Do you feel like life is happening to you, or life is happening for you? When life is happening to you, you probably feel like a victim in your life. Things are out of your control.

And when you feel like life is happening for you, it is taking responsibility for your life, seeing how everything that is happening in your life is for you, for your growth, for your evolution, an opportunity to grow, and you can therefore find gratitude in that.

Victim consciousness: someone with a victim consciousness, you'll often hear them say things like, "If only that person would XYZ" or, "If it wasn't for XYZ," or, "It's not fair," or you know, external things are responsible for how you feel or what's happening in your life, or why you can't do something, or why something's not working out for you.

And someone who takes radical responsibility is someone who realizes life is happening for me, for my growth, for my evolution, for... oh, what's going to happen from this?

Or I have the power to make things happen or turn things around. There's a guy called Tom Bilyeu, you may know him, he is a very famous podcaster, YouTuber, and he has this concept of "everything is my fault." Everything is my fault.

And he does that because he used to be a huge victim, and by saying, "Everything is my fault," he was able to really take charge of his life and build a multi-billion dollar company.

So yeah, and I'm not saying that you should walk around thinking everything is your fault, but it's just an interesting concept to go: "Is this happening for me or to me?

" I don't know who places these stones, these painted stones around the forest, but thank you because they're just so delightful to find.

You're lucky to get through your entire childhood without something happening, whether it's a parent's divorce or whatever.

And you know, I've had my fair share as well, which really, when I was younger, gave me permission to be a victim. "Oh, poor Maggie, this has happened to her," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I really leaned into that for a while—a long while. Um, and you know, as I went on the spiritual path, the personal development path, you realize that you can't get very far in life if you think that you're a victim or if you have victim consciousness.

There like, there's a limit; there's lots of glass ceilings on what you can do and how far you can go.

So I've been on this journey to heal my victim consciousness, to take responsibility for my life, and I've made huge strides with that, absolutely.

And the more I go along, the more I see—the more it gets more subtle, more and more subtle ways of feeling that it's out of your control and if it wasn't for that person, if it wasn't for that thing, etc., your life would be better.

Yeah, bit by bit, it's like the whole spiral thing.

Like, you learn something and then you do a lap around the spiral and you go a little deeper and you touch base with it again, and then you touch base with it again, and you touch base with it again, and each time you're going a little deeper, clearing a deeper layer of it.

Yeah, so this is something that's really on the forefront of my mind often.

Am I being a victim? What's my language? How am I viewing this? What's my perspective? And it's, you know, it's interesting how two people can come from the same family, same situation, same upbringing.

One person is like, "I'm going to do differently, I'm going to make something of myself, I'm going to be happy, I'm going to have..." and they go on to have happy marriages, happy families, etc. And then you've got another sibling who is just imprisoned by the bitterness and the "it's not fair," "like this is your fault," "if you hadn't, mother or father, whatever, if you hadn't have done this, I would be okay, it's your fault that my life hasn't worked out." Two siblings, same environment, one's thriving, one's not, and the difference is just victim consciousness.

And there is just—that's a beautiful bird—there is so much evidence for why something isn't working out the way that you want it to, but it still doesn't help you at all to buy into that.

Yes, there can be lots of evidence, lots of justification for it, but you're the one that's suffering if you're doing that.

Like, I'm talking to myself as well as to you. So, it's funny, my sister actually has just come back from this workshop, this big, intense five-day workshop, and it was on business and money and psychology.

And there's this great quote: "You can't out-dream your self-esteem." And it's the same in business; you can't thrive in business but have issues with—well, there's a limit on how far you can go if you don't take responsibility for everything.

So, my sister was in this workshop, and there were, I don't know, a couple of hundred people, and the facilitators spoke about there's above the line and below the line emotions.

So, if you are blaming, shaming, or justifying, that's below the line, and you know, taking responsibility is above the line.

So, anytime in this workshop, when—oh, there was, let me backtrack, there were heaps of activities and there was, um, lots of interruptions, loud music, difficult for people to focus—all intentional so that people would be uncomfortable and just to see how they would react.

Were they going to go into blame, or were they just going to, like, laser focus, get on with it? And anytime anyone blamed, shamed, or had to justify their behavior, they had to put $2 in a jar, and apparently that $2 jar just was filling up.

Even one of the facilitators had to put $2 in the jar for justifying something. It's just insidious— I was about to say insid—it's just insidious, um, how much the blame, shame, justifying of our behavior, of our life, of our circumstance.

I guess an example I can bring in my own life from just the last few days is, yeah, this—I've just, you know, finished my first week on YouTube, uploaded three of these 'Walk and Talk: Steps and Stories' videos and one, um, analytics, um, video talking about how I've gone during the week with growing the channel, and that one was very edited, and it took me hours—hours, like 7 hours to edit that video, and it's a very basic edit, but, um, yeah, I got to the end of the week and it was like Oh my God, this is insane.

It's so much work. I don't know if I can do this, and you know, it's... oh my God, everything else is falling apart.

And it's like, no, I get to do this. I don't have to do this; no one's asking me to do this. I'm doing it because I want to.

And so, reframing to: I'm learning so much. Next week, it's not going to take as long to edit. Next week, I'm excited about implementing all the things I'm going to improve next week.

And now I feel like, oh yeah, I've chosen this.

I love this. This is so exciting. I'm so excited I get to walk and talk to you guys, and yeah, it's wonderful. So, oh, I've just spotted another stone.

Going from victim consciousness to radical responsibility really is just a change in perspective. It's changing the meaning, changing the story.

I once went to a Landmark Forum seminar, you may have heard of them, and their whole thing is: life is empty and meaningless, and it's empty and meaningless, and it's empty and meaningless.

And that just popped into my mind then; it's like, whatever meaning you want to attach to something is what it's going to mean for you.

You can literally make it mean anything. Cross examples, like if you, um, ask someone else, you know, when you're a teenager or whatever, and you're asking someone out and they reject you—that's a choice of meaning.

Um, you can think, uh, "Rejection is God's protection; they weren't right for me anyway," or you could make it mean, "Oh my God, I'm hideous, I'm ugly, no one's going to love me." Same situation, same outcome, different meanings create a whole different story and a different narrative and a different life.

Sorry, I couldn't come up with a better example on the spot. Okay, I found another example: say you get fired from a job, and the victim might think, "Oh my God, I can't believe this has happened.

This is not fair. How can they do this?" And someone who takes radical responsibility would be like, "One door closes, another one opens.

What else does life have for me?" But let me be clear: I'm not talking about not talking about overriding the feelings.

Like, if you got fired, you're going to have feelings about that. I'm not talking about overwriting that. I'm talking about after you feel the feelings that come up from the situation.

In the example of being rejected by someone, after you feel the rejection and let it move through you and let it go, it's then what do you do after that?

Not being stuck in the rejection of it for 30 years, or, "My life, my wife left me for someone else," or, "My husband left me for someone else," and being bitter and stuck in that for 30 or 40 years.

However you feel the pain of that, and then, "Okay, what am I going to do with this?

" That is what I mean by life is happening for you and not to you. But to heal the victim part of ourselves, we can't hit it over the head with a big stick.

We can't be, you know, whacking ourselves.

It actually takes love and care to heal that part of ourselves. Can you hear the birds? So beautiful. It takes love and care to heal that part of ourselves; we can't beat it into submission.

I have a very busy Podiatry business, and it's been like very very busy for many years and I've often felt a victim to it.

Um, gosh, I've, you know, got so much work on, I can't keep up and patients are demanding and blah blah blah, and sometimes a special person in my life will remind me that I'm the boss.

I dictate the working hours, like I'm responsible for what hours I work, I can say no, I'm responsible for my life.

It's my business, it's, I'm the boss, and it's like, oh yeah, that's how insidious—that's how insidious the victim consciousness is.

It's everywhere, and so it's not about beating ourselves up about it, it's just about looking for it and going, "Ah, there it is again, let me catch that, okay, what's a reframe?

" You know, it's interesting, have a look in your life and see where am I not taking responsibility?

Where is—usually it's, if you can't find it really in an obvious way, first of all, if you think there's no victim consciousness in your life, you're probably in denial about something.

Just look a bit harder and it's okay, we've all got it, unless you're a master.

Um, if it's not obvious, just go through some people in your life, maybe family, because you know families are the ones that really get in there 'cause you can't escape them, 'cause your blood is there.

Is anyone in your family or in your life where you're like, "If only they would do this," or "If only they would stop doing this," if only then I would feel better or my life would be better?

That's an alarm bell, that's an alarm bell, that's an alarm bell that, um, There's a little bit of not taking responsibility, and you can be like, "Yes, but you don't understand, they did this, they did that." That doesn't matter.

You're the one that's suffering. I'm the one that's suffering. Taking responsibility, you're actually liberating yourself. It's a get out-of-jail-free card.

Well, it's not free because you have to do the work, but it is liberating, it is empowering, and you think when you're in victim mode and you think, "Oh, if I take responsibility for that, but that's their fault, if I'm taking responsibility, then that means they're right." It doesn't mean anything like that.

It means that you set yourself free. It's getting out of prison, it's more love, a better life for you.

So, I really encourage you to really examine your life and have a look at, "Where am I playing the victim?

What am I not taking responsibility for?" And just have a play. I'm going to have a play with it on a deeper level and see what happens.

Do check out my video on a key mistake you could be making, preventing you from achieving your goals right here.

Conquering Victim Consciousness: Empower Yourself Now

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