4 Steps to Avoid Victim Mentality with Adam Cox

Have you ever gone through a hard trial in your life and fallen into a victim mentality? Join me this week as I talk with my husband, Adam, as he goes through four steps on how to get out of a victim mentality so that you can feel empowered and learn from your trials and hardships. 

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Are you looking for a space where you will learn to improve your mental strength, emotional health, and heal your insecurities from the inside out? Take the first step to living a more meaningful life with a better meeting with body by breeze podcasts. I'm your host, Bree. I'm a certified personal trainer, entrepreneur, and mother of three. I've helped empower thousands of women to take action through fitness, nutrition, meditation, personal development, and aligning thoughts with action. This podcast is for those who are ready to feel inspired and motivated to live a more purposeful life. Let's grow together.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

If you've ever gone through a hard trial in your life and sometimes fall into a victim mentality, this podcast is for you. I actually have my husband Adam on with me today, and he goes through four steps to help you get out of a victim mentality so that you feel empowered and you learn from these experiences and these trials in your life. I can't wait for you to listen. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast, babe. You haven't been on since our sex therapy session. Did I scar you?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

I didn't think I'd ever come back.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Were you a little bit scarred after that episode?

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah. I'm sure my mom listened to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

She did. She told me she listened.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Are you serious?

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Yes, I'm serious. But hey, we helped a lot of people. And that actually was our most successful podcast. So there you go. People like to hear about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Sex sells.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Sex sells. Okay. So today I actually asked Adam to come on the podcast because we were talking last night about a situation that happened in our life. And he was giving such amazing advice that I was like, every single one of my clients and my listeners need to hear this message because it will change their life. And it's all about how you are not a victim in your life or in your situation. So why is that important before we kind of talk about our example?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah, I mean, it's like, well, why I mean the question would be, well, why is it bad to be a victim? And I think it's more or less if you live in a world where you don't control your circumstances or situation or your happiness, uh, your energy, I think then it really it just causes a lot of stress and anxiety, which I think is kind of perpetuating the world we live in right now. It's a lot of people just don't feel like they're in control of their outcome. And so to me, it's like I just don't want to live in that world, which I did for a lot of years. And so I just shared kind of my my what helped me get out and a few of the things that helped me kind of take back my power where I feel like hey, I have control over my destiny. I'm not um, you know, I'm not a victim.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Okay, so let's kind of share um just like a brief out like brief overview of kind of what happened with our sister.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah, so my sister calls and she's been a school teacher in kindergarten for I don't know, uh 20 years, and uh which is really tough. So she has all these COVID kids that were coming through the lockdown, so she has I mean terrible, terrible behavior issues where kid, you know, kids are still uh one kid that's peeing peeing the her pants five times a day uh in class, and kids that are violent and emotionally disturbed, and so there's all these uh and then a principal that's not supporting her and putting more troubled kids in her class. And so after 20 years of this, she it was there was just kind of this breaking point where she just had no control, she was stressed, um could hardly make it through the day, and um, and so she just finally felt like she needed to reach out and kind of just spill it all onto me. And so that was kind of the press, you know, the beginning of of where we're at now is kind of hey, that what this is what I mentioned to her and what helped me get through all of this.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

And so, like, even obviously take this for what it's worth, like any situation that you're going through, because he has reps and friends, and like we have family, right? Like every person is gonna go through some trial or some crazy hard time where you're gonna feel like you don't have control. And this is Adam has four steps that he's kind of implemented that pulls him out of that when he starts feeling like he's being in a victim mentality. So we're gonna share those with you. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah. So for me, and none of this is I haven't invented any of this stuff, obviously. This is just from resources and things I pulled in. So the first thing that I do when I get in like these really tricky situations is I'll literally take a piece of paper out and I will write down uh like draw a line down the paper, and I will write out everything on the left column that I can control, and then everything on the right column that I cannot control. So I can just put a place to it and say, okay, here I cannot control these things, so I'm not gonna give emotion or my energy away to something that I just can't control. And so I I focus on the things that I can't control and I look at those and I say, okay, well, there's actually a lot of things that I can control that I'm actually not even doing, which is then in turn causing more stress because you're you're just not necessarily uh fulfilling and doing the things that you can do. So that's that's step one for me, and it's really helpful, and that in and of self is empowering because when you actually realize you're like, oh, I actually have much more control than I thought I did. So that's kind of step one to just taking back your power. Uh step two, and this is Wait, can I say one thing about that?

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Um, actually, when I was having a really hard time losing weight with Mila, um, I broke down to Adam when we were on a hike. And I was like, I feel so out of control. I just I can't, I'm doing everything in my power that I can do, and my body's not responding, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he literally was like, No, there are a lot of things that you can control. You can control what you put in your mouth, you can control your, you know, daily mental wins, you can control um, you know, what you're putting your success on. All of these things you can control, and that does make you successful. So it you can also apply this to losing weight or getting in shape or being in the eight-week program, whatever that is. So I tried to put that in there.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Yeah, for sure. Um, and so the second step for me, and this is where this is classic, classic victim mentality, and I deal with this every single day, and this is 95% of America, uh, or people in general, is they they can tell you all about the problem. They can tell you everything about it, every detail of it. What they can't tell you is a solution. And so I got this. Tony Robbins talks a lot about this, and it really had an impact on me. But he says, hey, you should spend 5% on the problem, 95% on the solution. And this is going back to taking back your mentality, or I'm sorry, taking back your power. And and the reasoning behind that is it's not that you're ignoring the problem. You you are in fact uh you are in fact uh acknowledging it, but you don't no nobody ever really solved uh or or nobody ever got out of a problem by just focusing on the problem itself. And so that's uh it's like being in a boat that's sinking and you're just staring at basically this the hole and um complaining about the hole, whereas like you wouldn't do that. You would actually think, okay, hey, how do we solve and plug the hole? Whereas most of us just sit there and just kind of say, whose fault caught whose fault was it that caused the hole in the first place? And why is there a whole like you're you're complaining about things that don't solve the problem? So that's that's step two. That's a big one.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Um and you were saying, like, really be cognizant and aware of, you know, when like you call people and you're telling them about the problem and you're having conversations with other people about the problem, and you know, it's just escalating the problem instead of really trying to find that solution.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yeah, you're you're continually giving away your power every time you keep talking about the this person did this to me or this happened to me. You keep giving your power away, and again, that causes every like nobody feels empowered if they get off the phone about having to complain about the issue. You don't feel empowered, you feel stressed, you feel and you keep building this case that you don't have control. So um, step three is a big one to me, and this was so Deepak Chopra uh talks a lot about this, but really it's saying, Hey, act as if you chose every situation in your life. So it restructures the framework of, hey, look, are are you a victim? Or if you chose this situation, if that was the case, then now you're looking at it very differently, saying, Well, why would you have chosen this? Like, why what am I to gain? Or who is the type of person I will become by overcoming this thing? Or what type of person, what type of person would need to, in order to maintain their happiness and joy through all of this this these challenges, what does that person look like? And so obviously, for you to grow and evolve, you have to have some of these obstacles. Some are bigger than others. And so I really like the concept of just changing the framework of hey, uh, this happened to me versus I chose this. That that's very fundamentally different. And I think even the people who have gone through some of the worst situations and circumstances that you can imagine have come through that with saying, hey, like I I am not a victim. And and if I had to, and there you hear this all the time, like if I had to go through that challenge, I would have done it again because of all these amazing things that I learned and developed and from it.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Well, and um also you were saying, like, if you look back at your life, at every hard trial that you've ever had, you've always learned from it. You've always grown from it, it's always stretched you and taught you something. So you, you know, it's like shifting that to being almost grateful for those situations, even though it's hard. Like we were talking about Jameson with his ADHD.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yeah. And I mean, for me, it's the same thing where I was asking all these the wrong questions. Again, victims ask the wrong questions. They say, Well, why is this happening to me? Or why do I have to deal with this? And I was doing that with my son, who uh had just really, I mean, really bad ADD, and it was just, he was really, really challenging. And I was asking these questions that caused more frustration. I didn't feel like I had control, so I was really taken out on them. And then all of a sudden I switched to where, like, hey, I like what if I chose to have a child that has these challenges, and why, and so what am I trying to get from this? What am I trying to learn from this? And how can I love him in a different way that that or unique way that I wouldn't have otherwise? And it really flipped everything. My whole perspective changed to where now it was, again, very solution oriented and not problem-oriented because the solution is hey, the so the solution isn't necessarily to go and say, hey, go get him, go get his problem fixed, but it's my problem, which would be impatience, um, lack of empathy, and things like that. So now I have it a deeper level of patience because that was the ultimate solution of me having that problem. The only solution of dealing with my son at the time was for me to get more patience. That's the only solution. So it kind of empowered and brought it back to me. And and again, I have control over how much patience I have or not. I don't have control over um my son's, you know, actions. So step four, and this is the last one, and this is what I really, really am a big, big believer in, is just the concept of visualizing, manifesting. And so I would do this every morning uh as either I'm driving or just close my eyes, kind of meditating, and this this helps a lot, but I would visualize my day, especially when I know, like, okay, I'm gonna come home and I'm gonna see my son, and I know we're gonna probably have some challenges. So I'd visualize, okay, well, what would what kind of person would come home and be incredibly patient? Or what kind of person uh would be happy and light and um you know, um I think loving and yeah, what kind of what and and what would that feel like to be light and patient and you know, so I just think of the end result of the feeling. What would it feel like to become this type of person and not give my power away and be happy? And I just think it changes the whole your whole vibration very quickly when you visualize the problem happening, and then you visualize yourself going through that exact situation, but in a really positive way, and what kind of person that would become, or what kind of person would would overcome some of those things. And so for me, doing that on a daily basis is really, really impactful. And and it was interesting. So I walked through this with my sister, and she wrote she wrote down all the things that she can control. Uh a morning routine was really big for her, so she hadn't done a morning routine where she really kind of filled up her cup and and did her prayer and meditation and reading. And so she called me like three days later, and it was like it was everything had changed. Like some of the behavior issues that were so problematic went away with some of her students. She was able to steck up for herself and communicate better with her with her principal. Um, you know, she was able to look at per things perspectively, and all of a sudden she was just like this it was almost like as if she'd been transferred to a whole different class, like her whole world changed, and she was like really, really happy and had like this kind of light back in. And she was light and and not heavy, and so all within like a 48-hour period of me having that conversation. And so it's just amazing how fast and quick you can actually change your state, and then and then how fast you can change your uh environment. And so it's just uh so again, follow those four steps. It's helped me. I'm sure there's a lot of other steps you could add in there, but uh, those are the ones that that kind of got me through um, you know, on a daily basis, some of my own things.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Okay, so to just recap, we have step one is identify the things you can and cannot control. And then step two was spending 95% on your solution instead of the problem. Step three was look at your life and um the challenges and try to show up as the person that would find joy and learn from those experiences.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

And then and and act as if you chose those circumstances.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

And then step four was visualize showing up as that person and like walking through those situations as that person and what does that look like and what attributes and habits does that person have? So hopefully this helps you. I thought this was life-changing information, and I never want to be a victim in my life. I slip into this victim mentality um as well still. And so we're all working on it. So hopefully you can take some gold nuggets and apply it to your life.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Good luck.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Okay, we'll talk to you guys later.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Have a good day. Thank you for joining us in today's episode. If you liked the content and want to hear more, remember to hit that subscribe button and write a review. As a small business owner, I appreciate it more than you know. If you are looking for a program to help with self-confidence, to lose weight, get in shape, and work on your mental, physical, and emotional health. Check out my training programs on www.bodyby.com. My team and I help to hold you accountable through the Body Bible app, where you log in to see all your workouts, custom meal plan made specifically for you and your needs, and communication through the messenger. You are never alone when you're on the Body Bybree training program. Click the link in the show notes to get more information on how to transform your life from the inside out.