“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” –Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” -The Bible

“Neither a victim nor a perpetrator be.” -Kenrick Cleveland

Odds are, if you’ve been to one of my seminars or if you’ve been involved in one of my coaching groups, you’ve heard my views on victim-hood. I hate it. I don’t believe in victims and I’m fed up with the victim mentality. We all choose our destiny.

Do an internet search of the phrase ‘victim no more’. You’ll be shocked. There are workshops, and articles, a book, and online classes, to encourage you to be a victim no longer. There’s a wallowing quality to being a victim. Oh woe is me.

Since when is it so fashionable to be a victim? What happened here?

It seems like there are certain groups of people that choose victimization over empowerment. A lot of groups like to talk about how their forefathers were bound in slavery or they came from countries of poor economic progress and they absolutely have to be here to have any kind of hope in their lives or all kinds of things along those lines, and I’m not trying to be difficult with any group because we, as individuals, all need to help ourselves and the groups that we identify with to whatever degree we think is right. A couple of years ago Bill Cosby was lambasted for having something to say on the subject of victimization when he made a speech at the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ’separate but equal’ schools basically telling the black community to get its shit together and claiming “the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.”

Some people considered this speech to be tough love. Others were angry that a prominent, rich man who had risen to the top of his field had began to “adopt the white man’s language” when talking to his “former” community. I see both sides to this. And I also happen to believe that a hand up is vital, but there has to be an expectation that with a hand up, people will continue to give hands up and attempt to stay up.

There’s also a point where people need to really get out of the negative cycles that have held them back. This is all people here, not just one ethnic group.

When we play the victim, we are giving up and believing we can’t change our situations. We’ve agreed to this destiny and accept it as being outside of our hands. This is an attempt to get an outside source to be responsible for us. And really, that’s not going to happen.

We can choose to be in control or we can just choose to keep on doing what we’ve been doing. The minute we choose to be in control, we step outside of victim mentality and the minute we step outside of victim mentality, we have options available to us.

Let’s all use the power of persuasion advantageously for ourselves and for the world. Let’s decide that our thoughts matter, our lives matter and we cannot depend on the rest of the world to save us. If we happen to get a hand up from time to time, great. Offer it in return wherever you can. But instead of waiting around for someone to act first, let’s act first. Let’s act first to save ourselves and the way we do that is by changing our thoughts such that we have responsibility.