victim

I was thinking recently how so often in life we act like victims. We want everyone to wallow in what we do not have, what transgressions have hit our days – the “poor me” mantra. Think about it, how many times do you think “poor me” and want to tell others so they can potentially get on board with your poopy and negative day? How is that helpful?

There are a lot of things I could share about my life that folks would think “wow how do you do it?” I lost my parents when I was 16 (mom) and 21 (dad) and that has meant that a lot of my life has been parentless. You could call me an orphan. I do not have a large extended family. I have a sister and brother, and of course my husband’s family, but as families go mine is small. I could look at that and say “poor me.” Or, I could look at that and think this is my life, this is the hand I was dealt, and how am I going to handle it? As evident in my blog post: Suck the life out of your day, I believe that whatever hand you are dealt, deal with it, and live it to the fullest.

Yes, I think make the most out of what you are handed. Sometimes we take the heat in our home life. Say your spouse is in a phase at work where they have to work crazy hours, so you take the slack at home, making sure your house is stays clean, things are fixed, food is purchased so that the other spouse does not have to think about those day-to-day tasks. The scale might later shift to the other spouse and the tides shift and the roles change. To me that is part of the ebb and flow of life.

Maybe it is a work environment that you do not like, or does not feel right. Sometimes we have to be patient and wait out the tough times and know that sometimes things are happening under the surface. Sort of like how my spring flowers have been growing these past months and last week I saw their stems poke out of the earth, and yesterday I even found a few had bloomed. Sometimes all the trying and tough times lead to a time of growth and color.

Can you look within yourself? Do you act like a victim? Or, do you divert such conversations to ones that are positive, helpful, and meaningful, rather than hoping folks will side with a victim mentality and go there with you? What do you think?

You know when you have one of those days when every possible curve ball is thrown at you, going at the fastest speeds and you cannot imagine how you are ever going to hit it out of the park? Somehow you do, and somehow you do it with poise. Are you like that, or do you know someone like that? Or, do you wish that is how you handled life?

Poise is attractive. It is sexy. Why? It shows that someone can hold themselves together, keep their calm, and not let the situation affect them. I can give you an example. My husband, that man has poise. He will probably hate me for calling him out for having poise, but call a spade a spade right? Hundreds of times over the past 10+ years I have heard him handle people over the phone. He is direct, polite, does not get flustered or angry, yet firm to get what he deserves. Boy, do I have a lot to learn.

There are a lot of aspects of my life where I feel I carry myself with poise, but for some reason (usually surrounding customer service issues) I can sometimes lose my cool, or my composure. Why is that? What sets me off? Often I feel like a victim, that the company has overcharged us and will not reverse the charge, or the customer service agent is rude, unhelpful, or will not fix something that is truly the company’s responsibility. It is easy to slide into that victim mentality and lash out aggressively in hopes that it will fix the issue. Does it work? Sometimes. I have to say that lashing out has worked and leading with poise has also worked.

Maybe the goal is to work towards more poise, and pulling out the feisty aspects when needed?