MINDSET & RESILIENCEThe Hero Never Plays the Victim
The victim mentality is regressive. It reinforces the very structures it claims to want to dismantle. So how should you deal with the injustices you face? Be results-oriented. Look forward. Roll up your sleeves and fight. The victim dwells on what has been. The hero fights in the present and looks ahead.
Humanity has made an extraordinary journey thanks to science, technology, and entrepreneurship. But we have not seen the best of it yet. We are heading toward a future our ancestors could not have imagined. And the road there — as always — is not one that gets handed to you. It is something you fight for. And you can only do that if you refuse to be a victim and choose instead to become the hero of the story you are helping to write.
I have often thought about what the people who changed the world have in common. Above all, I think about the women who managed to break through societies built on norms designed to keep them out. And what becomes clear is that one thread runs through every one of their stories: the refusal to see themselves as victims. That thread leads me back to my own roots. To my homeland, Iran. To all the women and men who were tortured for their beliefs but who — when they survived — came out and kept fighting. They transformed their trauma into fuel. They refused the role of victim. I think of my childhood. Not once did I see the women who fought alongside my parents in the armed resistance against the regime call themselves victims. They had endured the worst imaginable torture, been raped, watched family members executed before their eyes — and they rose and continued, even more determined to bring the regime down. I remember them appearing with wide smiles and a fire in their eyes that lit the way forward.
Those of us in the free world are fortunate not to face brutalities like those in my homeland.
We are, broadly speaking, a product of our genes and our environment. But there is a third factor that is critically important and often overlooked: the individual's own mindset. We do not choose where we are born or into which family. We do not choose our genetic hand. Rich or poor? Man or woman? These are factors beyond our control. The only thing we truly control is our mindset. Yes, perhaps I — as a woman with a foreign background — have faced more discrimination than the blond Swedish man standing next to me. But so what? Should that define me as a victim? The victim role paralyzes. It diminishes. It weakens. That is why it holds no interest for me. I never want to be chosen because I am a woman or an immigrant — only on my merits. I believe that people who constantly highlight their gender or their foreign background — and the disadvantages it may bring — end up making themselves into victims and, in doing so, reinforce the very power structures they set out to dismantle.
Especially in a country like Sweden, where men and women are equal under the law — a country where, unlike Iran, there is no structural oppression to speak of — we should have moved beyond this. On the contrary, Sweden does everything it can to ensure that laws and regulations promote diversity. Of course racism and discrimination still exist — we are, after all, human beings running on a brain that has not been updated in over forty thousand years, a brain that relies on stereotypes and categorization to make sense of the world.
So how should you handle the injustices you encounter? That probably differs from person to person. But my experience says this: if you have to work twice as hard as a man to get as far, then work twice as hard. If you are both a woman and an immigrant, work three times as hard — or whatever it takes to get where you want to go. Beat them. Not by talking. By doing. Study, study, study. Acquire knowledge and power. Be results-oriented, look forward, roll up your sleeves, and fight. The victim focuses on what has been. The hero fights the battle in the present and looks ahead. And when she looks back, it is only to use history as fuel — a source of energy, not an excuse. She refuses to be defined by her disadvantages. The hero never wraps herself in victimhood. Be the hero of your own story.
