From Victim to Victor: The Power of Perspective

In this episode of The Endgame Podcast, I’m diving deep into the power of perspective and how it shapes our mindset, success, and growth. Whether you think you can or you can’t, as Henry Ford famously said, you’re right. The way we perceive challenges—whether as obstacles or opportunities—will directly impact the outcomes we experience, both personally and professionally.

Let's explore how a victim mentality keeps us stuck, while a victor mentality empowers us to take control of our destiny. By reframing setbacks, practicing self-awareness, and adopting a growth-oriented mindset, we can transform adversity into fuel for resilience and success.

Tune in as I cover:

• Mindset Shifts: How to break free from a victim mindset and embrace a victor’s perspective.
• Reframing Challenges: Practical tips for seeing setbacks as opportunities for growth and development.
• Building Resilience: Why creating a strong foundation through self-awareness, positive environments, and daily habits is crucial for long-term success.
• Compounding Growth: How small, consistent improvements lead to exponential success over time.

If you’re ready to shift your mindset from being controlled by your circumstances to taking control of them, this episode is for you.

Listen in, adopt the victor’s mindset, and take action today!

The Power of Perspective (00:20)
How Perspective Shapes Reality (00:42)
Mindset Philosophy (01:04)
Facing Challenges with Resilience (01:37)
Control vs. Being Controlled (02:27)
Achieving Personal and Professional Success (03:00)
Creating Positive Days Through Mindset (05:03)
Growth vs. Decline: The Importance of Momentum (06:05)
Building a Victor Mindset (10:03)
Final Thoughts on Shifting Perspective (15:49)

Transcript

0:08

Hey everyone, welcome to the end game podcast season two, where I bet you didn't know what you didn't know. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach. Sit back and relax and tune in to today's episode from victim to victor, the power of perspective. I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim. Thanks for tuning in. Today we're going to elaborate more on the idea of mindset and really the lens through which mindset is is created, which is someone's perspective, right? So I always say perspective is reality and the lens through which you view the world. Will absolutely influence not just the world in which you live, but your successes within the world in which you live. One of my favorite quotes actually that I've followed over the years and try to remind myself of along the way is this idea or the quote from Henry Ford, which reads, whether you think you can or you can't, either way, you are right. And that is the kind of foundation of the idea of mindset and perspective and really the interplay of them both, which is if you choose to be a pessimist or an optimist, you're right. You, you can see the world and the kind of lens of opportunity and how that might, how a. Particularly challenging opportunity may end up building resilience and and create lessons learned and allow you to be more effective and successful next time. Or you could view a challenge as. A negative, right? You could put the negative skew, negative lens, the PEP, the pessimistic lens on that and something that could otherwise, you know, help you learn and shape you into the future and help build mental resilience. We've talked about this before. Can then become something that drains you, right? So, right. So rather than something that energizes you, something that builds resilience and is a move forward, feel like a constant step backward, right? So and this, there's some concepts here around how you view yourself in the world either as having control or being controlled. Again, this is a viewpoint or a perspective that really shapes. Your ability to be a leader, your ability to be a manager. And, and again, just at the end of the day, your ability to be successful, whether that is personally in your own life or professionally in your work life. And obviously then you start talking about the balance there in, but the reality is again, going back to one of the core quotes that I think really encompasses this. Well, is from Henry Ford and just to say it again, whether you think you can or you can't either way, you are right. So let's dive in a bit more around this concept. So again, the mindset, the power perspective. And the title of this podcast, although not one, it's controversial, to be honest, this idea of victim versus victor, especially in the mental health world we try to shy away from the idea of being a victim, right? And, and again, as we just kind of put mindset and perspective onto it, how do we really empower the victor mentality and get away from the mentality that You know, again, lends itself toward what is kind of mainstream known as the victim mentality. So common non victor mentality items or signs would be laying blame on others. Again, kind of this external locus of control, feeling powerless, you know, feeling at the effect of things around you. Again, that negative pessimistic You know, the world is a burden. Things are bad. And others are to blame. So that is generally this, the, the kind of frame or mindset of someone who is not performing at maximum or optimum levels. And tends to not be a victor, right? Tends to not be as successful, tends to live their life at the effect of, you know, everything outside of them and doesn't take accountability or control for what they can do to be more powerful into the future. And so again, as you can imagine, if you live your life constantly at the effect of things around you and a good day is only good when something around you allows it to be good, rather than you making it a good day as you can imagine, you're that really will limit your growth opportunity personally and professionally that will really limit your successes. Personally and professionally. So we want to try to get out of this idea of being controlled by those things around us. Right? And again, that is comes from your mindset, comes from your health set, comes from how do you prepare yourself every morning to be successful? How do you create that really strong foundation so that every morning you wake up in the mindset of gratitude and growth and gratefulness? And not in again, you don't wake up every morning, hit the snooze button and, and give the woe is me conversation, you know, inside, inside speaking in your own mind. And this reminds me of another, you know, kind of adage, which is this idea, if you're not climbing your slide, right, if if you're not constantly kind of moving forward, growing, stretching outside your comfort zone, building resilience, Then you're, you're shrinking, right? That you're, you're sliding, you're shrinking, you're kind of moving in the wrong direction again. This compiles off of something we talked about before with regard to compounding interest, right? So if you were to just do one thing, you know, the same thing, better 1 percent every day, where you end up getting in terms of your successes is exponential where you started. And if you do the exact opposite, if you end up losing a skill 1 percent every day, It'll compound in the negative direction. So we're always wanting to kind of move in the positive and that comes down to the power of your perspective. We've mentioned it before and I just said it earlier, but the idea that perception is reality, right? What you choose to see and how you choose to see it will absolutely shape your capabilities for whatever it is. And that comes back to this idea of kind of a growth mindset. Versus a fixed mindset or, you know, again, maybe even a negative mindset. So a growth mindset is a mindset or a foundation through which you're viewing the lens and the idea of opportunity. You're, you're viewing things through the idea of control and accountability. You're viewing things through the idea of building resilience and being. Kind of flexible, I always say your ability to kind of dance in traffic, right? So if you can spin plates and dance in traffic and do all the things that is an example of how you can be stretched in different directions. You can be stretched outside your comfort zone, you can create really audacious goals and you can achieve them through compounding benefits. As compared to this kind of fixed mindset, which is leave well enough alone I've, I've made it this far, you know, now, now I'm going to things are going to go stale for me and, and again, whether you choose to, you can always pivot your mindset to growth in something else. So if you've, if you've achieved the top of the mountain, if you've, you know, summited the peak, so to speak in a particular goal or area of your life. That doesn't mean that you can't then pivot a growth mindset somewhere else. There's, there's limitless opportunities. And so even if you think about kind of your mindset as it relates to a particular task or, or again, kind of avenue of your life personally or professionally, you can always then apply that to something else, right? And you'll see that a lot in very successful individuals or peak performers and athletes where they may have reached the pinnacle of their career in one thing. But then they'll pivot. Let's say they're there. They've either reached the pinnacle and choose not to go any further not to stay there. You'll often see them pivot to something different, but also do it in a way that is peak performer or high success. You know, and so they're just taking the same playbook and pivoting it into a different direction. So the kind of setting the foundation, the power of perspective is critically important. As we think about how we grow and become victors in our own lives. Reframing has a lot to do with that. So a couple of, a couple of things we've talked about in the past, but just to kind of reiterate, what are ways in which you can set that foundation? I mentioned a little bit ago the power of gratefulness being in that grateful mindset. First thing in the morning, setting the foundation for your day, positive affirmations. You could do journaling practices in a positive direction focus on solutions. So, you know, I always say the. Or thinking about this idea of you can be kind of solution oriented or problem focused. Right? And so again, mindset and perspective matter. If we can go towards solution orientation, we're much more likely to get to an outcome or a goal. That we want to get to sooner, better, faster and over longer periods of time once it's achieved. So that comes down to control and again, kind of how you view your sense of control in the world in which you live. Reframing as I said really speaking about instead of challenges or, or, or barriers or obstacles, thinking about it as opportunities and how those opportunities help to build. Progress into the future and help to build resilience again, and how those energize you are kind of refill your tank as compared to drain you. So those become really important to or those kind of simple solutions or simple shiftings that can really go a long way in terms of your. your mindset. Other strategies include self awareness. We've talked about this a fair bit which is this idea of being kind of situationally and self aware amongst, you know, amongst your peers in social settings and of yourself. And you may recall, we talked about this in the setting of EQ, this idea of how you can have emotional intelligence. And one of the, Best ways you can have emotional intelligence is having self awareness and situational awareness and those same strategies go a long way in helping to set the, the victor mindset, right? Other empowering actions. So building momentum through small steps. Again, the compounding interest example, how do you get to something that is an audacious goal or a crazy idea? How do you achieve that outcome? You don't do it all in one day. Okay. Another really great example of this is this idea of kind of bodybuilding or weightlifting and exercise, physical exercise, which is you know, the very, let's say you've, you've been stagnant or you haven't lifted in a while and you go to the gym and you pick it back up. You're going all the pain, all the heartache, all the kind of negativity comes right away, right? You, you lift legs for the first time you wake up the next morning and you, you can't even get out of bed. So all of the negative comes early. You can't see the positive, you know, you can't lift once and suddenly, you know, you wake up the next day and your, your glutes and your quads and your hamstrings are all back to where you want them to be or in some sort of body building shape. You have to make small incremental changes, those compounding interest changes over many days, weeks, months before you will begin to really see the outcome or the benefit or the, or the positive. Meanwhile, you'll struggle through it. You will have many kind of negatives or, or barriers or just perceived negative outcomes in that process. So this idea of building muscle memory and building muscle tissue and how it often happens in life are very comparable. Oftentimes getting to the top of the mountain, getting to your end game, getting to the peak or your pinnacle takes many, many small steps that often can come with. And kind of a pool towards the negative and that's what is an incumbent upon us to make sure we're changing every morning and keeping our eye on the prize towards that end goal, positive environments. We've also talked a bit about this, but the idea that you can absolutely your environment can influence you. And it can, it can chip away you small bits at a time or it can add to you in small bits at a time again, not this idea of having, letting everything affect you that is your surroundings, but successful people tend to put themselves in surroundings that lend themselves to be successful. You know, if you are someone who really enjoys outdoors and that's a real positive mood influence for you, then. You know, maybe you should take some meetings on the phone, walking around outside. You know, also do you surround yourself with a bunch of other individuals who are pessimistic and, you know, view the world negatively and kind of always have the opinion around challenges and, and struggles, or are you surrounding yourself with friends and family and employees and business folk who are. Again, personally developed or developing very positive mindset very optimistic in their viewpoints because those things will absolutely influence you slowly but surely over time. So putting yourself in a positive geographical space, but also a positive space from a those in which you surround yourself with. We'll go a really long way in helping you get to that mindset you're trying to achieve. And so in closing today, thinking about how do we really, you know, the power of perception, the power of perspective, how do we go from maybe a kind of fixed mindset or one that is more negative skewed, more pessimistic in nature? How do we really change that to one that can be? Lead us towards success and that really comes down to this idea of a positive foundational mindset with the right perception in perspective through which we're viewing the world that lens how we're viewing the world as it relates to us, our ability to be at the effect of the world or to Be the one driving those decisions or the feelings they're in and everything that comes with that that we've talked about. So whether that is self awareness strategies, whether that is positive influence strategies the reframing solution orientation again, all of those items that we've talked about, incremental improvements or compounding improvements, all of those things go a really long way. In influencing your daily mindset and perspective that then grows into your monthly mindset and perspective and then grows into a, you know, years and candidly your, your lifetime mindset and perspective. And if you do that in a way that is positive, that is opportunistic, that a solution oriented that is resilience building. You will fill your gas tank and you will be more successful with time as compared to the opposite. So I encourage you to. To take this information and do something with it and change that mindset. Thank you for listening. Please like subscribe and share this episode. Once again, I'm Dr. Ryan Wakim, successful entrepreneur and your end game coach. I'm here to teach you how to exist today so you can expand tomorrow and create the ultimate end game of your wildest desires. Talk to you soon.