Kill the victim

And claim the whole world.

When experiencing low mood, anxiety and depression, no matter how bad it gets, there is almost always an action we can take to make a difference. Understanding this, internalizing it somehow, and then habituating oneself to act when feeling low, trains us to overcome despair and victimhood. It is a kind of superpower.

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When my mood is low my thoughts are now turning to action despite my urge to do nothing except think. This is something I have only recently tried.

It is a conscious decision on my part to overcome feelings of despair or anxiety. When I am down, and worrying about some thing, I am recalibrating by asking myself what action can I now take? What must I do in the real world outside of my head? There is usually something.

This skill does not come naturally to everyone, including me, and today it is somewhat discouraged by the culture we now live in.

As a result, many find themselves lost inside a kind of mind prison, with doom and gloom news and other assorted calamities dragging us down into the depths of despair.

But the solution is to get outside of our heads and into the real world, and the fastest way to accomplish this is to take action.

Society needs victims

Many are like me. They have learned over time to not act. They feel helpless or overwhelmed.

Society encourages this behaviour. The pressure to retreat is everywhere.

Traditional news is a constant source of stress and anxiety. Everything is negative and pessimistic. We are all doomed.

Much of what we are told to worry about is beyond our control. Foreign wars or macroeconomics or distant climate targets.

Even the things we do control are cast in terms that make us feel powerless. The inflammatory modern diets many have unwittingly adopted are discussed in terms of what big corporations are doing to us or to the food chain, and rarely in terms of the choices we make ourselves.

In this way a sense of helplessness pervades our culture. We unwittingly avoid taking steps to improve life because we are worrying about the wrong things as we focus on external conditions few control. The economy, racism, sexism, the weather and history are some common examples that constitute a modern backdrop to almost everything we hear.

We live in a time that celebrates powerlessness and the victimhood it incubates.

Society wants us to feel helpless. But we are not.

An embarrassment of choices

Compared to recent history we have it easy. There are a multitude of ways to act. We can access phones, email and the internet. We can research and share. Modern communication tools allow us to compare notes and form groups.

This array of options comes at a price as they provide many opportunities to prevaricate. There is always another article to read or video to watch.

The overwhelming volume of information at our disposal encourages us to feel unprepared and therefore can be an impediment to doing.

This is the paradox of choice. The more choices we have the more we tend to hesitate and second guess ourselves.

Some of the malaise in modern life is this, too many options, too much information, and too little time to absorb it all.

The overwhelm it induces blinds us to the usefulness of the options we possess to better ourselves and improve our lot. The antidote is not to tackle the information overload directly, to endlessly read and consume, to forever think, but to act decisively on the world with the information we already have.

Analysis paralysis is real; the alternative is doing and acting, not more thinking.

Don’t get hung up on every choice. Act and then adjust course as needed.

The world would have us think we are unprepared. We must get more information and data. Even when true, it is not the point. Getting outside of our heads is the point.

Acting is a superpower

While celebration of victimhood has never been more popular it just means swimming against the current has never been easier.

Even understanding this basic observation often helps. We are rarely truly helpless.

Learning to do so often feels like a superpower. Habituating ourselves to take a step back then look for actions we can take is one of the most important skills we can cultivate.

This is an active method of overcoming the decline into victimhood. Disciplining ourselves to retreat from despair and pessimism and reconsider what actions we can take is a transformative experience.

Action trumps everything.

We can train ourselves to embrace this instead of victimhood. Take an action, any action at all, and see if it helps.

When this process becomes habitual it changes lives. It becomes a default, an automatic reaction to anxiety, fear or despair.

Consider your own life in this way if you are prone to pessimism or negativity and find yourself depressed or suffering from low mood.

It may be sending an email or turning off the TV and going outside. For many it means put down the phone and delete the distracting apps.

These are simple actions and yet many fail to act as their lives degenerate into depressing consumption that only numbs them for a time.

And they then wonder why they hate their lives or hate themselves.

Even better than the above re-actions are positive actions. Go to the gym, lift weights, do cardio to lift mood.

Research healthy food and make more meals at home. Read books instead of content online.

We often don’t feel like doing any of this when our mood is low, which is the point. When we get lost in our heads it feels natural.

But forcing ourselves to push through this and take action seems to break the spell. It pulls us back into the real world where everything actually happens.

Kill the victim

Victimhood is appealing; it gets us off the hook. It is rewarded in today’s society, so it can come with plenty of back-patting. But it damns us and weakens us.

Be stronger by rejecting this path. Actively seek out ways to overcome using action.

A default to action is empowering in ways social approval can never be as it comes from within ourselves, so it builds resilience over time.

Acting or doing unleashes quite different outcomes than ruminating or despairing. Things happen out there in the real world that we can build upon to maintain momentum.

Try to make the anxiety or despair a trigger for taking some action. When done often enough this can become a habit, where positive actions are triggered by calamities. Soon any negative thought generates a drive towards doing something in the real world leading to better outcomes. This daisy chaining approach is powerful yet often overlooked as too simplistic, but it is surprisingly effective.

Habituating this turns passive people into active agents in control of their lives.

That increased sense of agency is often the basis for a very real boost in self-confidence many lack. And it is real self-confidence, not just a fleeting improvement in mood.

This is the transformative power of agency. Those who exhibit high agency don’t just feel more in control of their lives but often are observably so to third parties. This is what acting on the world does, it improves our lot and it is obvious to others.

In a world that celebrates defeat, and needs a steady supply of broken victims to operate, the genuinely confident stand out. To the lost they look superhuman. To the victimongers they seem dangerous or crazy.

But they are not superhuman or dangerous. They have simply learned a valuable lesson, that when you become a doer you destroy the helpless victim our damaged society needs you to become.

Act directly on the world and kill the victim.

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