July 2025 Museletter: Letting go of Victimhood. Learning to act
Supporting you to free your mind so you can live from your heart!
“There are really only two ways to approach life - as a victim - or as a gallant fighter. You must decide whether you want to act or react, deal your own cards or play a stacked deck. And if you don’t decide which way to play with life, it always plays with you.”
— Merle Shain
This quote is from Each Day a New Beginning, a seminal book in the recovery world by Karen Casey. I have it in app form on my phone and turn to it regularly. The structure is simple and powerful: each day of the year has a quote and a meditation to reflect on - a format that has deeply inspired me. In fact, it’s the model I use for my 60-second mind shifts and these newsletters.
This quote just happens to be the one assigned to my birthday, July 5 (I turned 46 this year. It feels like I blinked and 15 years flew by). The synchronicity of its relevance to my own journey is not lost on me.
For many years I showed up in my life, unconsciously, as a victim and a martyr. The reality is that most of us are victimized by others who have also been hurt. Hurt people hurt people. But then the brain latches on to the experience and creates a victim mindset, a lens we carry around like an old pair of glasses we forgot we were even wearing. I didn’t realize I was doing this until I started working with a coach who helped me see it clearly. You can't shift what you can't see. And as my mentor says, “When you see it, you don’t have to be it.”
My old orientation toward life was painful. It left me feeling invisible, hyper-focused on my flaws, stuck in analysis paralysis, and always at the mercy of external circumstances. I didn’t have the internal tools to choose how I showed up. Reaction was my default. I felt like a walking open wound.
When I began working with my first coach I learned to observe that a lot of my thoughts had a victim/martyr flavor to them. My coach was non-judgmental about this. He simply held up a metaphorical mirror so I could see it. He also supported me to see my strengths and power and shift my focus to thoughts that were more useful, constructive, and true. And supported me in taking action from that new empowered place.
That work changed my life so profoundly that I became a coach myself at 40 years old! My mission is to offer others the same transformation I experienced: to help them see who they really are, live in alignment with what is most important to them and let go of a pattern, fear or limiting belief that has been getting in the way of living the best life they can imagine!
Just this week I was in session with a client (shared anonymously with their permission) who reflected that it can feel surprisingly foreign and even uncomfortable when you start feeling consistently good and empowered in your own life after being in a default mode of investing in and focusing on the struggle for so long. I get it. That shift is real. And it’s worth it.
Step By Step,
Jessie
