What is this no victims only volunteers business? Living an empowered life, whereby you move out of a victim position into one of influence and meaning, involves volunteering to see your situation with a different lens. This is not easy, searching for another viewpoint or perspective in which to find the silver lining in situations when you feel grief, anger, disappointment or frustration. Especially when there is so much circumstantial evidence that someone or something is to blame outside of yourself. That you, in fact, didn’t ask for this, that you were simply an innocent bystander who was wronged.

Of course, you can feel this way, of course, you can not live a life without hundreds, maybe thousands of challenging experiences or, perhaps, just one devastating experience that almost destroys you. To live is to experience many suffering situations. However, what if your power came from the creation of a more meaningful (to you) viewpoint? What if you could say, “I am grateful that the biggest problem I am waking up to today is my coffee pot that didn’t work right, especially when there are so many other people who are waking up wondering how they are going to eat to sustain their life?” What if those five loads of laundry sitting on your bed waiting to be folded were reminders that the people you love the most were alive and well?  And, what if when tragedy strikes, you search for something positive, something that challenges you to see that there was good in that situation, that there was love and support and an inner strength you did not know you could draw from?

What if your suffering was a wake-up call, that others you know have faced similar or worse situations and you did not reach out to them, you did not fully empathize or sympathize and so now you have become a more caring and loving person? And, when the tough times come, and you are too scared to leave your home or are frozen with anxiety or fear, what if you chose to rise above the situation, and look for resources to heal, to actively pursue support, care and help?  What if you were committed to finding joy again, to see the beauty in life, even with your broken heart and spirit? That determination is moving from victim to volunteer, it is the willingness to have personal power in all your life situations so you come from ownership and accountability and a sense of being at the steering wheel of your life and not losing yourSelf in blame, anger and resentment.

More on this with the next Waking Wise…