RISE ABOVE is OUT!

Today is publication day of a project I've been working on a very long time. I hope it gives you the hope and freedom to live the life you truly want to live!

Listen.

I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn’t get better.

You get better.

—Joan Rivers

My entire career has been an attempt to discover our greatest potential and show people what’s truly possible—to help people break out of their imprisoning labels and show that diagnoses aren’t destiny. But somehow in the past few years, this idea has become controversial.

It’s almost as if we’ve stopped believing in our potential for growth and development. Life’s challenges now seem insurmountable, and we’ve begun to cling to diagnostic labels (sometimes even inventing them for ourselves) so strongly that we can’t see ourselves as anything else. Our obstacles have become so ingrained in our self-concept that we don’t recognize what we could become. And we don’t see that these obstacles are, in many cases, our path to our potential—that we become our greatest self because of, not in spite of, life’s challenges.

To be fair, we weren’t exactly getting it right before, either. Society largely overlooked the very real challenges people faced. We were in many ways discouraged from sharing our struggles, and that certainly wasn’t healthy. It’s still true that we have real problems to work through, and the things we’re facing can be extremely hard to overcome. Yet somewhere along the way, weovercorrected. Our solution has become a problem, too. We’re living in a time where we identify so strongly with our victimhood that our potential has taken a back seat to our pain.

Hey, I get it—life can be a total shitshow. But life can be other things, too. It can also be full of moments of beauty, joy, wonder, awe, meaning, intimate connections, and, potentially, the realization of your full creative and humanitarian possibilities.

Look: It takes work to embrace the messiness of life. It’s hard to summon the courage to take responsibility for your whole complex human self and engage in the trial-and-error required to navigate it all with self-compassion and self-connection. But holy moly will developing that skill set lead to a life you never even imagined could be possible.

So much is already there within you. But to access it, you have to stop fixating on what’s “wrong” and start doing some cognitive re-framing. You’ve got to expand your perception to include not just your obstacles but the opportunities they bring. I realize this may sound like I’m telling you to simply put on a happy face, but nothing could be further from the truth. This isn’t about magical thinking; it’s about making a very real shift in your mindset from one that will keep you perpetually feeling like a victim to one that will unleash your ability to overcome.

I say all of this as a cognitive scientist, author, professor, and self- actualization coach who has spent the last twenty-five years of my career formally studying the mysteries of human intelligence, creativity, personality and neurodiversity, and how to unlock human potential. What in the world do these topics have to do with a victim mindset? As I’ve discovered, a whole lot.

THE VICTIMHOOD TRAP

One of my primary goals with this book is to help you develop a more flexible identity. I want to help you see that a little dysfunction here and there is totally normal and not something to get hung up on. I also aim to convince you that whatever is true in this moment can change. Who we are is not static.

That’s why I generally prefer phrases such as people who score high in narcissism over narcissist. The latter sounds so labeling and set in stone. It’s true that there are some aspects of ourselves we can’t totally shift, but as I’ll show you, we actually have a remarkable ability to steer our outcomes. So when you encounter these words, phrases, and ideas, please hold themgently; don’t point them at yourself like weapons. They’re meant to help you gain understanding to fuel your growth, not give you ammunition to judge yourself (or others).

Take the phrase victim mindset. Without judging, honestly look at these features of a victim mindset and think through how they apply in your own life:

Having a victim mindset means:

• You tend to blame your problems on external circumstances— whether it’s that life dealt you a bad hand, or that a person or even an entire group of people have it in for you and are holding you back.

• You attribute all or most negative outcomes or challenges in your life to your past or “that one thing that happened to you.”

• You’re often distrustful of people and wonder what people want from you if they give you something positive.

• You rarely give people the benefit of the doubt if they seem mean to you. You tend to take things personally.

• You tend to feel entitled to good things in life because you’ve suffered are suffering.

• You tend to feel entitled to behave aggressively or selfishly because of your suffering.

• You often believe your suffering is more important than anyone else’s suffering.

• You seek recognition of your victimhood beyond healthy sharing. For instance, you are quick to tell your story to total strangers or at inappropriate times.

• You often feel a sense of moral superiority and accuse others of being immoral, unfair, or selfish while seeing yourself as moral and ethical.

• You often lack empathy for the pain and suffering of others (unless perhaps they are part of your identity group).

• You can’t stop ruminating about your past victimization. You may even fixate on how to enact revenge, and you rarely think about solutions or ways of moving forward with your life with hope and purpose.

I bet it’s easier now to see how pretty much all of us end up engaging in a victim mindset at some point. Even if you don’t hang out there a lot, there can still be that one issue or circumstance that can get you stuck in what I refer to as the victimhood trap. It’s a trap because the more you dwell in that headspace, the more you will continue to dwell there, making it harder to eventually get out and move forward with your life. Also, just to be clear .

Having a victim mindset does NOT mean

• You were never a victim of a terrible life circumstance.

• You’ve never had real pain.

• You aren’t suffering right now.

• You should stop fighting for justice.

• You should ignore systems that have a powerful effect on our psychology.

Being or having been a victim is not synonymous with having a victim mindset. You can also not have been a victim and still have a victim mindset. That’s right: Having a victim mindset can be independent of actual victimization. This is so important!

For those among us who have been victimized, you absolutely should not be blamed for what’s happened, and no one should criticize you for having a victim mindset. This isn’t about shaming and blaming. Yet in spite of your past experiences, you can still take responsibility for how you show up in this world and what you’re doing to help yourself cope with future uncertainties and challenges. To me, and I hope to you too, that’s what real empowerment looks like.

And for those who haven’t been victimized but still claim victim status? Well, there’s hope for you too! For reasons I’ll unpack in my new book, these days people are often encouraged to highlight their perceived victimhood. But while that may garner attention in the short term, it works against your long-term growth.

For healing, hope, and growth it’s much better to harness an empowerment mindset.

HARNESS YOUR EMPOWERMENT MINDSET

Regardless of your life circumstance, I believe that you can cultivate an empowerment mindset. This requires Yes/And thinking, where we acknowledge our struggles but also understand that this isn’t the end of our story. We both embrace the reality of our experiences or our obstacles and maintain a belief that life holds more for us! If you’re familiar with improv, you understand Yes/And thinking. An improv comedian must accept whatever setup they’re given, no matter how challenging, and work with it. Over time, they become more adept at steering the skit where they’d like it to go.

Someone with an empowerment mindset thinks like this about their life experiences:

• Yes, something happened and it has affected me, and it doesn’t define me.

• I have deep reservoirs of resiliency within me and can handle difficult situations.

• I don’t want to be reduced to the worst thing that has happened to me. Instead, I’d like to be seen as a whole person—that includes my strengths as well as what has happened to me.

• My reactions are within my control.

• I am aware that I am not the only one on this planet who has suffered or who is suffering.

• I am not a victim to my feelings—I can learn techniques and strategies to regulate my emotions.

• There’s a lot of wisdom I can learn from my adverse life experiences to become a better human being.

• I can develop strengths because of my adversity.

• I don’t expect everyone to walk on eggshells around me or open doors for me just because of the adversity I’ve experienced.

• I strive for empathy and understanding of others who are suffering but who may seem very different from me.

For most of us, it’s not easy to shift from a victim mindset to one centered on empowerment, and that’s why I wrote this book! I want to help you get there, no matter your life experiences. At the same time, I won’t ignore or downplay your circumstances. This book will attempt to avoid toxic agency (the idea that you can achieve anything just by lifting yourself up by your bootstraps) as well as toxic passivity (the belief that you are completely helpless and hopeless because your circumstances suck.)

Remember when it was considered a great thing to overcome your challenges, conquer your demons, have a positive attitude, be kind to others despite your life circumstance, and positively contribute to society?

The fact is that, for many of us at least, stories of overcoming are still extremely popular and inspiring. That means that we haven’t lost sight of the value of rising above our past. But instead of letting that notion simmer on the back burner, let’s bring it front and center!

LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT

“People are always blaming their circumstances for being what they are. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

—George Bernard Shaw

Life is what you make of it, at least to a larger extent than you may realize. You can resist this notion all you want—citing all the real injustices in the world that exist and all of the things in life that are holding you back. And while all that may very well be true, what I said is also true. It’s a Both/And situation.

Most people wait for the world to react to them. We expect people to read ourminds about we want, or we expect others to assess our emotions. We wait until we get approval before we bring our whole self to the table, or at least a more authentic version of ourselves. When I say life is what you make it, I mean we grossly underestimate the extent to which we can make magic happen. And by magic I mean create lives rich with meaning and satisfaction.

We have a lot more power to make magic in the world, instead of waiting for it to poof out of nowhere and conform to our every desire, goal, and dream. Toparaphrase Gandhi, you’ve got to bring the energy you want to see in the world!

Yes, you can absolutely sit there and watch other people around you get after it, and you can certainly make a million excuses why they have what it takes and you don’t because of what you’ve been through in your life. But again, while even some of that may very well be true, they certainly don’t have what others have either! More im- portantly, they don’t have what you have.

It’s easy to disparage ourselves or our circumstances. Everyone can find someone else who is a little bit more talented, more good-looking, or more driven, or who started life with more opportunity. So what are you going to do about that?

Are you going to fold your hands, or are you going to get in the game? I, for one, wanna see you get in this thing. Because the truth is we need you. We need your skills and your talents and your energy. After all, life is ashitshow, remember? If we’re gonna make something better out of it, it’s an all- hands-on-deck moment, and that includes you. It’s time to take the wheel and captain your own damn ship!

One of the most world-changing, groundbreaking shifts in consciousness you could possibly make right now is to realize just how much life really is what you make it. I’m not saying that’s easy. In fact, nothing in life that’s truly worthhaving is easy. But it’s possible, and it’s worth it.

My new book will use the latest tools of science to help you confront life with healthy vulnerability, bravery, wisdom, self-acceptance, life-acceptance, compassion, creativity, and healing. I assume these are things you want out of your life, and to a very large extent, you can have them.

To find out how, order Rise Above wherever you get your books! It’s out now.