4 Steps to Ensure You Do Not Fall Victim to Victim Mentality

Victim mentality can be summed up through these four characteristics:
1) You feel sorry for yourself
2) You feel like chasing your tail
3) You fear failure
4) You have been in this pattern for an extended period of time (1 month plus)

The truth is you need to be able to feel sorry for yourself once in a while or feel fear. Who doesn’t feel this way when dealing with stress? Having these feelings periodically is part of your normal personal growth, especially when you are facing change. You simply do not want to remain in this state. It is important to feel how you do and have compassion for yourself. Yet, if you stay in this state too long, you risk injuring your self-esteem.

If the above four points sound too familiar, here are some steps that not only help with stress management but also allow you to move forward.

1) Make your long-term goals the priority. Victims feel sorry for themselves because they get too caught up in the everyday to-do’s rather than their long term vision.
2) Create a plan and schedule in time for your long-term objectives. If you are in victim mode, you will feel too overwhelmed when really all that is need is organization of your time.
3) Make sure you are taking real action. As part of your goals, make sure you are including action steps each day. When you are in victim mode, you tend to overly think about what you want to do rather than actually doing it.
4) Be flexible. If something doesn’t go as planned, you don’t need to take it as a personal assault against you and give up. People who have created a fulfilled life do so by trying again or trying another route.

If you are feeling stuck in the victim mode and would like more information on a breakthrough session, contact Michelle at Michelle@MichelleBersell.com.

Do You Know What Radical Love Is?

What I am about to share is beyond what most people consider when they talk about taking care of themselves such as eating well, exercising or getting a massage.   Those are crucial components to your well-being, but I would like you to also consider radically loving you.

Radical love is really about making yourself uncomfortable in giving to yourself in order that you are able to expand your meaning of love.  It is especially uncomfortable to give this type of love to yourself because you fear what others will say.  Worse yet, you judge yourself for having the needs that you do.  Yet, this expansive love for yourself is exactly what is needed for you to fulfill your life’s work, take the necessary risks to make it happen and live a life that is aligned with your highest good.

The best way for me to explain is to share a recent experience that was about me being tested to explore the love I have for myself.  At the beginning of the year, I had a great yearning to get away by myself.  All I wanted to do was go somewhere and experience peace.  I wanted to throw myself deeply into good spiritual books, journal writing and meditation.  In my mind, it would take at least a week for me to really be able to feel the benefits of this self-care.  Unfortunately, that would take some time for me to be able to plan between making sure I had someone able to take care of my kids while also missing work.   In other words, my mind told me “Nice thought, but it is not going to happen right away, so forget it.”

Fortunately, my essence wouldn’t let me forget it.  For about a week, I would talk to my close friends about longing to go into what I called a “spiritual cave” and reconnect with my essence.  Even though my rational mind kept shutting that idea out with thinking such as “it can’t happen right now,” I was further fortunate to be able to use my feelings as a guide.  My feelings, as all our feelings, are present to guide us back to our truth.

After a week of shutting down this idea of getting away, I woke up one Saturday morning to my kids seemingly being extraordinarily loud!  “Please just a few more minutes extra sleep is all I need,” I said to myself, “then I will be okay.”  I wasn’t.   All I can say was that I was out of it.  I wasn’t being present with my family.  I also had work to do but could not focus on that either.  Then I was given the opportunity to again experience and test my radical love for me.

After trying to be present, enjoy the moment, and be grateful for my family, I came to the conclusion I had to get the heck out of there…and right away.  But how could I?  How could I just spring this on my husband and stick him with the kids?  What about our plans for the next day to celebrate his parents’ birthdays?  I didn’t want to miss that either.

At that moment, I was an internal mess.  I knew what most people would consider the right thing to do was to just suck it up, or go take a walk, but certainly not just picking up and leaving.   My essence, however, brought me back to my truth and asked me the following questions:  Do I love myself enough to ask my husband?  Do I love myself enough to inconvenience him?  Do I love myself enough to disappoint him and possibly his parents if I don’t make it back in time for their party?  And the answer was yes!  In half an hour I had packed my bag and was gone!

The gift didn’t end there either.  Radical love is loving yourself just as you are in the moment, especially in those darker moments.  Can I love myself in my sorrow?  Can I still love myself when I am judging me?  Can I love myself when I can’t take care of anyone else but myself?  Can I love myself when I don’t meet the expectations that I place on myself?  Then, even more profound love came.  I could distance myself from all of the illusions that I was buying into and sink into the self-care that my soul desperately needed.

Of course, this care did not take anywhere near as long as my ego convinced me I would need.  When I left, I told my husband I would be back somewhere between 24 and 48 hours.  At that point, I felt there was no way that would be enough time for me, but that is where I would start.  The miracle of our essence is that it’s healing ability is much more profound than our minds and ego can imagine.  I was back home 23 hours later – refreshed, renewed, and authentically happy and at peace.

What I found was that sometimes my needs go above and beyond what I think is normal and necessary for most people.  Nevertheless, the truth was that it was my need.  This experience allowed me to give myself that extra TLC my soul was craving.  Even though I take care of myself by meditating daily, eating well, exercising, playing, and getting monthly massages – I still needed more at the time.  Learning not to judge myself for it was part of my continued growth of loving myself more.

I worried, as have many people that I have worked with, that in giving this type of love to ourselves are we being selfish, self-centered or even narcissistic?  This is what society would have you to believe – that your self care is selfish.  When you buy into that limitation that is when you have to worry about becoming narcissistic.  This is because narcissism and selfishness actually comes from a hatred toward your true selves that becomes disguised by self-importance.   (For more about this, read my book Emotional Abundance: Become Empowered.)

Now that the selfish question is cleared up, ask yourself what is going to be your next step.  For some, maybe it is taking off for a couple of days.  For others, it may be remembering to stop what you’re doing to get yourself a glass of water and recognizing your thirst as a priority.   Regardless of what your needs are, the faster you can recognize them as your truth, the better off you are going to feel in mind, body and spirit.

Once you give yourself permission to stop whatever you think is so important to take care of yourself, you can hear the voice of your spirit saying “it’s not that important.”  It’s at that point that I laugh at myself.  I really get a huge chuckle out of myself that I know these lessons so well, but can still fall prey to the tricks the ego plays.   Yet each time I do, I come closer and closer to radical love.

Why does radical love matter?  Because when you give yourselves that type of nonjudgmental, over the top love, it is so much easier to give to others.  In fact, it will just flow out of you.

WITHOUT SELF-LOVE YOU CANNOT MAKE THE CHANGES THAT YOU SO DEEPLY DESIRE TO MAKE!  Unfortunately, so many people make their resolutions out of dislike toward themselves.  They judge themselves how they are not good enough in one way or need to improve in another manner.  That is why resolutions fail.

Radical love shows the balance in acceptance of who you are in the present with all your gifts and vulnerabilities and cherishes them all.  The deeper your love is for yourself, the more deeply you will desire to take better care of all aspects of yourself and your life.   Instead of making the New Year a time of change, why don’t you use Valentine’s Day as a time to reflect upon how you could more deeply love yourself, and from that see what changes happen.

Wishing you heartfelt change in the days to come!

Are you adding stress to your stress?

We all create an illusionary world in our minds.   The illusion is not based on fact, but rather assumptions gathered from information we picked up here and there.  It is how our brain processes information to a degree in order to make sense of our world easier and faster.  Although this may support us not to get overwhelmed with facts, there is a cost.  We end up adding stress to our stress.

On a smaller scale, most of you will get caught in some illusion daily.  The most common I know of (based off my personal and professional experience) is the illusion of stress.  This isn’t to say life isn’t really getting busier or more challenging at those times.  I am sure they are.  Yet, you are also giving your stress meaning based on illusion.

For instance, maybe your workload has increased.  You may be saying to yourself “How am I ever going to fit more work in?  I can barely make it through the day as it is. “ Believe it or not, the stress isn’t about the increased work.  The increased work has further implications to you in your mind.  Maybe it is about your unwillingness to make yourself a priority.  Maybe the increased work sets off alarms about your inability to succeed.  Whatever those implications are, they are not necessarily real.  They are not a truth.  Yet, you act as if they are.  This is when you give the illusion power to become your reality.

Another version to the above scenario is the underlying illusion that as work increases, so does the notion that you’ll ever take time to care for you.  You have bought into the illusion that you have no time for self-care.  The truth is there will never be time for self-care, unless you create the time.

On a larger scale, the illusion can cause you to lose your sense of self.  Not too long ago, I met Ryan, a guy, who on the outside, seemed to have it all together.  Ryan was always goofing around and joking.  In fact, he seemed to be living life fully and happily (which is exactly what he wanted you to think). He appeared to have an amazing job that allowed him to take the summers off while still being able to afford a nice home etc…  Ryan seemed happy with his family and kids.  Plus, he was in good shape. What more from life could he want?  It turned out to be a lot more.

A year later, when I saw Ryan, a lot had changed.  He still tried to present himself as the chipper, happy-go-lucky guy of his image yet, you could sense his pain.  Ryan and his wife divorced.  The truth about his job was uncovered, which was that he was really unemployed and only surviving off an inheritance.  He could no longer uphold the image of “having it all.”

When I found out the truth about Ryan, I saw how easily we can fall victim to the illusion.  You see, it was easier for him to buy into the illusionary world he had created.  The illusionary version of his life was so much better, in his mind, than his real life.  His real life involved pain, pain that he did not want to have to address.  Yet, his pain became elongated by Ryan trying to hold up an image of himself that wasn’t true.

As a psychotherapist and life coach, people admit to me all the time how untrue the image that they project out into the world actually is.  The reason they project the image in the first place is because they believe that their lives should be better or different than it currently is.  Due to this belief, life feels painful because it is based off the illusion.  In other words, instead of truly living, they are living to protect the image they have created.

The pain comes from either trying to measure up to that standard or putting yourself down for not meeting the standard.  The truth is that in being human, you ebb and flow.  You will not always feel happy, rich, successful, loveable or in good health.  When you define yourself based off only the highs, you guarantee internal struggle.  When you accept your reality wherever you are at on the continuum of life, you feel good because you will feel empowered.

To relieve some of your stress, begin by letting go of what stress is supposed to be.  You don’t need to make assumptions about how your stress will impact you.  There is an opportunity that despite the stress for you to choose differently.  Do so by being awake instead of being the sheep following the herd.

To live a life in which you feel lighter, let go of the illusion of what a fulfilled life looks like.  Do so by holding the dichotic feelings of having a sense of fulfillment while also having a sense of yearning within you.  You will find the freedom of not being weighted down by pretending.  Plus, you will be one of the few who are truly open to having all your dreams come true.

Have you overcome an illusion?  Have comments about this blog?  Please share your ideas and opinions.  I would love to hear from you!

Having a hard time unplugging?

Many times I over hear people saying they need to get away and unplug for a few days.  Now with the advancements of technology, a getaway does not necessarily mean you are unplugging.  It takes a conscious effort that many people have a hard time keeping their own promise to disconnect.

A recent study explains the reason why we have a hard time unplugging is because when emails and posts come in on social sites come in an emotional response similar to that to gambling.  We want to open up these sites or emails to see what we have possibly won so to speak.  There are even some alerts now to tell you when you receive a post or email, which reinforces that trigger.  Even though not all posts/emails are “feel good” ones, there is an addiction like gambling to see what the next one might offer you.

(Insert pic here of someone on their computer looking either super engaged or overwhelmed)

Tips and tricks:

1) Literally unplug your internet connection at work.  Allow yourself only specific times to re-plug into your connection in order that you don’t get distracted when alerts come your way.

2)  Record the time you spend throughout the day peeking or going back and forth to email.  Now pick a day in which you wait until the end of the day to respond and see how much less time is wasted.  Establish a system that allows you to be the most productive while still being attentive to communications coming your way.  Alert those who feel they need to urgently get to you that they can call you instead.  This will keep the vast majority of communications at bay until you are ready to proceed.

3) Check email at the end of the day.  At the end of the day, we are already on the decline of our productivity.  You want to use the beginning of your day to tackle projects that will take the most mental and emotional energy to get through.  Emails tend to be mostly mundane work that you can attend to even when you are beginning to fade.