You are not a victim.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
When it comes to your life and achieving your aspirations, many people choose to be a victim. It is not their fault that they are not in shape as they are unable to eat a good diet due to work and time constraints, or they are unable to train on a regular basis because they have work to do. Most people go through life playing the victim and not taking responsibility for their own actions.
Brain Klemmer writes how being a victim comes with several advantages. You are not held responsible for not achieving your aspirations, you get sympathy from those around you, and things that go wrong in your life are (in your eyes) not your fault and there was no way you could have prevented them. There are many benefits to being the victim and one can understand why it is an easy option to take for those who struggle to find the motivation to better their situation and in this case their health. Victims have excuses for not achieving goals and they have reasons why bad things always happen to them that prevent them from the success that they "should" have achieved.
It is important to realise that everything comes down to choice and responsibility. We all have choices to make in life and those choices will either help us or hinder us from achieving what it is we want out of life. If every time you look in the mirror you know you want to look better, or if you wake up every morning feeling tired and depressed wishing you felt better, these are both things that you are in control of, no-one else. There is always a simple choice at the beginning of any consequence. If you had a bad night sleep, it may be because you chose to rush through your meals the previous day, eating poorly and stay up late to "unwind" after work instead of going straight to bed. If you did not lose weight this week when you were expecting to, there may have been a point where you chose to skip breakfast or to stay up until 1am with your friends at the weekend and caused your training session at the gym to be non-productive.
There are choices we make every day that will influence our fitness goals. The choice might not be a straight forward one, and there may be consequences in choosing either option, but you are not a victim. Only you make those choices and only you control every decision in your life. You are in the driving seat, no-one else. Make sure you chose wisely and invest time and effort in to yourself and your own goals. After all, if you are not healthy and happy, you can't inspire these qualities in those you work with or your family and loved ones.