Entitlement & Victim Mentality: a vicious cycle

'You should be making me successful!'

This phrase makes my eyes roll repetitively. Unfortunately, it isn't an infrequently heard phrase. It’s used by many individuals across a variety of generational age gaps, races, religions, and socioeconomic wallet sizes. 'You should be making me successful' are the kind of statements that prove to us that entitlement exists and responsibility and accountability have gone for a holiday. Sadly this relationship with entitlement leaves individuals with an inability to own their own success leaving them consistently frustrated at life, struggling to develop responsibility and personal accountability. To experience the success we must not give our responsibility for it away, here's how we can stop the entitlement and begin being happy little Vegemite again.

It is true that we are products of our own family life. What we don't understand we will struggle to understand, what we do understand we have the power to change if we desire it enough. It is also true that everyone wants to experience success whether people want to verbalize it or not. Unfortunately, though its statement like 'you should be making me successful, it’s your job' that completely abdicates any responsibility for an individual to create their own success. It shifts the ownership of success to one person- the person who steered the ship towards a final destination. It may have been a parent who did their child's assignment, a superior who took all accountability for what was happening in their workplace and didn't require their staff to receive criticism when it was due, or a role model who is attempting to help someone in their care by not enabling them to fail. Either way, one question must be answered when we start hearing statements like the one above, how do you experience a sense of achievement when somebody else owns the responsibility for your success?

You see when responsibility is abdicated individuals become lost, unsure of why things happen to them instead of simply just happening. This abdication or removal of responsibility creates a sense of entitlement that results in the victim mentality. The victim mentality is a vicious loop that follows an internal dialogue of me, me, me. It isn't created because the individual is necessarily seeking to be entitled, its created because the world has revolved around making life easier for the individual, supporting them, providing for them, removing resistance. Unfortunately, real-life does not reflect a reality that people will deliver what you want on a resistance-free silver platter. This is why individual end up stuck on the common victim phrases:

'This always happens to me.'
'This only happens to me.'
'Why doesn't this ever happen to anyone else.'

These phrases are the bane of everyone's existence. Why? They lack awareness. This lack of awareness prevents them from seeing that others have similar struggles, that our mindset affects the outcomes we want in our lives, and that we have an ability to change the way we feel. Without awareness, it can be easy for people stuck in victim mentality or me mode to start asking people 'why didn't you tell me that, why would you do that to me?' when the reality is they haven't been conditioned to help themselves to find the answers to problems in their life or sadly they've been told that they 'are never a problem, its someone else'. This delusional knowledge sometimes told to children can result in teenagers or even middle-aged adults who have negative relationship after negative relationship because they lack the ability to reflect and consider that perhaps there is something I did wrong, maybe I AM the problem with my situation at times because I only see problems or I expect others to solve my problems for me.

As you can probably see, this self-centered instead of reflective attitude feeds more significant problems- an inability to connect with others and see the more significant issues in society. This can prevent individuals from feeling connected in their family, relationships, community, country, and regions. One of the most positive aspects of life people can miss out on is a connection, finding a way where they can be a positive influence on others, giving back. Giving back to others or serving them enables people to become well-rounded individuals who positively impact on the world, it helps them realize a far greater identity than being a victim and fuels a positive feedback loop that's essential to happiness. It helps people consistently see that the world doesn't exist to do things to them but rather it exists just as we choose to perceive it. To me that is extremely freeing when we have the perception of possibility and self-earned success.

For those of you who may find yourself regularly dissatisfied with life ask yourself, how aware am I of the roles I play in my own life?

If you have liked this post I would love to have you comment below or share this post on. We can only up-level our life when we have the tools and strategies to change the thoughts and beliefs that do not serve us.

Till next time,

Julia xo