toughest situations. We can always come out the other side if we want to. And that starts with managing our minds. We have to believe that God always has our back. And then we can stand up and we can have our back as well. Knowing that God has my back gives me strength to have my own back as well, to make sure that I'm moving into a space where I am choosing to be strong. I am choosing to look for the lessons. Because regardless of how difficult or how bleak it is, I promise you it will work out for you if that's what you are looking for. Because everything happens for us. Whether God purposefully gave it to us to to strengthen us or challenge us in a certain aspect of our lives or whether we brought upon ourselves by our own behaviors, our own thoughts, our own actions. Regardless of whether I made a bad choice or whether God gave it to me, all of this happens for me if I learn to look for it and if I learn to manage my mind around my challenges and my struggles, because there is always something to learn. There is always space to grow and there are always connections to be made. Connections to God, connections to ourselves, and connections to others. 

15:16 

So here's the deal, my friends. Learning to become the hero of our story is something that is totally doable. We don't just have it or not have it. We learn to train our brain how to think. We learn to train our brain how to look for things, how to have the kinds of thoughts that strengthen us and that help us to see the potential and the possibility in our struggles and in our trials and there is always possibility. I don't know what you're going through right now that is tough for you. But I promise you there are lessons to be learned. I promise you it will work for you. If you can learn to manage your mind around the circumstance and around the situation. 

16:07 

And this is what I do as a coach. I help you learn to manage your mind. I help you learn how to see the thoughts. If this is a struggle for you, I help you learn how to see the thoughts of how you are saying this is happening to me. How you are stepping into the victim mentality. I help you see those thoughts and I help you learn how to create hero mentality thoughts. I help you to see how this situation is working for you. And that's an amazing place to be. Because when we can learn to step into that space. Our whole world starts to change and we start to up level our lives in a way that we did not before and we start to do it at a quicker pace and with more depth to our understanding. I promise you, my friend, things don't happen to you. Things happen for you, if that's where you choose to go. If you need help with this, please let me help you. You can go to my website tanyahale.com and you can schedule a free consult where we can talk about what you're struggling with and talk about how we can help move you into a better space, a more empowered space. Promise you this is amazing work. It's amazing work. I rely on it regularly to help me move forward and to help me grow. 

17:36 

In fact, I had a coaching session just this morning and one earlier this week because they help me to see what I need to see so that I can step into the space that I want to be in. So I can step into the space of learning and growing and being the hero of my story. I don't need anybody else to be my hero. I get to be it. And that puts me in the place where I want to be. A place where I am empowered and where I get to choose the direction of my life. I hope you have an awesome week my friends. I will see you next time. Bye. 

36:45 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!