Bad things happen.  Its one of those things in life that we don’t like to think about but nonetheless is there.  Throughout history, many of us have been adversely affected when somebody or something oppressed, injured, tricked, mistreated, or otherwise afflicted us with emotional hurt, physical pain, or psychological damage. Due to no fault of our own – whether by cruel fate, happenstance, or divine intervention – we involuntarily suffered something unexpected and unfavorable that, by definition, reclassified our human condition to that of “victim”.

How about in your life?

Perhaps you have suffered abuse, theft, violence, or accidental injury at some point in your life. Maybe you were born with a genetic disease or developed an unfortunate illness over time. Perhaps other people treated you poorly because of your gender, race, or ethnicity. Maybe you were born to irresponsible parents who were not there for you as a child or who never quite got their own lives together enough to be a truly positive force in your life. Or, perhaps you were born to really good parents who just never seemed to make enough money to make your growing up as comfortable as it was for many of your friends and fellow classmates.

Certainly, these were bad things that happened to you. Moreover, what happened to you was outside of your own control. You lacked the power to prevent or change these bad things when they happened to you, and you lack the power today to travel back in time and alter your personal history so as to completely avoid these bad things in the first place. Whatever these bad things were that happened to you in your life, they really happened to you, it was not your fault, and there is no changing that.

    So ask yourself was I a victim or am I still a victim?

Your answer to this question is crucial to getting ahead in America because it says a great deal about your approach to life. If you answer, “I am a victim,” you acknowledge that something bad happened to you in your past and you remain a victim of that badness to this very day. If you answer, “I was a victim,” you acknowledge something bad happened to you in your past, but you no longer remain a victim of that badness today.

Note that these two different perspectives offer you two different states of personal freedom. In one perspective, you are not really free – you are still shackled in the chains of victimhood. In the other perspective, you are entirely free – you have transcended victimhood to arrive at a human condition not defined by suffering or other forms of badness. Note that the only difference between these two different states of personal freedom is the verb tense you choose to use – present (“I am”) or past (“I was”).

Which state of personal freedom would you prefer to be in?

Hopefully, you do not revel in victimhood. It would be unhealthy if you have discovered, in some way, benefits to continuing your status as a victim. While you may somehow feel those benefits exist, remember that, in victimhood, you are not truly free. By definition, personal freedom trounces any benefits to victimhood that you may feel.

If you truly want to get ahead in America, in the past is where your victim status needs to be. Victimhood needs to be a human condition that will always be familiar to you because you have been there; at the same time, victimhood needs to be foreign to you today because you consciously realize that personal freedom is what you truly desire in the life you are seeking to create for yourself in America. To be clear: your personal freedom begins the moment you refuse to be a victim.

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