My Falling into the Victim Mindset

And so we're gonna be talking about the sad, terrible descent into victim mindset today on episode 236 of the relaxed male. This is the relaxed male, a show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms. Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.

Amen. Hello, and welcome to the relax mail. I'm your host, Brian, and I am a certified men's coach who assess men who are just neck deep in the suffering of their life. These are the men who are struggling with their relationships, trying to find ways to make their bride happy, yet they are just making themselves miserable in the process. What are men to do? Do you change

how do you change your bride? How do you change your your wife to being this person who is more accepting, more open for a relationship? Do you change how you approach that marriage? Or do you see how you can have a discussion and embrace the dynamics of her strengths and your strengths? You can do this. This is a this is a podcast where I love to see men become better men through their actions and through their ways that they converse

and how they keep themselves playing small by the very thoughts they have. And that's what we're gonna be talking about this week is this last week, I had a bit of a roller coaster. Now a lot of it is stuff that I brought on to myself. Now I'm live in a small town, and this small town

doesn't have anything like an HOA or anything like that. But because I have been so committed and pressured or not pressured, but pushing the getting relaxed smell up off the ground because, well, I would like to get out of the truck. I have been neglecting to mow my lawn. I had somebody for the past 2, 3 years who were who was mowing my lawn, and the guy who originally was mowing lawn, he,

at the end of last year, were just kinda flaked out. I think he went back on on drugs that he was is was on at one time and, just disappeared. And he's still he's still running around. He's not he he hadn't been disappeared. He's he's still here. He's just over in lives over in, the a little bit larger town. Just got up, decided to move. His his actions had become it it very erratic, and that's why I'm saying he it looks like he went back on to, using meth and stuff. But he

was a he was a reliable guy. I mean, he annoyed the hell of my wife because as soon as he got finished mowing, he knows that mow that payday I can't I'm not paying him until Friday because that's whenever I get paid. And so Wednesday, Wednesday afternoon, which is when he would normally mow. Sometimes Thursday, he would show up wanting to know if he could got if he'd get paid and be like, no. We have to wait till Friday. I'll get home, give you the money, and we're good. We're kosher.

And did that great for a couple years. Then this year, thought I had thought I had somebody to replace, replace him with, but the guy that I was, the young man that I have was gonna have mow the lawn, he got a job offer that he wanted to try out. And so he took off to, Arkansas, and he was gonna do that for a little bit and and, and stuff. So I was and he recommended somebody else to do the,

mowing for me. And so I called him up. He came over. He'd mowed the lawn. Did a great job. Alright. Sweet. Awesome. Kick butt and all that. Came back. He did it again, and then nothing. Called him. Hey. Looker online and online to go on Facebook Marketplace. I'm like, hey. Anybody know anybody around here mows lawns? Not really get anything. Or, yeah, you know, they've the local commercial lawn mowing company, which, I mean, they wanted to charge $300. It was like, screw that. And

I didn't wanna mow the mow the lawn. I hated mowing lawn. Even from whenever I was a kid, hated mowing the lawn. Well, last, was when I was checking the mail last Saturday, we got a nasty gram from the, from the city saying our lawn's being is is, is overgrown, and we and we gotta get it taken care of. It's like, alright. Well well, I'll get to it this weekend. Well, my wife went to go pay the bill, and

they were asking her about, so when are you gonna get the lawn mowed? I was like, well, whenever he gets a lawn mowed. And he's like, well, we can get it a lot. We can take care we can get it, the lawn mowed. What do you think it's gonna end up being? And the guy quote is astronomical, stupendously, idiotic, asinine number. He said $400. And, when my wife told me that, I was like, you. That is insane. Bulk and I'm long line of other expletives associated with it.

Wasn't going to have that. Wasn't gonna do it. I was like, I'd I've been get it trying to get stuff together to do the, to get the lawnmower up and running. Knowing that I the lawn has gotten way, way, way out of control. So, dogs had, chewed a the the pull string,

into 2. So now it was too short. I couldn't grab a hold of it. I'm gonna have to be taking it up, but off, and all that stuff, and that was just I'm not gonna mess. Didn't wanna mess that. Wanna put a new one on, so I was gonna get that all taken care of.

Didn't couldn't find the right size socket on that, so I had just go ended up getting a getting a a metric system, set of sockets that I could actually get in there to remove the the, the starter or the cover on the top of the engine so I could get to the the winder, so I could actually attach a new pull cord and all this. And I'm just I was amassing stuff slowly and not as fast as I would like. And then on top of that, for the past

2 weeks, this is going on week 3, My car has been dead. And it not just dead. It's been dead, dead, dead because, apparently, we had developed a leak behind the turbo, which I didn't even know my car had a turbo, which is a bit which is the wild part because I never hear you I'm used to hearing turbo spinning up the nothing there. So I was like, alright. Well, we found the leak. Been put messing with this farting with this leak for way too damn long.

And finally, it's like, alright. Let's get it done. Let's get the leak fixed, because, well, we can't drive it. So might as well go in and get it fixed. So now I've had a couple weeks where I've had not had a working car, and it is a bit of a pain in the butt having to drive a use my semitruck to go grab my my groceries and get a couple in town errands run and stuff like that. And being able to go over to Ace and Atwoods and

and Dollar General and any other place that I need to go, it's kind of a pain in the ass because, I mean, you got this oversized truck and you can't or not oh, well, it's not oversized. It's a normal sized semi truck. But for parking in in parking lots, you can't just park because there is a little bit of weight to them. A little more than your typical, Humpty. That's about the biggest thing I could think of, heaviest thing I could think of that might, equate closely

in some distant manner. So it it wait. It's a hefty hefty machine. So I have to logistics, all that. Alright. So this week, my wife called me up and goes, you better get the damn good lawn mowed because and told me price did my did my spiel of of bullcrap, all that, and spun out on into victim mindset, trying to

come up with as many different things, being as petty as I could. It's like, what can I do? If they wanted a $400, would I get it? Would I do the 4 $100 in pennies deal just as big f u or get $400 in ones and walk up to, walk up to the the the lady at the deal and throwing at her and and talking to one of the guys, there, and he's like, well, it's he was trying I guess he was trying to calm trying to paper over or whatever. But, anyway, he's like, well, it's not it really doesn't bother us

whether your lawn is mowed or not. It's just everybody else in town's talking about it. I was like, who cares? And this is what got me thinking about 1, the victim mindset. I was deep into the victim mindset. How dare you? I've been driven. No. Actually, I haven't. I haven't been trying all that hard to get a a replacement lawn mowing person. 2nd of all, I know that I have I am as I've mentioned, a couple places, I've gotten way overweight because of quitting smoking,

and it's time for me to start moving some. Instead of just sitting around, working on on what, on anything that I can sit still on, stop that. Let's get to actually improving my health. Start working on the body pillar. And because of that, it's actually a good thing that all this has happened because I've had to work. Yesterday, we had almost 100 degree weather. Today, thankfully, it got a lot cooler. I but we had a lot of rain also.

So I'm not able to actually still mow because of my backyard actually has still a lot of grass. It's just flipping thick. It's comes up to to my thighs or not thighs, my calves. Sorry. Not that deep of of grass, but up to my calves, and it's it's some seriously thick grass. And so it's taking a lot just even if it was dry to take a lot a lot. But because it is wet and it clumps up so much more, trying to mow wet grass, If you know anything about mowing wet grass, it is a pain in the ass.

And it's you you move a half inch and it chokes down, and so you then you have to clear everything out, pull rip cord again, and go another half half foot, and all of a sudden, it chokes again. And there's so many different things you could try and do, and you're swinging this and swinging that and trying this and throwing fits and cussing and hollering and stomping and looking like the town full, but at the same time, it's got me working.

But at the time, I was just in this state of misery because I wanted to be the victim. I wanted to play the victim. I was not coming to any solution because how dare they? Don't they care that I'm trying to make something of myself? Don't they care that I am trying to make

try to get my family up to a better spot so I can make this house look better, because I know the house looks disastrous. I know I've got crap piled everywhere, every which way. I've got limbs and branches, trees that are overgrown too close to the house, and I'm I've got a lot of stuff wrong with the house. I get that.

But then I heard everybody else going off about how they thought it was unfair, which is really interesting because that is a set of people who have decided, I'm not following their prescribed belief. And so they they have decided, oh, well, why do I have to mow my lawn if he doesn't have to? Well, that's just it. That's the question. Why do you have to? Isn't because I'm not doing it. You don't have to actually mow your lawn.

The reason why you mow your lawn is because you've told yourself you have to mow the lawn. You've told yourself that you have to mow the go out there, mow the lawn, weed eat everything, trim it all. I don't care. Yeah. Does the yard look better now that I've mowed it? Yeah. Yeah. It looks nicer, and I feel better about it for myself.

I could give a rat's ass about what anybody else in that little sleepy town that I live in thinks of my yard as evidence to the state that it was in before I started mowing. And I'm still not happy with city manager because, I mean, that's no. It's it's a it's a a screwed up deal because, I mean, hell, the city manager is just

could easily tell people. It's like, build a bridge. Get over it. If you want your yard to look nice, make your yard look nice. Do it for yourself. But, I mean, he's not gonna do that, 1, because he's not a coach, and he doesn't think that way. But at the same time, it is interesting that I have a I I almost don't completely believe what was being said about what the house is, that it's not fair. I think that is just the

person at the city hall that was wanting to make saying that as a means of just come allowing having to escape the discomfort of, yeah. Well, we we we decided we wanted to make sure that our your lawn was lower. Because we've got this the what is it? The 100th anniversary of Route 66 being running through town coming up in, like, 2 years from now, maybe a year, 2 years from now. So we're starting to get a lot of traffic driving through this the town that I live in, and it's

it's not like there's anything really there. There's a couple of really old art deco style, filling stations. There's like a Phillips 66 that used to be a Phillips 66. There's not anything there. I don't the Cotton Bowl Motel, which has been bought out by somebody who turned it into just a house with a bunch of storage rooms. There's another, another hotel that was converted into a house with several storage rooms.

And it's just it's that's all that really is there. Yeah. They put a crap ton of work into into the, into the park for no one to really play with because we don't most people don't go to the park anymore. I'd go to the park from time to time to walk the dogs, and now I'm gonna I do it so that I walk. But, again, it's just a matter of what are your thoughts? What are you making somebody else's actions mean about you? What is that fact that

is somebody else's if you see somebody else's lawn, it's not mowed and you're going, well, I just god, that looks ugly. Well, okay. That's you having a thought, having a judgment about a lawn. Does it mean my yard is ugly? Possibly. But it also could be no. Maybe I'm just being green.

Maybe I'm just somebody who doesn't want to pollute the the, the air with a lawnmower, green or other or, battery powered electric or what because, no, it's you're still gonna have to utilize power someplace, so you're burning off, you know, the the coal, natural gas, or or nuclear, whatever the power source is, you're still having to even if it's wind or or solar, you're still just taking they're still taking that energy,

and you have to convert it. And and it takes time, causes me to have to work because I'm pushing the mower, which causes me to expel more carbon dioxide. So I'm growing grow my grass and my the weeds out in my yard so that they consume more carbon dioxide. Maybe that's why I do it. Now, honestly, no. I don't. I don't give a shit about that, but still,

there's, you know, I that's a line I could actually take. That's a path that I could be doing. Then maybe that's why I grew my my yard out. Out. That's be why do I that maybe why I don't care about mowing my lawn. But in all reality, I don't care about my lawn care mowing my lawn is because I don't care about mowing my lawn, plain and simple. It's a lawn. It says nothing about the people inside the house. If anything, it says that you have more time to just do, do random stuff.

Now there are things that need to be done to the house that I haven't. And that's because I've been spending more time. I had not been very intentional with my time. This is so this whole thing is actually a good, good experience. It's a good results that I has been produced all because somebody had by what's reported to me, someone had got butt hurt that I don't put as much effort into my yard as they put into theirs. So, hey, I got myself out. I'm mowing the lawn. Bingo. Bingo. Boingo.

Start doing I'll start turning Saturdays into workdays and turn Sundays into my, into my, into my my business day. Means I'll probably end up putting 12 hours into here instead of just 6 times 2. I'll just have to put get up, you know, get over here at 6 and work until until 6, and that'll be fine. That'll be good. I it's you know, what is this gonna look like? I don't know. I haven't really started

forming it. I've just started as I was mowing, contemplating the different ways that I could get back at city hall for making me have to sweat and push a lawn mower and and get dirty and all that. I mean, boo. Right? So all that all that did is it allowed me to first process, what am I actually angry about? What what is it that I'm actually getting angry about? And it's that I'm being forced to have to do something.

And, yeah, I mean, Dan, the city manager, he could is just as easily have just let it go, but he didn't, and that's fine. He's doing what he thinks is best. I'm doing what I think is best, and sometimes we don't sync up eye to eye. Some a lot of times we don't sing for with me and Dan. We don't sing up your eye to eye, and that is fine. It's not a end of the world situation. Even if they were to come out and mow the lawn and had charged me $400.

Okay. Well, I'd means I'd get my mowed lawn mowed once a year. If in all reality, it probably would save me money because, hell, I spend more on that day, you know, about to spend $200 every month mowing the lawn beforehand. So that tells me that now if they were due at $400 and I did it just once a year, I'd be a I'd I'd be even, you know, at the best, even, but more than likely, I would be saving money.

So, you know, I can look at this in so many different ways, and this is what's so fun about intentionally thinking your life through. What's pissing you off? Well, I got pissed off because I didn't wanna do this. Okay. So what's another way I could look at this? Hey. I'm losing. I'm I'm getting out there. I'm doing some physical exercise. I'm sweating.

I'm I'm not stink right now, I still I still stink because I got up this morning to finish off a little section of the yard that I knew I could get with that this is what, that, was easy while mowing, you know, while being wet. But now the rest of it, I just have to live set.

And so probably next week, I'll get out there. I'll finish the rest of that lawn, and then I'll go over the front part of the lawn again because, you know, hey. It needs to be done. And that's just that's that's how how things go. I have plans. I wanna do stuff. Other plans come along. They bump you out. I can get angry. I can get pissed off. And what it is, I'm just frustrated that I'm not able to do what I wanna do. I don't have the power

to I have well, I had the power. I could find somebody else. I could go ahead and use utilize the commercial landscaping company to come out, mow the lawn. It's not gonna really fix anything other than it'll cost me $200 probably to have him come have them come out and mow the lawn, clean the yard up, and all that other stuff. But if they were to take away all the all the trash and and extra crap and and stuff like that, I might be actually be up for spending $400, with them. But that's

down the road. Prod more while more than likely, what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna go through. I'm gonna dig a little hole, take the extra bits of wood that I have piled up and turn have myself a little little, little campfire in the backyard and, and and enjoy the day, enjoy the night, enjoy the coolness when the when ball keep creeps in. It is all up to you. You can be in victim mindset.

Is it going to help? I could be. I could fall into kid to dude Karen. I could and fall into his, that type of thought of thinking process, getting just as petty and walk around being angry at the world. It's not gonna fix anything. It's not gonna help me. I want to be able to go around in life and have a good time, have a smile on my face, have love for everybody.

And is that going to happen realistically all the time? No. Most of the time, I'm kinda walking around. Half the time, I'm pissed off at something, and the other half, I'm full of love. That's life. 5050, baby. It's a 5050 life. That as always, your life, my life, everyone's life. All you that have to do though is decide. Do you want to keep feeling pissed off? Do you want to keep being angry? Do you want to have

a better life? Do you wanna have a life that you're no longer striking out at your wife, not physically striking, but verbally striking out your lie wife because she said something that hurt your feelings? What if you could relax? What if you could become somebody who yeah. You're gonna get angry. You're gonna even stomp around. You may slam a door or 2. But in 30 minutes later, you've processed what's going on inside of you. You process the

irritation that's sitting inside of you. And instead of going off and drinking beer or take smoking some pot or looking at porn or just closing yourself off to the world and just playing video games, you actually step into the challenge. Step into the fact that you need to mow the lawn. You can do that. And, yes, I am a terrible homeowner. I I get this. I admit this a 100%. You can be the person society needs right now, or you can be a whiner.

You can sit around, bitch, moan, and groan. You can be what your wife and your kids need, or you can be an absentee dad. You could be an absentee husband. You're married in there in the name, but there's nothing else there. And then we want stand around and we wonder, well, what did you believe? Because you weren't putting gas in the tank. You weren't charging up the relationship. Well, what? Do I have to do everything? Yeah. Actually, you do.

You have to do everything that you need to be doing, and you can. If you want help doing this, I have a 3 month program right now for $300. That is 90% off of the full package whenever we get that whenever I decide to start introducing that. It's 95% off. That is $300 for 3 months each week. You and me, we will talk it out. Find out. Come up with strategies that you can use to help bring out that alluring, sexy, beautiful bride that you know is still there in that house.

Bring her bringing her out so that all of a sudden, instead of being locked up in the bedroom, she comes up from time to time, sits down, watches a movie with you. You can do that. If you want to be able to do that, you can go to relax mail.comforward/lubberts, or you can go to the go to the show notes for this, this episode. And down at the bottom is a button. Click that, and you will be you'll be taken to the sales page, and you can you can then, schedule a

a consult call, and we'll sit down. We'll talk about that, see what it is you're wanting to accomplish, and I can see if you're somebody who wants to be really wants to be coached or if you're just wanting to go through the act. I think most guys want to learn how to actually get better at their relationship. But to be able to do that, a lot of times, they have to get a little bump in the butt. Be told that they're gonna be charged $400 to have their lawn mowed.

That was the kick in the kick in the pants I needed. Maybe that's kick in the pants you need. And if anything on this episode resonated with you, sounded like just, oh my gosh. Yeah. That's what I I've been in the same predicament, or you know somebody who's been in that who is in that predicament right now, take share this episode with them. Every all podcast apps these days have a share button. Hit that share button. Share it out on the Facebook and Twitter.

Share it on the Instagram and threads and Mastodon and and StoryFire and all the other places that you might be at. And let those guys in your life know there's this place called the Relax Mail. It is a place that is changing men's lives, helping their relationships become better and stronger. If you wanna know, have from time to time and I'm gonna be starting to go live with this.

And if you wanna be able to listen to the, to the podcast live, it's being recorded, which will get all the oopsies and the uhs and the and the and mess ups and and little side tangents that I end up cutting out. All that will end up being in the live episode, and you can get that by getting a podcasting 2.0 app. And you can do that by going to relax mail.comforward/newapps,

all one word. And there, you can choose a new podcasting app. You can actually start listening to see what is is going on, how and catch all the information just as it comes out. And then every Sunday or every, every Thursday, you will end up getting the that episode edited down, looking nice and pretty, polished up, sounding great. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Hope you have a great rest of the week,

and stay out of that victim mindset because it's not gonna help you. It's going to hurt you. It's gonna hold you back, keep you from having the the success that you actually want. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Till next time.