How to take control of your life

Stop seeing yourself as a victim.

You have more control over your thoughts and emotions than you give yourself credit for. Although there are many external factors that affect your life, you should pay attention to the things that you can actually control.

I see so many people making excuses for why their lives are so hard and why they deserve everyone’s pity. I’m included in this bunch, and I’m guilty of creating excuses for why I didn’t get what I “deserved.”

We tell our friends and family about how unfair everyone is to you and how irrational they are. The strange thing is, if you look at the common denominator, it’s usually going to be YOU.

So is everyone out to get you, or are you changing the story to make yourself look like a perpetual victim?

Here are some classic examples I hear from everyone, including myself:

“I didn’t get the A in my class because my teacher was a douchebag and he didn’t care about my class. I did so well but the teacher had something against me so that’s why I got such a low grade.”

• Did you go to class and take notes? Did you seek out your teacher after class or during your free time and ask for help? Did you study for every exam and read all the assignments? Did you do all the homework? Was your work actually deserving of a high grade, or are you overvaluing your work?

“I didn’t do well on my group project because everyone else didn’t shoulder their own weight. No one was being a leader and communicating, and I don’t want to put in more work if no one else wants to put in their share of work.”

• Did you communicate with your group members and figure out deadlines and roles to play? Did you put in 100%, regardless of what your group mates were doing? Did you talk to the “troublesome” individuals who weren’t responsive or willing to do the work and figure out what their problem was?

I can’t lose any weight because of my genetics. I wish my parents didn’t have such rotten luck so that I didn’t have to deal with this. I’ve tried everything, from juice cleanses to fasting, and nothing works!

• Did you go to the gym and commit to exercises that make you work out hard? Did you talk to a trainer and think about getting professional help? Did you eat a healthy diet for a prolonged period of time, or was it only for a week?

To be fair, maybe some of these excuses are actually valid. Maybe you were surrounded with slackers and you had to do all the work yourself. Maybe you were preoccupied with work, family, and unexpected events in your life. Maybe you got sick and couldn’t focus or contribute to anything. But let’s be honest here…

It doesn’t matter. We can see right through our own excuses. We fail to tell the truth to anyone, not even to ourselves. The truth that maybe it was our fault that we failed. The burden of responsibility.

Even if you were able to give me good reasons for every question I asked, there are still way more things you could have personally done to change your outcome.

Maybe I’m speaking from a privileged position, where I haven’t faced any REAL hardships. Let’s think of some lives that are objectively harder than ours:

There are single mothers out there who work two jobs, go to school, and take care of their kids after that long day and continuously do this for years.

There are kids who can’t afford to have their own personal computers so they finish homework at libraries.

There are kids who have to work 40 hour shifts to help pay for tuition and take 6 classes at the same time.

Do you think they have time to even think about how hard their lives are? No. They put their heads down and work hard. If anything, these are the people who have more valid excuses than us.

In the face of hardships, you have to ask yourself if these excuses are helping you at all. Blaming everything else but yourself only helps you in the short term. In the long run, you’ll start resenting life itself.

You’ll always see yourself as a victim and never take responsibility for anything negative in your life. You’ll never be honest with yourself or with anyone and everyone will know this but yourself.

Do you see the outrage in college campuses these days? People are complaining about how the world is in such bad shape and that if certain policies or mindsets were adopted, the world would take steps to become a utopia. “Society is corrupt and oppressing us everyday, and if only the patriarchy would stop holding us back, we’d become successful ourselves.”

Let’s think about it this way. Is there a problem with the WORLD or YOURSELF? Which one is more probable? If you really think something as complex as the economic system should be changed to serve you before you change yourself, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Do you really think the fabric of reality should bend to please your desired outcome?

So before you start blaming everyone around you and complain about how life is unfair, try to look at yourself first. Take ownership of your life by claiming responsibility for every outcome. Think about things you could have done better, instead of every external factor you can find.

Stop being a victim and instead of attributing blame, take the blame. There’s no point in getting angry about things that were out of your control. Only pay attention to the things you have power over, and keep it that way. This is the only way to be free from the victim complex and take control of your life.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi