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CREATORS MINDSET

There are Victims in life, and there are Creators. The Victim is the passive character, waiting for the waves of life to crash down upon them, beating them down and wearing them away. The Creator is the active character who, given the same lot as the Victim, will fight against the waves so that they may stand up and move to higher ground. In short, the Creator is in control of their life. The Victim allows themselves to be controlled by their life. Creators are the ones who are ultimately successful, Victims are not (Downing).

 

A post by David Mirman on his blog “You are the Prime Mover” further explains the difference between so-called Victim and Creator mentalities. He uses the story of two students who are unable to acquire copies of their textbooks for their class. The Victim student never acquired her book, citing the bookstore running out of books, and absolved herself of responsibility by declaring “It’s not my fault.” The Creator student called other college bookstores in the area to locate a copy of the textbook for sale and when none is available, she purchases an older edition online. The Victim is explained as having the mindset of things happening to them, of misfortunate events happening to them, with nary a reprieve or solution in sight. In comparison, the Creator is explained as a more active archetype, seeking out a solution to the challenges around her. The Creator is active, a problem-solver, someone who seeks alternative solutions (Mirman).

 

Every day I live my life as a Victim. It’s a horrible habit that probably is rooted in some armchair psychology involving unmanaged anxiety and fear of failure, and one that I would lie and say that I’m working on – but really it’s just so much easier to stand still and let the world move around you. Back in the spring semester, I had a class that had everything go wrong that could go wrong. The brand-new textbook was functionally useless, as the program it was teaching had been substantially updated just a few weeks before the beginning of the class. A major view setting had been removed. Menus were not the same, and worst of all, every time I tried to roll back to the previous version of the program, it would auto-update to the new one. The professor could not adequately or clearly explain his expectations for formatting. I gave up. No matter how long I worked, I was always two to three weeks behind the syllabus. Nothing I did was right. I had other classes that weren’t fruitless endeavors, that I actually felt good about my progress in. I turned my attention to those classes instead. I got an F in that other class. It wasn’t my fault that I failed. I lie to myself too much.

 

Despite my own shortcomings, I have many friends in my lives whom I regard as Creators, and consequently look up to as role models. There is Viva, who, for a time, subsisted on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from a coworker because she was so poor (despite working at a hospital laboratory) and yet always managed to make ends meet just enough for her horse Rayna to eat. Viva now has a better job, after a position finally opened up. There is Cass, who has a nigh-militant work ethic. She single-handedly started a rape awareness and support campaign on her college campus after very quickly becoming dissatisfied with the limited resources available to her female classmates, especially amid concerns about the fervent “party culture” at that school. Cass is also not a privileged woman. She comes from a village in upstate New York, and worked three jobs during high school (as well as being on the drum line) in order to save up for college and help out her family. She works three more jobs at college. Cass is indomitable. She throws herself head first into her work in order to quell her anxieties about failure. Cass is a Creator who makes miracles appear out of thin air, though it’s really all networking and good work. I want to be like her.

 

This semester, I’ve already made small steps toward becoming a Creator. This week, I will report to the library for training in becoming a peer tutor for web design and business math. It’s not much, but it’s definitely something that I can feel good about. I have additional goals – I’ve been getting into a slump with my grades, so I’m aiming to get all Bs and Cs this semester instead of failing another class. My biggest obstacle is procrastination, which means I must forcefully work on self-discipline and schedule time to do my homework instead of waiting until the last minute and panicking all through the night. I have no excuse to fail, I’m taking multiple 100-level classes and I’ve already been in college for a few years. I know how to study and I know what I need to do, I simply must remove distractions and actually get to work.

Works Cited

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