Chapter 2
Change Your T-shirt
So let’s build upon what we’ve already been exploring in the previous chapter E + R = O.
Let me start by asking you the same two questions I ask people when I am running a seminar or speaking at a conference. Firstly, ‘Do you drive a car?’ And secondly, ‘Did you get yourself dressed this morning?’ If you answered yes to either question you’ll relate to the following fact – much of what we do in life we do without consciously thinking about it.
Ever had the experience of taking a familiar car journey and suddenly finding yourself at your destination and wondering ‘How did I get here?’ Or found yourself driving on the motorway and asking yourself, ‘What happened to those last ten miles?’
When you got dressed this morning, did you consciously decide in what order to get dressed? Did you weigh up the pros and cons of which shoe to put on first? If not, then you probably identify with the concept I call ‘auto-pilot syndrome’.
We are about to go on a journey. Except on this journey I want you to be very conscious of where you are going and how you get there. To do so, your first step in the SUMO process is to ensure that you take time out, off auto-pilot, and honestly assess how you have been living your life so far. To help you do this, here are three questions to consider.
- Which person has the biggest influence on your life?
- Who deserves the most credit for where you currently find yourself in life?
- Whose advice and opinions do you tend always to act upon?
Let me share with you my answers. (Although I have to confess they would not always have been my responses.)
- Which person has the biggest influence on your life? I do.
- Who deserves the most credit for where you currently find yourself in life? I do.
- Whose advice and opinions do you tend always to act upon? My own.
How do they match yours? I admit there are many people who have influenced my life and who deserve credit for how they have helped me. And I have listened to the advice and opinions of others; but ultimately, the biggest single factor that determines where you and I currently find ourselves in life is ‘you’.
Here is the challenge. We live in a climate and culture where this outlook is not always encouraged.
Be honest. How comfortable do you feel about standing up and saying, ‘I take full responsibility for my life?’ Well, let’s explore why many people would not only feel uncomfortable saying that statement, they would also vehemently disagree with it. I call it the BSE crisis.
The great BSE crisis
I meet individuals who believe that their current circumstances in life have:
- Nothing to do with the previous decisions they have made.
- Nothing to do with the actions they have taken.
- Nothing to do with the attitudes they have adopted.
Apart from that, they take full responsibility for everything.
If life is not as they would want it, they can quickly play their BSE card – Blame Someone Else. ‘I mean, what can I do?’ they ask, ‘It’s not my fault. Someone else is to blame.’
Not only do they carry their own personal BSE card, they also tend to wear a particular T-shirt.
Confused? Let me explain.
Imagine for a moment that how you felt or what you believed about yourself was written on your T-shirt. Some T-shirts may have the phrase ‘I am confident’ or ‘I feel good about myself’; whilst others may have ‘I lack self-belief’ or ‘I don’t like people’ (I have met a few of those). BSE card carriers, though, wear one with the message – ‘Victim’. Wearers of this T-shirt tend to think, say and believe the following:
‘This is my life and I must grin and bear it.’
‘It’s not my fault.’
‘Life is not fair.’
‘I’ve never been lucky.’
‘I blame the government/my parents/the traffic/my boss/my teachers/my kids.’
‘I cannot really change or influence my situation.’
‘I’m not capable.’
‘I’m not confident.’
‘I’m not good enough.’
So why wear the T-shirt in the first place?
Here are four reasons why we might be tempted to wear the Victim T-shirt:
Reason 1
You feel you have no other choice. ‘That’s just the way it is, there’s nothing I can do’ is the mantra of people who play the victim role. You can adopt a fatalistic approach to life and to the inevitability of being the victim.
Reason 2
Low self-esteem and poor self-image. Either of these factors can distort your view of a situation. Your esteem and self-image can be affected by ‘life events’ and you are more vulnerable to seeing them damaged when you have experienced a major change such as a divorce, redundancy or an illness. Such events can knock your self-confidence, which, in turn, affects how you think and feel about yourself.
Reason 3
It’s become a habit. Some people have been putting on the T-shirt so regularly that they now wear it without even being conscious of the fact. Their wardrobe consists of a whole range of styles and colours of Victim T-shirts – one to suit any occasion.
Reason 4
People actually enjoy wearing it. My research reveals that wearing the Victim T-shirt can bring people many perceived benefits:
- People feel sorry for you and give you more attention.
- It can increase your own feeling of self-importance.
- It is a good excuse for not being able to achieve other things (I would have been able to achieve X if only Y had been more supportive).
- And finally, a very common reason why people wear the Victim T-shirt is simply this: Blaming others frees you from the responsibility of taking charge of your own life.
People are not always conscious they are wearing the T-shirt. You might not be. So let’s explore some characters I have come across on my travels, which may help you spot the signs more clearly.
Victim T-shirt wearers on parade
First let’s meet Colin, who is in his early thirties and always has a reason for why he can never remain in a job for longer than three months. He claims he is the victim of office politics; a boss who feels threatened by him, jealousy amongst fellow co-workers and finally, some plot by head office to make his life so unbearable he has no choice other than to resign. Colin is the master of conspiracy theories. On no occasion that I know of has he ever admitted that he might have something to do with losing his job.
Dave had been made redundant. He spent months harassing an organization for not appointing him to a position that in his words ‘I was clearly right for’. During this time, he failed to apply for any other job until he dealt with what he saw as discrimination. (He did not specify on what grounds he was being discriminated against.) Rather than believe someone else had been more suited to the position, he chose to be the victim. Sometimes people are discriminated against and it is right for them to fight for justice. But on other occasions, discrimination is not the reason for people’s lack of success – they are.
Several months ago I was coaching Lucy, who believed that success was a matter of luck and that she was not lucky. ‘It’s all about being in the right place at the right time,’ she protested, ‘and I never am.’ Rather than identify and develop her skills and abilities, she chose to believe that life would only get better when she got her big break. Her ‘victim mentality’ verged on paranoia when she even blamed her accent. ‘People think I’m posh and are threatened by me… particularly northerners.’ (As a northerner myself I had to smile at such a comment.)
Finally Brian, an office worker I met on one of my courses, seemed to be full of regrets. ‘I could really have made something of my life if it had not been for my elderly mother. She has been ill for over 20 years and I have had to look after her. Opportunities have passed me by, including marriage. But what else could I do?’ Well, what could he have done? Perhaps if he had seen himself as less of a victim of his domestic circumstances, his life could have been very different. Having a sick or elderly mother does not automatically require a person to remain single. Brian thought it did.
The consequences of wearing the Victim T-shirt
What do Colin, Dave, Lucy and Brian have in common? Simple – wearing the Victim T-shirt has consequences for your life. For them, these include:
- A failure to fulfil their potential.
- Missing out on opportunities because they were too busy feeling sorry for themselves to spot them.
- Other people failing to benefit from their talents.
- Feelings of regret because of what might have been.
- Stagnating, rather than growing as people.
Also their stories indicate the formula on which their lives are built. Sadly it’s not E + R = O but E = O. They have all failed to realize that it’s not just the event but their response that has influenced their outcome. If Colin, Dave, Lucy and Brian changed their response they’d also change their outcome. That’s, of course, if they wanted to.
Remember, some people enjoy wearing the Victim T-shirt.
Having explored the consequences of wearing the Victim T-shirt, you may decide you want to stop wearing one. I want to examine why changing it can be difficult. There are three reasons.
Removing your T-shirt means changing your status quo.
You and I are creatures of habit. Living a life where we do not take responsibility for our actions and where we can blame others for our circumstances is convenient. It becomes a part of our normal way of living. It’s what we are familiar with. To change means to move out of our self-created comfort zone. To some people, that is neither appealing nor easy to do.
Removing your T-shirt means going against the current fashion
In the past, when people had accidents, we saw it as part of everyday life and most people were usually prepared to accept some, if not all, the responsibility. Not anymore. Our minds are bombarded with messages such as ‘Where there’s blame, there’s a claim’ (and in some cases that is appropriate). But we are now encouraged by some parts of society to feel like victims who are powerless to help ourselves. Blame your teachers, blame your parents, blame the government. Blame anyone but yourself.
We are told we are victims of stress, long hours and unsafe food. Seeds of victim mentality are sown when we are asked questions such as ‘Have you felt stressed in the last month?’ or ‘Have you ever experienced bullying at work?’ (Clearly some people do genuinely face such challenging situations, but tackling the problem whilst wearing a Victim T-shirt will not help.)
Removing your T-shirt requires courage
It can be uncomfortable to admit to yourself that you have been wearing a Victim T-shirt. This is even harder to do if you feel you are a genuine victim.
So let me be clear. I do believe there are innocent victims in life who could justifiably wear the T-shirt. However, some genuine victims choose not to. They decide not to allow events or circumstances to define their identity. Why? Without exception, the people I have met who have been able to move on have done so because they hold on to the following belief:
On a lighter note, during one of my presentations, I produced a large yellow T-shirt with the word Victim emblazoned across the front. I was making the point that we need to get rid of this type of T-shirt. At the end of my talk a man approached me wondering if I sold Victim T-shirts. He knew plenty of people where he worked who he could sell them to.
In case you are wondering, I don’t sell Victim T-shirts.
So we know some of the reasons why we wear the T-shirt and why it can be difficult to change. But if you want to change it, how do you go about it?
How to change your T-shirt
First of all you must decide you want to. Then you need to choose a new one with a different message. The message I suggest is SUMO. When you wear this T-shirt, you are deciding to Shut Up being a victim and Move On to taking responsibility. If you want things to be different in your life, you have to make different choices and take different actions. The rest of the book will show you how to do this, but you can make an immediate start by learning to ‘mind your language’. It’s important that we remove victim language from what we say and what we think and replace it with SUMO sayings. Let me give you some examples. You can come up with your own suggestions for the last one.
| Victim language | Replace with SUMO language |
| Life is not fair | I am unhappy about that, what can I do? |
| This is just the way I am | How can I improve? |
| There’s nothing I can do | There’s always something I can do |
| It’s impossible | Let’s find a way |
| Who is to blame? | How can we move forward? |
| I am a victim | I am a survivor |
| What’s the point? | ___________________________ |
In a nutshell
Let me be really clear about what changing your T-shirt does and does not mean. To do so I am going to answer the two most common questions that people pose when we’re exploring this topic.
- Does removing the Victim T-shirt mean I have to accept full responsibility for everything that has happened to me even when it’s not my fault? No. Removing the T-shirt simply means you accept responsibility for how you choose to respond to an event. You do not necessarily have to blame yourself for what has happened, but you should accept responsibility for how to move forward.
- But what if I do believe I have been unfairly treated or discriminated against? Are you suggesting I simply ‘get over it’ and stop making a fuss? Absolutely and categorically not. The key is not to remain helpless. You may have been a ‘victim’ but you must see yourself as a survivor. You must assert yourself when necessary and do all you can to challenge inappropriate actions by an individual or organization.
The message from this chapter is that some people, consciously or unconsciously, habitually wear the Victim T-shirt. In doing so, they abdicate responsibility for their lives. Removing the T-shirt is an indication that no matter what life has given us so far or will give us in the future, we take control of our response.
If you want your life to get better, you’ll never be able to achieve it until you remove your T-shirt. Change does not happen when circumstances improve; change happens when you decide to improve your circumstances.