Difficult Circumstances
By: Adam Mohiuddin
Tags: Money, Schools, Learning, College, Work

Don’t let your circumstances define you, define yourself. Regardless of how you grew up, you have to put in the effort to change your circumstances.

You may have grown up in a home with one parent, maybe with no parents, maybe you didn’t grow up in a home, you might have experienced violence towards yourself, towards the ones you loved, towards those in your neighborhood, what if you were born a minority, what if you were bullied because of where your parents were from, what if you were bullied because of what looked like, in some cases, you were not accepted because of your religious beliefs, in many cases you were not accepted because of your sexuality, sometimes there wasn’t enough food to go around, other times you had to sleep on the floor, you may have lost your house, you may have lost the ones you love, you could have been born with an incurable disease, a life-altering disability, or crippling depression and anxiety.

You may have experienced one of the life circumstances listed above. You may be lucky enough to never have experienced any of these things. And you may have experienced several of them. How you use your past experiences determines how they will affect your life.

That is not to say if you have lived a hard and traumatic life that those experiences may not affect you. The conditions under which we live, especially during childhood, no doubt have major repercussions later in life. However, being a victim does not put you on a path towards your goals, in fact, it often has the opposite effect.

Why is identity important? Think about a small goal that you have for yourself, let’s say you want to go to the gym and get fit. Being fit is a goal that almost everyone has, yet why are unhealthy lifestyles so prevalent? When accomplishing the goals that you set out for yourself, you first must identify with that aspiration. Before getting fit you must first see yourself as that healthy person you would like to become. You need to be or at least identify a part of yourself as the in shape person. If you do not identify with the goal that you set out for yourself, you will struggle to make meaningful long-term progress towards your goal.

Many people think of motivation as something that can be achieved in the short term. Motivational videos and anthems are increasingly prevalent in today’s society, but to what effect.

As an experiment go on YouTube and type in motivational videos. Go ahead and pick the one that you think best suits you. If you are present and focused during the monologues and cameos of Steph Curry shooting buzzer-beating threes, you will notice your state to rise and your optimism towards accomplishment will boom. If you truly feel inspired put down this book and go accomplish that thing you have been putting off or just go take-in the beautiful day. You will probably find that the shot of inspiration you felt after the video has faded by the time you go on your walk out the door.

You shouldn’t feel sorry that a single piece of motivational content didn’t get you to turn your life around. It is natural and even a good thing that your identity is slow to change because once you’ve established an identity that will help you achieve your goals, it will become equally hard to change.

Often times those who achieve overnight success or quick rise to fame, think lottery winners, music sensations, etc., fall the hardest and most quickly. Without time to adapt and embrace their new role, you will undoubtedly resort to your old bad habits.

The victim’s mentality, or the belief that you have been wronged by the world and deserve better, will prevent you from succeeding because one you are not capable of envisioning success, two you will attract other victims to you rather than the successful, and three you will self sabotage yourself. For these reasons choosing the victim mentality and identity is like setting yourself up for failure.