00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 365, "Villains, Victims, and Heroes." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there and welcome to the podcast today. Happy to have you and so glad to be able to share some content that I have prepared for you today. Before we start, I want to remind you our next Talk with Tanya is going to be July 8th. That is at two o'clock eastern, 12 o'clock mountain. It is a free webinar where you can just show up and you can just talk about anything that you want. You can get coached, you can ask questions, you can dig deeper into a concept. Anything is fair game on these and we've had some really amazing conversations. And I would like to invite you to join us there if that is something that is of interest and is at a time that works for you. 

01:05 

Also, if you have a question for me that you would like to have answered on a podcast when I do a question and answer episode or if you have an idea for a podcast that you would like, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can go to the "contact me" button and there's a place there where you can drop me an email and just let me know if there's something that you would like a little extra guidance on and I would love to be able to help you with that. 

01:34 

Alright, let's move on. Today we are talking about villains, victims, and heroes. So our brains are fascinating. Regardless of how creative you may think you are not, your brain is wildly creative and prolific at making up stories. And all good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If your life only provides you with one of those, your brain will will invent or create the other two parts. It has the ability to create a story so believable that your brain won't even question it and you will live your life as though the whole story is true even if two thirds of it is made up. And to make it even more interesting, the one third that you may go, "yeah, I know this part right," is probably still not factual because everything we see and experience is done so through the lens of our own encyclopedia of experience. Everything we have experienced in our lives impacts how we interpret the facts we encounter. So even that one third of what you might know is true is not 100% correct. And it's such a challenging part of life because our brain likes to think that we have perfect recall and memory when in actuality none of us do. 

02:54 

And here's another part of the storytelling that our brain does: it likes to have a victim and a villain and a hero in this story. But here's the clincher. It always wants someone else to be the villain and someone else to be the hero. And it really, really likes making us the victim. And that's because when we are the victim, we don't have responsibility, which can be painful. It is not pleasurable and it requires energy..three things that our primitive brain likes to do. 

03:27 

So if there's a great villain in our story, we can sit in blame and accusation. We can criticize and attack someone else and we can spin and spin and spin in the problem. It is someone else's fault that we are in the situation we are in. And from that place, it is also easy to believe that unless they do something differently, I'm just stuck. Anytime we're in victim mentality, we believe that somebody else has to change in order for us to be in a better place. 

03:58 

Now, we may not like where we are. We may hate being in the victim place because let's be honest, it's painful and uncomfortable, but our primitive brain likes it better than taking the responsibility to fix it because responsibility requires pain and energy and it isn't pleasurable. So until the pain of being where we are in the victim space is greater than the pain of moving into responsibility, we will stay stuck in that victim mentality. 

04:29 

The other thing we like to do when we're in victim mode is fantasize about a hero showing up to fix all of our problems. So let's say you're in a tough financial place because of the divorce, which was sped along by your spouse's infidelity. Your brain will want to spin and spin by replaying over and over and over all of your ex's bad behaviors and blaming him for your current state, ruminating about how he should have been different, and villainizing him because this is all his fault. And in this space we are absolutely the victim in this story. And then your brain will also fantasize about somebody coming in on a figurative white horse and saving you from all of your financial woes. You will see this person, likely a handsome, kind, emotionally available person who will have the money to make your life better. You will get married and live happily ever after as every princess in every fairy tale ever has. Or someone will die and leave you a huge inheritance that will save you from all of your financial struggles. 

05:33 

Notice again that when there is a villain in our story and when someone else is the hero that we don't have responsibility. It is the easy way out. And this is why our primitive brain likes it so much. No pain, lots of pleasure, and conserving energy. All of this is very normal. Of course your brain wants to make you the victim. Of course it wants someone or something to write into your story and save you. That would be easy. When I was still in my previous marriage, I used to fantasize about my husband dying. So not at my hand. I never had any plans to do anything, but I fantasized about him dying in a car accident or something because my brain believed that that would have been so much easier than getting a divorce. The hero that I was waiting for and hoping for was an accidental death. 

06:29 

Now I know that some of you are cringing and going, "oh that sounds horrible," but I've talked to so many people in a similar situation and that's not abnormal to think about, right? But it just seems like such an easy way to get out of a bad situation. It was just something to swoop in and save me from the terrible circumstance I was in at the hand of someone else, someone who was the villain of my story. And so I stayed there and stayed there for a lot of years, feeling that I was the victim of my husband's behaviors and attitudes and waiting for something to happen that would take me away from all of it without too much pain and humiliation and feelings of failure on my part. 

07:11 

Now to clarify, I really wasn't ever a victim. I just thought that I was in this way. I thought that everything going wrong was my previous husband's fault. And with that thought, I became a victim in my own mind. I was paralyzed to fix things and create something different because I saw all of my problems as his fault. And it was only after the divorce, when I began learning about how I contributed to the dysfunction, that I could start stepping out of the victim mindset. It was also at that time that I could stop fantasizing about someone or something coming into my life to save me, to be my hero. 

07:52 

When I started taking responsibility for how I contributed to the destruction of our relationship, then I opened up the portal to be able to take responsibility for finding the solution, to moving my life where I wanted it to become. At this point, I could stop looking for a hero outside of me and start looking for the hero inside of me. I began to realize that only I could be the hero of my story, only I could make the changes that would create the life I wanted to live. For me, once I got the villain out of my story, once I could stop focusing on all the things my ex-husband had done wrong or even was continuing to do wrong, then I was no longer the victim. Because you see, if there's no villain in my story, there is also no victim. 

08:44 

So often when I work with clients, I will have them tell me their story, leaving their ex out of it. It is such a challenge for many of them because they are so entrenched in the belief that their situation is solely because of the actions of their previous spouse. They tell the story their primitive brain is creating and they allow their ex to be a main character in that story. The challenge and the liberation is in making themselves the main character, in moving their ex either completely out of the story or making them such a small insignificant character in the background, like someone stocking shelves in the back of the grocery store when they are checking out at the front of the store. 

09:28 

So, for example, if someone asks how they're doing it can be so easy to jump into the story of all the horrible things their ex is doing these days and how it's impacting their lives, their mental and their emotional health, their finances, and their living conditions. Do you see how that person becomes the main character in the story? What we want to do is get them out of that role. So practice telling your story without them in it at all. Start telling about how you just started a new job and you're really enjoying the people you work with and how you're learning about where to invest your money and about the trip you're planning for the summer. Make your story about you. The hero of the story saves the day. The hero makes amazing things happen. They move the story forward toward resolution and they are empowered to do whatever necessary to create the happily ever after that they decide that they want. It is your decision to become the hero of your story. Get rid of the villain. Because without a villain there is no victim. And figure out how to find the resolution inside of you. 

10:38 

Does it take capital W Work to do this? Of course it does. And your primitive brain will be screaming at you to stop and take a rest and not do the work because it's hard and it's painful and it expends energy and it tires you out. Being the hero of your story absolutely takes energy, but it rewards you with greater strength and empowerment, a stronger sense of self and more self-respect. These things create more energy in you, more than was necessary to intentionally move into the hero role in your story. When we swim in the victim pool, all it does is expend energy. When we're in victim mode, we are continually emptying our bucket and from this place we always feel horrible and have nothing to put out into the world. 

11:28 

A huge part of filling your bucket and even moving it into a place of overflow is to get out of the victim story. Stop focusing on the problem and start focusing on the solution. Get the villain out of your story and stop waiting for someone or something to save you. You have to save yourself. You have to be your own hero. Nobody can do this work for you. And if you're stuck here, you have to figure out why you'd rather be in the victim place than moving forward. Because there is a reason. Maybe it's because you feel validated when you receive other people's pity. Maybe it's because you think it's a form of revenge when other people sees the state this other person has put you in. Maybe a part of you thinks they will eventually see the error of their ways and change, or at the very least sincerely apologize for the pain they've inflicted on you. And maybe it's just because your primitive brain understands that moving up and out of victim mode is going to take work and effort, the likes of which you may not have needed to exert for a long time and maybe even for your whole life. And so it would rather not exert that effort. 

12:40 

Getting out of victim mode is no walk in the park. Changing your mindset takes focus and perseverance and dogged determination. But there is no moving forward, there is no getting unstuck, until you are willing to do the work to get out of it. At some level, you have to decide that staying stuck where you are is just not an option anymore. You have to be tough with the part of you that wants to wallow in pity for yourself. 

13:13 

So let's take the last few minutes to talk about the difference between healthy healing and wallowing. When something big happens to us that knocks us on our butts, we absolutely need time to catch our breath. I'm not saying that we should just bounce right back up and start sprinting into the hero space saying, "I'm fine. Everything's healthy." So let's say that one of your adult children slams you for something that you had no idea happened. They're saying that you did horrible things that you don't remember, that you're the cause of all their current problems, that you just didn't parent well, that their life is miserable because of you. That can be super hard and it might knock you down for a bit. You might need a few days to process what they've told you to even wrap your head around the allegations. You might spend a good amount of time the first few days crying and hurting and trying to figure out where they're coming from and discussing it with your spouse or a trusted friend. 

14:12 

I get it. We all need time to feel the pain, to process what's going on in our bodies and in our minds. This is a part of healthy healing. And then you'll hit a point where you'll feel a small nudge to look up, to pick up, to take a deep breath and get back up on your feet. I like to imagine myself needing to put my hands on my knees and catch my breath after a strenuous workout. I just hit a point that I can't go anymore and I need to take a small break and let my muscles and my lungs rest and recover. And then I don't have to be fully recovered before my body says "alright, love, let's get moving." And I don't even have to start off at the same high intensity that I was at before I stopped to recover. I just need to look up and start moving. 

15:06 

For me it's very similar to what I do when something emotionally punches me in the gut. I need to stop, regroup, take a bit of time to recover and listen for the nudge that says "alright, love, you've got this. Let's figure it out." That's when I know it's time to get moving. And for me it's a pretty quiet voice and it can be especially hard to hear when I'm getting some type of reward for being the victim. If some part of me wants to stay in the victim mode when I'm telling my story to everybody and  everybody's feeling sorry for me and telling me what a jerk the other person is and telling me how right I am, I don't have a reason to get out of victim mentality. 

15:50 

So when I hear that nudge, I'm going to kind of ignore it. And if I choose not to listen, I move into wallowing. I'm choosing to stay the victim rather than moving forward with the solution. So that's when it's wallowing, is when I'm choosing to stay there when I actually am capable of looking up and and moving forward, even if it's in little small bits. But the nudge, if I choose to feel it, lifts my eyes from the problem, from a place of blame and criticism from a place of accusing and attacking to a place of future focused problem-solving. But I have to be willing to let go of the rewards that I'm getting by being a victim. 

16:37 

And that's also not to say that when I step up into being my own hero, that my primitive brain won't throw me back into victim mentality occasionally. Remember, primitive brain loves victim mentality. She loves to wallow in the pain of being tormented by other people. She enjoys hearing other people tell us that none of this was our fault and that we've done nothing wrong. She loves that validation. But when we believe this, we don't have to take responsibility for moving forward. Moving forward requires pain, energy, and it isn't always fun. So primitive brain does not like moving forward. Primitive brain really likes to wallow. 

17:20 

But your prefrontal cortex will give you a small nudge. She will let you know that you've caught your breath enough, that your muscles have recovered enough to start moving again, even if it's in very small ways. And it has to be a deliberate choice to move forward into problem-solving. We have to choose to step into the responsibility of getting ourselves where we want to go. We have to choose to step into healing. We can't dictate most of the circumstances of our life. They are out of our control. How other people think, how they behave, world events, the weather, etc., we have no control over them. But the other four parts of the thought model we do have control over are thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. 

18:03 

I think we often resist taking responsibility because whatever choices we make won't bring us back to what we thought we were going to have before. For example, maybe you struggle to accept that your marriage has ended and you feel stuck in not being able to heal and move forward. This is so, so tough. I get it. It's probably a place you never thought you would end up. The hopes and dreams you had for your future life have been dashed on the rocks and there is nothing left of them. But the tighter you cling to those lost hopes and dreams, the longer you will stay in victim land. At some point there has to be an acceptance that you are where you are, as unplanned as it might have been. 

18:52 

You can be sad for the lost hopes and dreams and you can even grieve them. But to move out of victim mode you have to accept that they are no longer an option with the life that you used to have and with the person you used to be with. There has to be a time where you intentionally choose to let go of them, to realize that for a lot of years that's what you thought you were going to have in life and also realize that apparently you were wrong. Apparently life was going to put you on a path that you didn't consider before and it doesn't mean you're now on the wrong path. It just means that you didn't know before that this is where your path was going to go. And now you do. Life has a way of taking us down paths that we didn't anticipate. 

19:41 

When divorce was looming at my own doorstep, I just couldn't wrap my brain around it. I was not a quitter. I was someone who figured things out, someone who stayed committed to what I said I was going to do, someone who fixed things that were broken. I used to use the phrase "I didn't get married to get divorced." It was all just like, "listen, no, this is my path. I know this is my path." And I was clinging so desperately to that path. And one day during that time when I was struggling so much with my marriage and knowing I had to stay married and blah, blah, blah, right? I was listening to a women's conference CD and the speaker said something like "to the divorced women here: maybe God knew your marriage wouldn't last, that you'd get divorced, but maybe he also knew that this was the path that you needed to take to learn what you needed to learn." 

20:40 

And that thought shifted everything in my brain. I felt God's presence wash over me in one of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life. And in that moment I realized that divorce was always a part of the plan for me. That God knew it would happen and that through my experiences surrounding it, I would become who I was destined to become. When I stopped believing that my plan, what I had thought it would be, always married to this person, then I thought that that was the eternal plan. And when I could accept that maybe God had a different plan, that maybe I was wrong about the plan that I had thought about for over 20 years, then things started to shift. 

21:33 

I began to understand that getting divorced, that being wrong about what I thought it wouldn't be, didn't make me less important or decrease my value. In fact, I began to embrace this new idea that God had a different plan for my life than I had imagined. And I began to feel empowered. I felt strong enough to stand up, to take that deep breath and to take a step forward. But I had to accept that this was part of the plan, part of God's plan, part of my path, whether I had previously been privy to this information or not. How did I know that this was supposed to happen? Because it was what was happening. I had to learn to lean into the unknown of what God knew about me and my future life and let go of what I thought it was going to be. 

22:30 

Sometimes God calls an audible and your life plan changes in a split second. That doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you or that you've been doing it all wrong. Sometimes it just means that we didn't know everything we needed to to complete our end of life plan. Maybe we just knew enough to complete our 49 year plan or our 57 year plan. Trust yourself, my friend. Trust God. Know that your Heavenly Parents love you and want what is best for you. And even when others use their agency to make decisions that impact you in unexpected ways, you can still move forward and you will receive the spiritual guidance needed to move you into the next phase of your growth and development. 

23:20 

I know it can hurt. I know it can be hard to wrap your head around. And I know it's possible to heal and move forward. It is possible to move out of the victim mentality and to become your own hero. I know you can figure it out. I know that if you choose that this next phase of your life can be so much better than you ever imagined in your previous life plan. When I look at where I am now, it is so much better than I ever imagined 20 years ago when I was in pain and aching for something different. And it's so much better than 10 years ago when I was in the middle of my divorce and even better than five years ago when I was just happy and in a great place and loving where I was being single and kind of deciding that maybe it was about time to start dating. 

24:18 

God's plan was so much better than the one that I had imagined. And I'm so grateful I decided to release the grip on my plan and embrace God's plan for my life. Becoming your own hero by letting go of the story you thought was supposed to happen and embrace the story that is happening, deciding to figure it out in a way that will create an incredible life if you can't even comprehend at this point. Who you will grow into is one of the most beautiful stories yet to be told. Don't leave it up to your primitive brain to decide, but rather create it intentionally by stepping into the solution mode and choosing responsibility for your life. 

25:10 

You've got this, my friend, and I've got you. Embracing God's plan for you is the one of the best parts of growing up. There is so much more than you have even imagined. I know that. If you are struggling moving out of this victim mentality, whether it be a divorce or a tough marriage situation or adult children, I've got you. This is what I do. Coaching might be a really good fit to help you move into your next best version. You can contact me at tanyahale.com, go to the "free consult" tab, and you can get on my calendar. You can set up a time that we can sit down and chat, talk about your situation, tell you about coaching, and help you make a decision of whether this is going to be a great fit for you or not. I love coaching. I love being part of your life in this way. I feel so honored that you bring me into your life each week and allow me to share a part of my journey with you. I wish you all the best this week, my friends. And I guess that's going to do it for me today. Have a great, great week and I'll see you next time. Bye. 

26:35 

Thank you so much for joining me today If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.