Travis Thomas: Are You a Victim or a Victor?

care. So, ask yourself, and I like to— when you think about yourself right now, and if you're not sure, ask your friend sitting next to you. They'll tell you. They'll be honest with you. As you go throughout your day, do you typically have a victim or a victor mindset? Are you the kind of person that looks at every situation, good or bad, and go, this is something I can learn from. I'm going to make the best of it. That's a victor mindset. Are you someone that looks at every situation and go, ah, teacher's out to get me. Oh, did it again. The world's out to get me. And you know in your heart which one you fall into. So, ask yourself right now, do you fall into that victim or the victor mindset? And for some of us, like myself, you might bounce around a little bit during the day, but we all kind of have that default that we sit in. And when that thing happens, that unknown confronts us, we either go one or two ways. We go in this, I'm going to rise above it and learn from it. Or, I'm going to let it knock me down and I'm going to create this story. I'm going to be a victim. I'm going to be a victim to my circumstances. Another book that she wrote, Miscellany, Mary Baker Eddy, she has this to say, unless one's eyes are open to the modes of mental malpractice working so subtly that we mistake its suggestions for the impulses of our own thought, The victim will allow himself to drift in the wrong direction without knowing it. A couple of key phrases there again. Unless one's eyes— what are you seeing? What are you paying attention to? Modes of mental malpractice working so subtly. They're not— and that's the way that malpractice works. It's subtle. It's little things. We start believing these little imperfections, these little errors. And then it's so subtle that we actually start to believe that this is our own thought. I actually thought these error thoughts. These are actually my thoughts, which in turn actually make me responsible for these thoughts. I created them. I'm such a horrible person. Well, I really am a victim. And when we don't pay attention to them, they become so subtle that it allows us to drift in the wrong direction. So what are these subtle thoughts? We start to make mistakes. We start to make excuses. We start to blame. If you can relate to any of these up here on the board, please raise your hand. Have you ever blamed a teacher? Teacher, have you ever blamed a student? Do we blame administrators? Blame coaches? Do we blame parents? Do we blame the weather? Do we blame the economy? Do we blame the government? Do we blame the board of directors? Do we blame the refs? Blame genetics? Do we blame our luck? Blame the coach. Do we blame it on the rain? Yeah, yeah. Gotta blame it on something. No, no blaming on the rain fans, or no fans of my singing. Thank you, Sam Wade. It's so subtle. If it is, it is so subtle that we will find anything to blame. Sun was in my eyes when she wasn't tired. I didn't get enough sleep last night. If you didn't keep me up, we as soon as if you want to know if you're a victim or a victor mindset, if you're doing any of that, and we've all done it. When you find yourself slipping into the blame game, you are in the victim mindset. You are separating yourself from God. You're separating yourself from love. Would God ever give you a reason not to be inside that perfection, inside that abundance? If you feel yourself blaming. Just catch it. I've fallen into a victim mindset. So, excuses and blame equals a victim mentality. Simple. It's as simple as that. Are you making excuses? Are you blaming others? You fall into this victim mentality. I am catching myself in it over and over again right now. I'm noticing it. I catch it. I change my thought. I shift out of it. I'm having to do it over and over again. on a daily basis. Dr. Wayne Dyer, I'm not sure if anyone's ever read any of his works. He has this to say in a very short quote: All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much blame— how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but— here's the key part— but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy. That's the key idea. We will all find others to agree with the reasons that we've been wronged, but it doesn't pass the pillow test. And what's the pillow test? When you go to bed each night and the world is quiet, And it's just you and your pillow and you're trying to go to bed, that's where the thoughts show up. That's where your pillow hits the bed at night and you're like, yes, I'm living the life I want to live, or all the junk comes up. And that's when your head hits the pillow, are you still stuck blaming others for your unhappiness or are you taking responsibility for it and figuring out what you need to do to make things better? This amazing quote: The worst possible friend you can have in the pursuit of your dreams and happiness is justification. The last thing you want to feel is justified for not getting what you want. You don't want others to support you for why you're not getting it done. It might make you feel good at the moment, but it is not going to pass the pillow test. And the person that wrote this quote was me, but I just figured if I put it in quotes, it would make it look a lot more important. So, that's mine. If I put my name by it, you guys would have discredited it a long time ago, so I figured I'd leave my name off. We don't need others supporting our misery. We need others who pull us out of it. Yeah, that stinks. Yeah, it seems like you're getting an unfair shake, but don't leave them there. Don't feel justified in quitting because it's just not going to get you out of it. You're just not going to be happy. You don't want to be the guy that everyone goes, yeah, Travis really, really got a bad deal. You want someone to empathize with you and understand you, but then you want them to pull you out. Let's problem-solve this. What can we do to learn from this and get better and get back on the road to our dreams and goals? Being a victim keeps you small. And ask yourself right now, do you feel big or do you feel small in life with where you are right now? Do you feel big or do you feel small? I don't care who you are, how old you are, what you're doing in life. If you don't feel victimized, you're living that big expression of yourself. It doesn't matter what you're doing. If you are blaming other things for where you are and if you're not happy with it, that is being small.

You—

there's not a single person in this room, in this world, that should be playing a small game. And when you allow yourself to be a victim, you play small. You separate yourself from God. You separate yourself from abundance. Because if you remove yourself from God, you're removing yourself from that abundance mentality that says you can do anything and everything. Don't be small. When you see someone being small, playing small, acting small, pull them out of it. Hold them accountable. Love them enough to pull them out. Got a quick movie clip from a great film right now. It's newly out. It's a documentary called Finding Joe. It's based on Joseph Campbell. For those— any of you guys know Joseph Campbell, he created this This philosophy called the hero's journey, and we're all on our hero's journey. Here's a quick, quick 2.5-minute clip, and then we'll talk about it.

Once upon a time in the forest, there was this little tiger cub amongst a flock of sheep. And he ate grass, and he wandered around with the sheep. And when he tried to say anything, all that came out was a sort of little meow, not much of a roar. And one day, through the forest comes a large male tiger. And he's just about to pounce on the sheep, and he sees this tiger cub. He says, what are you doing here? The tiger cub goes, baa. Picks the tiger cub up by the scruff of the neck, and he carries him over to a pond, and he puts his face over, and he says, look, see that face? You're not a sheep, you're a tiger. The male tiger says, okay, we need to do something. He slays a sheep, and he grabs a big hunk of raw meat, And he shoves it in the little tiger's mouth. And the little tiger gagged on it, as all do on the truth. But it went down. And he got a little bit of energy, and pretty soon he had a bigger tiger roar. And eventually he had a full tiger roar and he went off. with the male tiger. I think the moral here is self-evident. If you're a tiger living among sheep, you're a pretty poor specimen of a tiger. And we are all tigers living among sheep. We are all individuals with a self that we don't even begin to understand. And unfortunately, you can open the metaphor out, The food we get from the culture around us is maybe food for sheep. It's not food for tigers.

So you guys are tigers. We are all tigers. Now my wife doesn't like that part. She doesn't like the whole analogy with, uh, chewing on the sheep and all that. And I get that. Look at the analogy aspect of it. Don't allow yourself to play small by playing the victim. Every single one of us here, myself, everyone included, you are tigers. We are all capable of more than we do. We're capable of more in our relationships with each other, as students, as administrators, as an entire community and as a civilization, we can play a bigger game. And when we allow ourselves to catch ourselves from not falling into, well, this is the way it's always been done, or I can't do anything in my position, or it's— or I just— I'm just not big enough. There's not enough I can do. Don't be a victim. Don't be small. All right? It's more important to be out there getting your tail kicked in trying than standing out— standing on the outside going, wow, doesn't look too safe out there. Just get in the game, play big, don't make excuses. And again, in Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, she echoes that statement: Experience is victor. She doesn't say achievement. Experience is victor, never the vanquished. And out of defeat comes the secret of victory. Out of defeat, out of failing comes the secret of victory. And what is that secret? That tomorrow starts from today and is one day beyond it, robes the future with hope's rainbow hues. The defeat, the failure of today is tomorrow's success. But we're not going to get there by intellectually analyzing everything and waiting for the water to be safe or waiting for someone to give us permission to be great. You gotta jump in and get it and not make excuses and not blame others along the way. So, I've got— this is— everyone grab your phones. Everyone grab your phones. I know you guys got them on you. Grab your phones. Everyone, administrators, phones, everyone. And I'm sure everyone has an alarm feature on your phone. So, grab your phone. What you're gonna do real quick. 3 times throughout the day, I want you to set your alarm to go off 3 times for today, not during a class time, not during class. Teachers, I'm with you. Set it 3 times throughout the day, maybe lunch, maybe in between period, next period, after school, and then 1 time in the evening. Okay, set your alarm 3 times today, and this is what you're going to do. When that alarm goes off, it's going to be your trigger. Your alarm is going to go off. And you're going to stop, reflect, and evaluate where your thought has been for the past few hours. And you're going to ask yourself, where's my thought been? Have I been going down a victim mindset or have I been going down a victor mindset? Have I been separating myself from God or seeing myself totally as one with God? Victim or victor? You're going to evaluate where your thought has been and then you're going to reboot your system. And you're going to get your thought back on track. And then the next time the alarm goes off, you're going to reflect and you're going to do it again. All right? That's going to be your discipline for today. You're going to ask yourself, are you ready to drop the blame and the excuses and claim your God-given right as a victor? Are you ready to be a tiger? And I hope the answer is yes. Have a great day, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving.