That feeling of someone breaking your trust is a very painful and inevitable process. There will be several situations during your lifetime where people will demotivate you, whether it is something as innocent and unintentional as forgetting a date, or as hurtful as seeking a divorce. You will get your trust broken always.
But what is important is how you behave and react after your trust has been broken. You are left with two choices: Resiliency and victimization. Victimization is an attitude of blaming, powerlessness, believing that everyone else has it better than you, and constant seeking of sympathy. Either you have experienced it yourself or you have seen it through others. It is characterized by things like: Why me? People cannot be trusted. I cannot change my situation. Why things are against me? It is not my fault.
The other way of having your trust broken is through resiliency. Resilient people have the power to change a situation and learn from their experiences. They grow in maturity and move towards a healthy life. Statements of resilient people are: This situation will make me stronger, I have got so many good things to look forward to in my life. This will make me stronger.
So, here are five concrete ways you can move ahead from that victim mentality:
1. Owning your choices: You cannot control everything that is happening in your life. But you can control how to answer a particular situation. You can choose to be in depression, resentful, or angry or choose to grant forgiveness and seek growth in life.
2. Never ask why me: Rather than asking, ‘Why me?’ when someone keeps violating your trust, ask yourself that ‘What can I learn from this situation?’
Many times it is impossible to know exactly why something happened the way it did. So, you can always choose to rise strong after a challenging situation hits you hard in life.
3. Seek forgiveness and forgive people: Forgiveness is about letting people go of all hopes for a good past. Choose not to grant forgiveness is like consuming poison and waiting for the other person to die. It does nothing but keeps hurting us and keeps holding us back from moving forward in life. So, if you are the one whose trust has been broken, then forgiveness is an option.
4. Counting your blessings: People with a victim mentality gravitate towards absolute thinking. Words like always and never limit the conversations. Life is absolute and one such way to remind ourselves to count our blessings. In the big scheme of life, the majority of us have many more positive things in our life than negativity. So, make a list of all the things you are grateful for and you will realize for lucky you are.
5. Moving ahead in life: Victims tend to live in the past. So, constantly focusing on the negative things in life makes you live in the past. Resilient people keep focussing on moving ahead. They do not let circumstances hold them back and they embrace whatever power they have to grow, learn and take all the good things in life.
Having someone break your trust is one of the most painful experiences in life. The easy way to let you down the road of victimization is to become more responsible for all the pain you have in your life. The harder way is choosing to acknowledge your pain, deal with it and move toward healing and growth.
So, feel free to share your comments below about how you can choose resiliency over victimization, we would love to hear from you.
So, feel free to share your comments below about how you can choose resiliency over victimization, we would love to hear from you.
