How Melanie Lowry of Catinality Cattery

Whines Her Way To Sympathy

Successful Failures

If we lived in a time when personal accountability and responsibility were held in high regard, a time during which choosing victimhood from a list of social options would seem utterly stupid, it would suffice to say that successful people aren't victims. But those are not the times we live in, and to some people, perpetual victimhood of one kind or another actually seems an attractive option.

When one examines the lives of successful people, one is impressed by the absence of traits they share in common (which is why self-help books that promise to make you successful don't really deliver). But there is one trait that all successful people have in common � they are not victims. Victims do not inspire confidence, they inspire pity. Seasoned investors don't buy into victimhood, because it is a losing proposition.

Successful people don't become victims for another reason � they know if they won't take responsibility when things go wrong, they lose the right to take credit when things go right. This is a statement, one among many, of the symmetry principle. Perpetual victims are subject to the symmetry principle also, but because of their utterly negative outlook on life, they don't expect anything ever to go right, so being a victim has no downside.

Successful people are able to read positive signs in a bleak landscape, and they can act on what they see in a creative, constructive way. Victims, by contrast, look out at the same landscape and only see opportunities for further victimhood. Successful people and victims both create self-fulfilling narratives.

Here's a case history of success. A young man is diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, thought to be a rather serious condition, but also one that is very controversial, both in deciding who has the condition, and in how to proceed (more on Asperger's here).

There is a lot of latitude in Asperger's, and the more responsible researchers counsel skepticism as to both diagnosis and treatment. An individual could take this diagnosis and use it as an excuse to be a lifelong victim (some have done just that). Or, because those diagnosed with Asperger's tend to be bright, one might choose to take it as a sign of superior ability.

What did our young man do? Did he try for sympathy and start a pattern of self-victimization that might have lasted his entire life? Or did he accept the cards he was dealt and find his place in the world?

Well, he did the latter. He became the richest man in the world: Bill Gates.

Most successful people learn how to be successful, they are not born with an instinct for success. By the same token, perpetual, professional victims are trained, not born. Where do they get this training?

Copyright 2006 P. Lutus

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