How to overcome victim mentality?
The answer is ownership.
Early in my time at Echelon Front, I was at an event with Jocko. During the Q&A session, a man stood up. His face was heavy with emotion. His voice was tense, not with anger, but with something deeper. Desperation.
“You talk about taking ownership,” he said. “My daughter was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. How do I take ownership of that?”
His question wasn’t argumentative. It wasn’t a challenge. It was raw. It was honest. It was a man pleading for a framework, any framework, to help make sense of something that made no sense at all. He wasn’t just asking how to take ownership. He was searching for how to get out of a victim mentality when life deals you the worst imaginable hand.
I remember the feeling in my stomach. That aching uncertainty of not knowing how Jocko would respond. Not because I didn’t believe in what we teach, but because this situation felt so far outside the realm of what leadership principles could touch. It was a parent staring down the unimaginable.
Jocko paused.
The room was silent.
And then he answered, slowly and with a deep sense of compassion.
“You can’t take ownership of that.”
Another pause. A long one.
I was surprised. In fact, I was shocked. I had never heard him say that. Never heard him reach a line that ownership didn’t cross.
But then, after a moment of reflection, he continued.
“You can’t take ownership of that. But you can take ownership of how you respond. You can take ownership of how you care for her. You can take ownership of the hard lessons this will bring and the gratitude you will develop for the time you have with her. You can take ownership of your attitude, of your emotions, of how you show up for her every day. And if the unthinkable happens, you can take ownership of how you keep her memory alive, how you live in a way that honors her. No parent should ever have to go through this. But even in the midst of tragedy, there are still things you can own.”
That moment redefined what I thought ownership meant.
I had always associated it with action…decisions, leadership, performance. But here, it was something deeper. It was about reclaiming agency in a situation where almost everything feels out of your control. If you have begun to wonder how to overcome victim mentality, this is a turning point in the right direction.
Because the truth is, bad things happen all the time. We get hurt. People betray us. Jobs are lost. Health fails. Tragedy strikes. There are things that will happen to you in life that are not your fault. You are the victim.
But staying in that victim state is a CHOICE.
That’s where ownership comes in. It doesn’t erase pain or hardship. It doesn’t let others off the hook for wrongdoing. But it does allow you to take back control over what happens next. That’s how to stop victim mentality without denying your reality, but by choosing your response.
Victim mentality says, “This happened to me. I’m stuck.”
Ownership says, “This happened to me. Now what am I going to do about it?”
And that shift, that one shift, is what changes everything. It turns pain into purpose. Chaos into clarity. Darkness into forward motion.
There are many barriers to ownership. Ego. Fear. Emotion. Blame. All of them scream for our attention. All of them want us to stay stuck in the story of what happened to us. But when we step beyond that, when we choose to own our response, our attitude, our actions, we get to determine the outcome.
Ownership is not just a leadership tool. It is a life tool. It gives us power in even the hardest situations.
So if you’re in a dark place right now, ask yourself: What can I own?
It might not be what happened. But it can be what happens next.
And ownership, in itself, is how to get out of victim mentality. For good.
