It Feels Good to Be a Victim: Unconditional Responsibility
Have you ever felt like a victim? Have you experienced any situation when someone else made you pay for their bad decisions? Or when something outside your control dictated the end result and made you feel it was all in vain?
Everybody has felt it, this feeling of unfairness. When even though we did our part, others or the circumstances got in the way and our actions seem not to matter. How to keep a positive mindset in these situations?
Unconditional Response-ability
Response-ability is your ability to respond to a situation. You can respond to an offer by choosing to buy or not buy. You can respond to a complaint by choosing to listen or argue.
We say that this ability is “unconditional” because your responses are not determined by your circumstances. They may be influenced by external factors and your current mindset and emotions, but you always have the final word. As long as you are alive and conscious, you can choose how to respond to your circumstances.
The idea of unconditional response-ability is self-empowering because it lets you focus on those aspects of the situation that you can influence.
When you play cards, you have no control over the hand you are dealt. If you spend all your time complaining and making excuses for your cards, you will most likely lose the game. You won’t even notice how they can work in your favor.
Similarly, out in the real world, we have no control over the hand we are dealt. You will live an unhappy life if you keep blaming luck or circumstances for your current situation. But if you see yourself as having a choice in how to play those cards, your feelings will change.
You will feel empowered. You stop focusing on the quality of cards you receive and start looking for alternatives to make the best out of the cards you already have.
Why Does The Pen Fall?
Fred Kofman, an outstanding teacher, author and consultant, usually conducts a simple experiment in his seminars. In his own words:
I pick up a pen and let it fall to the ground. Then I ask the group, “Why did the pen fall?” “Gravity” is usually the first answer. Sometimes people point out that I dropped it. Both answers are correct. Both gravity and my releasing of the pen caused it to fall. Most problems involve multiple factors as well, yet when we analyse them we don’t look at the causes. Normally we focus on a single reason. We look for a simple explanation. The question is, which reason is the most useful? In order to assess usefulness, we need to examine our goals. What are we trying to accomplish through our explanation?
If you want to prevent the pen from falling again, pointing out that the pen falls “because of gravity will not help you. As long as there is gravity, the pen will fall and, according to your explanation, there is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, if you want to argue that the fall of the pen “is not your fault,” gravity is the perfect explanation.
If you say that you dropped the pen, however, there is something you can do about it. Now you have a role in the drama and you can pursue your goal actively. If you do not want your pen to fall, hold on to it. “Gravity” places causality in the realm of the uncontrollable; “I dropped it” puts me in control.
This is a simple, yet immensely powerful way to illustrate how the way we think and see the world guides our belief system, and by consequence our actions. The fact that both gravity and our action are valid explanations shows us the value of looking at things from a different perspective.
Of course, most situations are more complex, but the example points out the critical difference between self-disempowering explanations and self-empowering ones. It shows the contrast between the mindset of the victim and the player.
The Victim And The Player
The victim only focuses on those factors he cannot influence. He sees himself as somebody who suffers the consequence of external circumstances. The victim keeps self-esteem by claiming innocence.
His explanations never include him, since he has nothing to do with the problem. When things go wrong, the victim is quick to point his finger at other people’s mistakes.
The player focuses on things he can influence. He sees himself as somebody who can respond to external circumstances. He bases his self-esteem on doing his best.
His explanations focus on him since he knows he can be affected by the problem and should not expect others to solve it for him. When things go wrong, the player seeks to understand what he can do to correct and improve them.
We can’t classify anyone as a total victim or total player. These are simply representations that illustrate two basic tendencies in all of us: openness and defensiveness. Some people, for example, operate in full player mode when they are at work and return home to become perfect victims.
It Feels Good To Be A Victim
We play the victim to protect ourselves from blame. It is a natural response — we are genetically wired to seek approval from others, something our ancestors needed to survive in tribes. Looking good and projecting an image of success, or at least avoid being associated with failure, is not difficult for us.
Responsibility, in that sense, can be seen as guilt, and therefore something to be avoided at all costs. One of the easiest ways to see how we avoid it is by looking at kids. Here are the most common ways children play the victim and argue innocence, and how we keep doing it as adults:
Finding external causes for problems:
- As children: “The glass fell”, “The juice spilled”, “The professor doesn’t like me”, and so on.
- As adults: Executives explaining poor results by blaming the economy, technological change, new consuming habits or government regulation.
- How a player sees it: All those factors may be real but, like gravity, they are outside one’s control. They imply the individual had no alternative to avoid or respond to them and change the final result. It is much more comfortable, however, to shift responsibility to external factors than to take it for oneself.
Claiming good intentions:
- As children: “I didn’t mean to hurt you”, “I didn’t mean to break it”, and so on.
- As adults: In a meeting to solve a conflict between two executives, the first one says, “You ignored my request.” To which the other replies, “That was not my intention, I was too busy.”
- How a player sees it: Both the children and the executive assume that good intentions make up for bad behavior and poor results, but in reality, it doesn’t.
Justifying it as a reaction:
- As children: “Why did you hit her?”, “Because she teased me.”
- As adults: A customer service employee yells with a client. When confronted by the manager, he replies with a “He yelled at me first.”
- How a player sees it: The answer implies a person is just a machine that reacts automatically to outside events. It not only avoids guilt, but deflects it to others.
You are not a robot. You make choices. External facts are information, not stimuli. External circumstances and internal impulses influence your behavior, but they don’t determine it. As Kofman says:
“Acknowledging that you have a choice is uncomfortable. “Choicelessness” is a great place to hide. When a phone rings in the middle of a meeting and you say “Excuse me, I have to take this call”, you are really deceiving yourself and the others. You do not have to take the call. You are choosing to take it, because you prefer to do it than to continue the conversation.
You need to understand how your past choices contributed to the problem, and take accountability. If you pick up the phone because it rings, the phone is in control. If you pick up the phone because you choose to, you are in charge.”
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