NEW: Plant Yourself merch designed by my daughter, Yael Zivan.

How to Change Your Health Habits:
Mind Hacks to Get Out of Victim Mode

YouTube player
Read the full transcript here

When we're not making progress towards the things that matter to us, almost always there's an element of victimhood somewhere buried in our minds. In this video, I'm going to show you three signs that part of you is thinking like a victim, and give you three mind hacks to overcome it.

Victimhood simply means you don't have the power, that something is happening to you. So you don't have to be a full blown victim of an attack, you can simply be a victim of circumstances, you're simply not the one with the power with the agency to make changes.

So how do you know that that's how you're thinking?

One way to tell is if you hear yourself using obligation words, as opposed to choice words, for example, I've got to get up and go running this morning, or I really have to, you know, sit down and meditate, or I really need to stop eating junk food, have to should must need. These are all obligation words, they're all words that are being imposed on us, rather than what we're desiring to do.

So the mind hack there is when you catch yourself, play a game and see if you replace it with a choose word. Whether it is as true or truer, I want to get up and run this morning. Well, you may not feel like it, but you want the results. So is it a true or truer to say, or I choose to get up and run this morning as opposed to I have to, I want to sit down and meditate, I am going to cut junk food out rather than have to should need all these really heavy words.

The second way you can tell that you're thinking about victimhood is really long. And strangely passive and convoluted verb structures, like, you know, I want to eat well, and then I find myself snacking in the evening, I find myself snacking, right or, as opposed to I snack in the evening, I make the decision to snack in the evening, I choose to snack in the evening. So again, that kind of verb, word salad, where you're distancing yourself from agency is another really good clue that you are in victim mode to some extent.

So again, the way out of this is to shift your language. When you hear yourself, say, you know, I find myself or I end up on the couch, like you were just a passenger, and you got dumped there without any will change it. I decided to sit on the couch and eat Ben and Jerry's, I chose to stay in bed and not go for my morning run. and see whether those feel as true or truer.

And the beautiful thing is, when you move out of victimhood, you can feel yourself getting your power back, it may feel bad like Oh, I didn't want to choose to I just ended up it just happened. But that, of course is a place of powerlessness, because what could you do about that. But if you say I chose to, I decided to, then you can choose and decide something different.

The third way to tell the word victimhood is if you're really falling in love with your reasons for not doing these things. Yeah, it was too cold to go running. Or, you know, I didn't have time to prep, so I had to go out and do take out. So when you hear yourself giving lots and lots of reasons for not doing things that you want to do get suspicious.

Of course there are reasons that stop us in individual moments. Hey, I was snowed in I couldn't go for my run. The thing got canceled so i right there are situations but just like someone who's always 10 minutes late and always has a good reason Oh is traffic. Oh, I couldn't find my keys. Oh, the carburetor. You know that it's not those reasons that those are just excuses.

So the mind hack here is to take your good reasons your cherished favorite reasons and reframe them as my favorite excuses. So instead of Yeah, I couldn't go running because it was too cold outside, I was afraid of slipping. I chose not to exercise because I indulged my favorite excuse of it being too dangerous to go walking. Or I didn't eat well last night because I indulged my favorite excuse of I hadn't prepared.

Once you begin to see how the you're playing these games with yourself how your mind is convincing you that you have no power and you begin to shift your language to get your power back. Guess what you have your power back and you'll be can begin to make different moves towards your goals.

Have a great day.

1 comment on “How to Change Your Health Habits:
Mind Hacks to Get Out of Victim Mode

  1. Shirley Kasser Creech says:

    Excellent points, thank you!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *