Not Becoming the Victim

I've been dealing with some frustrating setbacks recently, and came across a Travis Kalanick interview that helped me process them. His advice: don't get into the victim mindset.

Before Uber, Kalanick had Scour, which got sued for $250 billion and went bankrupt. Then Red Swoosh, which nearly died several times and paid him almost nothing for years.

A lot of bad things happened to him, but his point was about how you frame it. If the story is "this was done to me," the natural next move is to defend, resent, and wait for justice. If the story is "this happened, and some of it I can act on," the next move is to act.

The victim mindset isn't about whether we've actually been treated unfairly. We may well have been. It's deciding that everything that went wrong was completely out of our hands. Blaming external factors feels comforting because it means we aren't at fault, but it also takes away our control.

That's not to say we should blame ourselves. What seems to help is dropping the question of blame and looking forward. What matters is what we can do from here. The question I keep coming back to: what specifically happened, and which parts of it are mine to change?

Whatever the setback made us feel (resentment, embarrassment, anger, plain disappointment) is valid and real. Getting close and missing hurts more than missing by a mile, and rejection after real effort is a legitimate thing to feel bad about. Feel it, let it pass, but don't unpack and live there.

Bad luck and unfair situations are real. Focusing on the parts we can control just seems like the most useful way forward.