Be a Creator Instead of a Victim
There are two main platforms upon which to live your life. The one you choose will determine whether you are happy or sad, fulfilled or unfulfilled, successful or unsuccessful. One is the platform of a creator and the other is the platform of a victim.
There are certain simple laws of physics that correspond to each of these platforms. They have to do with which direction your energy flows. On the platform of a creator, your energy is sourced from within you and flows outward to enable you to create your world. You decide what happens to you and what you experience.
The platform of a victim is very different. If you live on this platform, the physics of your energy will change dramatically. You will be randomly bombarded with the energy from the world around you. In this case, that same outside energy will determine your inner experience. Creating your life consciously will be difficult, if not altogether impossible. For the most part, the world around you will create your life by default.
Two Powerful Paradigms
Each of these platforms represents a powerful paradigm, or a way of looking at the world. Whichever one you live from will determine the type of life you lead. Let’s examine some of the characteristics of each one.
10 Characteristics of a Victim Paradigm:
- Fear about what might happen
- Anxiety due to feeling out of control
- Confusion and an inability to plan, because “you never know what might happen next”
- Difficulty in making decisions because there are so many outside factors involved
- A tendency to withdraw and protect oneself
- A tendency to make excuses
- An addiction to distractions
- Fear of change
- Low self-esteem
- Negative outlook on life
10 Characteristics of a Creator’s Paradigm:
- Feeling centered, grounded, and sure of yourself
- Feeling in control of your own experience and circumstances
- Highly creative thinking
- Ability to envision your future and set goals
- More energy due to an enthusiastic outlook
- Greater strength in overcoming obstacles
- An overall positive outlook
- A strong belief in your capabilities
- A greater sense of peace and certainty
- Ability to make clear decisions
As you can see from these lists of characteristics, the paradigm of a victim exhibits withdrawal, unconsciousness, and negativity. The paradigm of a creator exhibits courage, happiness, and an overall positive outlook.
Most people experience a mixture of these two paradigms. You will probably feel that your overall tendencies are stronger in one paradigm or the other. You likely lean more towards experiencing life as a victim or you lean more towards living life as a creator.
How to Shift Your Paradigm
The way to live a more fulfilling life is to shift your paradigm from the platform of a victim to that of a creator. It is impossible to live a fulfilling life as a victim. You must shift to the platform of a creator if you want to live the life of your dreams. This is step number one in creating a fulfilling life.
Here are some simple steps you can take to shift your paradigm over to that of a creator:
- Do some soul searching along with a self-evaluation. Which paradigm do you spend most of your time in? Wherever you feel you lean more towards being a victim, ask yourself if you are willing to step off this platform and learn how to shift to the platform of a creator.
- Choose one of the main areas in your life where you feel that you function more like a victim. This could be in the areas of relationships, career, finances, or health. Or choose another area that really matters to you. Decide which area you want to work on first.
- Now look deeply into this chosen area of life. There are certain things that you will have to say goodbye to, as you leave the platform of a victim. These things are as follows: excuses, blame, justifications, and negative judgements. Such things can only live on the platform of a victim. They cannot exist on the platform of a creator. Are you willing to say goodbye to these ideas and let them go? If your answer is no, then find some other area of life where you can find that willingness.
- Here is where you can begin to shift your paradigm. Choose any situation in your chosen area of life that particularly bothers you. If you eliminate all excuses, justifications, and blame for that circumstance, what might you have done differently to have either avoided that outcome or have it turn out differently? How would a different outlook and behavior on your part have changed that outcome to something more aligned with your heart’s desires?
- Once you have answered this question, you will begin to realize that you actually had a greater option to control that outcome than you realized at the time. As this realization begins to fully sink in on a conscious level, you will begin to see how different things look from the platform of a creator. This will inspire you to look at other areas of your life and further realize that you have the capacity to decide for yourself what you want to experience.
How Can I Cultivate the Platform of a Creator?
The most important thing to remember about the platform of a creator is that all experience starts on the inside. You decide how you are going to process the things that happen around you. You move away from reacting to circumstances. Instead, you give yourself a chance to pause and think things through.
For example, if someone does something that usually upsets you, you can step back before you react. Ask yourself what you want to experience right now. If your goal was to have a peaceful, harmonious day, are you going to let someone else unexpectedly disrupt that for you? Are you obligated to react negatively to that person’s behavior and ruin your own experience? Of course not.
It is perfectly okay to let that other person be whatever he or she is in the moment and decide that their behavior is only about them, not about you – even if it appears to be directed at you. This way you preserve and protect your own inner peace. You stay in command of your own experience.
As you begin to understand this simple concept, you can take your realization further. You can start to make decisions about different circumstances in your life. You can begin to craft a new and better life for yourself.
Make a list of several things in your life that you would like to change. Now write down how you might influence and create those changes for yourself. Decide to be the master of your own destiny and the creator of your everyday experience.
There is no such thing as a sudden, overnight shift in these deep paradigms. It is better to pursue this as a daily work in progress. Every day look for a few ways that you can make the shift from victim to creator. Keep practicing and you will begin to see profound changes taking place.
Eventually you will see yourself building momentum and power. You will be astonished at what you are capable of. You will be amazed at the level of control that you can have in your life when you divorce yourself from excuses, rationalizations, and negative judgements.
Let your life be a work of art in progress. Be the artist in your own life. Decide what you want to paint and the story you wish to write. Don’t let outside circumstances dictate your life by default. Decide for yourself what you want to do, and become the influencer and creator of your circumstances.
It’s a simple formula. Choose to create your circumstances or your circumstances will create you. It’s up to you whether you are the victim of circumstances or the creator of your own circumstances by design. Be the creator!
Leave me a comment below and share your thoughts on this topic. Do you have any insights after reading this? I’d love to know your impressions!
I was the victim up until about this time last yr then I decided no more !!! …. I joined a gym because my health had always been important to me and I’d let that go … Now I try and eat healthy most of the time … Drink very little because that had also become an issue … Now I meditate. And have a positive attitude to life bringing anything into my life which makes it happier and richer … And I finally feel Im back to me and its all come from within
Elaine, I love what you said about feeling back to being yourself again. This is such a great example of how the paradigm of a creator is our natural state of being. That’s why it feels more like yourself and brings you happiness.
We are always happier when we take command of our situation and decide what our circumstances will be like, according to what fulfills us. This is also what helps us to feel peaceful and secure. To me, this proves that we are designed to be creators. We are not really made for victimhood, which is why it never works out to our benefit.
Hi Saratoga,thanks for theese teachings.Many I may know I’ve studied so long ha.But you put things in such a precise way they help to remember and simplfly things for me.Sometimes I try to do too many technics.Enjoy your week.Titia
Thank you, Titia. Yes, I agree with you about too many techniques. Sometimes that can make things overwhelming and even more confusing. Simplicity actually makes it easier to focus. Blessings to you! 🙂
Hi Saratoga; Thanks very much for this. I’m making good changes in several areas of my life but the main area and most important one (the one that will bring me the most happiness) still eludes me. That of developing a successful healing practice. I have several of your posts printed out and sitting there ready for me to apply their wisdom. This recent one ties it all neatly together in a structured and practical way that does not overwhelm. I do get that this will be a work in progress every day and ongoing and not to expect things to happen overnight.
This promises to be very helpful in terms of keeping me on track and avoiding distractions.
Thanks so much,
Doug
Doug, this is a good example of a self-image issue. You probably don’t entirely see yourself as healer just yet. You may still see yourself as more of whatever you have been portraying most of your life.
Thus there is a conflict. Which one should you be? This involves a paradigm shift from the old identity (whatever that is) to a newer one, which is that of a professional healer.
Of course, this kind of shift will probably evoke worry and anxiety because you don’t know what it will mean. The key is to decide for yourself what it will mean.
And you are right that it is always a work in progress. It’s best to expect that the shift will be uncomfortable. That is completely understandable. Just keep working through the discomfort day by day, until you become comfortable with seeing yourself as that professional. I hope this helps 🙂
Hi Saratoga. Reading this, I feel a deeper sense of clarity on what it means to live as a creator. I walked away from the “victim village” about a year ago when I decided that I was tired of the way I was living my life, that I just wanted to be happy and that I would do whatever it took to be truly happy. I started with one area of my life and little by little, day by day, it just started expanding into other areas of my life. I didn’t really plan that, it just happened pretty naturally.
This post has helped me to see the overall picture more clearly and I see some of the areas of my life that could use more work. I took the two sets of lists of 10 characteristics from above (victim/creator paradigms) and considered each of the different areas of my life. I gathered a sense of how many things from the first list and how many from the second list applied in each area. I was surprised by some of the insights I gained. For one thing, there weren’t any areas that were 50/50. Things tended to be mostly in one direction or the other, which makes a lot of sense, when you consider it.
Thanks so much, this is really helpful and very timely, as always! Sometimes it feels like your posts are about exactly what’s going on in my life when I read them. 🙂
Avalon, I like your expression of the “victim village”. What a great name! 🙂 It’s actually a pretty cool image that can make it easier to visualize walking out of it.
You are right about things happening little by little and day by day. This is the best way to look at it – continuous progress in incremental ways. So often people fail because they expect changes to happen all at once and overnight. When that doesn’t occur, they quit and decide that they can’t do it. It might be true that they can’t do it overnight, but they can certainly do it incrementally. That is really important to recognize in order to keep going.
I’m so glad that this post was helpful! 🙂 Blessings!
Thank you so much i used to practice being in control and letting negative fall away then trhrough several circumstances I quit I really needed a refresher thank you again
I’m so glad to be able to help you refresh your process, Lydia. Sometimes all we need is a reminder. 🙂
My mother used to say be the captain of your soul; it’s so true❤️
I love that saying, Kathy. Such a simple, yet powerful truth!
Saratoga, the blend of absolute truth about this and the underlying practicality of living life as a creator is undeniable. It is most certainly a choice for me, though oftentimes it doesn’t feel like I have the power to choose. I am committed to giving up my old victim patterns which strangely seem to surface in a huge way from time to time in my life, almost randomly it feels, and then I feel stuck. It’s almost as if I don’t have control over when these patterns are going to hit me, so to speak. It’s like this huge tidal wave and I feel flattened. Actually, I’m going through one of these storms right now. And it always seems to surprise me when I get stuck, yet again! I see it coming but I feel powerless to move out of the way.
I thank you for offering these tools so that I can shift my consciousness to take the actions I know will allow my desires to manifest. I know I am a creator, it’s something I’ve always believed to be true about myself, but I need to find consistency in my relationship to being one. I need to become a consistent creator within all of my being. That’s a real challenge for me, and has been all my life. I am seriously working at letting go of my past, but it keeps sneaking up on me. It seems like every time I get to the top of one mountain there’s another one to climb.
Thank you for the worksheet. Bringing all of this into simple format to work on daily is really helpful. It gives me a platform to create from rather than it all being like some amoeba swirling around me, as if it’s outside. I find that structure is a powerful tool for me.
Leigh, I’m glad you find the worksheet helpful. I think that practical simplicity is often a good approach because it keeps things clear.
What you describe here is so common to many. It really is about a deep, emotional paradigm shift. Otherwise it can turn into a lifelong battle where both sides (what we want and what stands in the way of that) are given equal weight.
I’ll share a few general ideas here that might help. When we feel that life is a constant battle between old patterns of reaction and what we really want to experience, it is time to do some deep soul-searching.
The patterns convince us that the way they cause us to react is what we want in that moment. Then in the aftermath, we realize that once again we were robbed. But then they come around again and proceed to convince us of the very same thing, as we once again react in a detrimental way. Weird, isn’t it?
So the thing to do is to get really serious about the life you want. Put as much mental and emotional leverage into that vision as you can. Think about it. Write about it. Do affirmations. Give it so much energy that you leave less and less room for the patterns to exist anymore. Eventually you will believe more in your vision and less and less in what the patterns are causing you to believe.
It’s all about shifting leverage and transitioning to a new paradigm. You are the only one who has access to your own mind. It’s about realizing that this gives you the power to completely change how you see everything. That’s the source of your freedom and also the beginning of functioning as a creator. I hope this helps! 🙂
As always a great post by you. Its true. Only you can change how you want to live your life . I have had a shift of how i live my life. I am calmer, less concerned about material things and more focused on my health. I have found balance. But it has taken a while and is still a work in progress . Love your posts. X
Thank you, Ann. You are so right that only you can change how you live your life. That’s because only we have the power to change our own thoughts and our own perspective.
It’s an amazing power that we each have and it’s awesome to make that discovery and begin to use it.
I am sorry to note that if you accept the world the way it is you fall victim to what’s happening around you. We are all one, time we act like this. This is the starting point where you open the mind. Question everything don’t listen with the mind comprehend with your heart