It’s hard to admit that you may be a victim especially when you work so hard at doing the right things and being a good person. Do you let everyone go first, have the last piece of desert, or give up your own comfort for someone else’s?  If you answered yes chances are you are a victim.   Victims spend their lives assuring the success of others without ever considering their own.  It comes as no surprise that victims are often surrounded by successful people, many of whom they have helped create.  So you see, we do have a purpose, but we also have a responsibility to become all that we can ourselves.  We can’t live out our hopes and dreams on the coattails of those we have been in relationships with. We accept only the best from those we love, we encourage them, we go the extra mile, we make them believe in themselves because we can’t believe in ourselves.  We watch them excel and grow to greatness and then close our eyes and feel it as our own.  For this reason we never reach our own potential.  Our hearts are so invested in those we love that we fall victim.  Having given everything we have to another, it often leaves little for ourselves.   We look for new projects, new souls to help, new people to inspire, because this is who we are.  Our lives seem to be going along just fine until someone says the words, “ Your acting like a victim,”  and suddenly the walls come crashing down.  We feel unappreciated, judged, and yes, victimized.  We are flooded with thoughts of, “Oh what I could have been if I weren’t doing this or that.”  Suddenly it dawned on me that being a victim comes from the feeling of a lack of appreciation from our self sacrifice.  The recognition of this felt like a thick heavy cloud descending on me.  This is how I justified not being a success on my own, by using other people’s successes as a means to hide from myself.   When I look into the eyes of those I have helped I can see the belief in themselves and if I look even deeper I know some of that belief belongs to me.  If only I could have taken some of that belief, some of that will, and given it back to myself, what might have I become?  Don’t I owe it to myself to find out?  Could I look for my own strengths and talents in the same way that I looked for them in the people I loved in my life?  Could I love myself as much as I loved all those I was in relationship with?   What it all boils down to is giving yourself at least as much as you are willing to give to others.  If you aren’t doing that in the end you will feel empty and incomplete.  Finally, you realize you can only live off the highs of others for just so long before you need to sustain your own success and happiness.