#45 - Overcoming "Victim Mentality" on the Journey to Realtime Success

0:01 Hello. So I'm trying something new. I am currently standing in a phone booth at the courthouse. I came early so that I could record this episode. It's a little difficult to find time when I'm working in the court and commuting almost two hours every day each way. So life's a journey. Right Like I was talking about in episode 43, in family court, I have my own private office. Right Like I was talking about in episode 43, in family court, I have my own private office. But in Supreme Court we don't really have anywhere that we can gather or that we can take a break or make a phone call. It's kind of like we're all sharing this big office space and we just you know it's very different. So we've been kind of searching the building for anywhere that we can turn into a break room or turn into a room where we can get a little bit of privacy to make a phone call, and finally we just found one recently.

0:48 So there is a little bit of an echo and there's a radiator making a lot of noise. So hopefully this works, but we're going to try and see how it turns out. So before we get into today's topic of overcoming the victim mentality, I want to thank the anonymous listener from Minneapolis, minnesota, who submitted some extra questions to add on to episode 44, which was entitled what Questions to Ask Potential Employers. So for anyone who doesn't know, the podcast has a new feature. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, you should see a button that says send us a text message, which allows you to send your feedback, questions, inspiration and to just easily send a message while you're listening. I'm not seeing a way for me to actually write back, so I will just respond via this episode until I can figure that out.

1:31 Okay, so this listener from Minnesota utilized that feature and texted these excellent additions that I'm absolutely going to add to my NCRA speech. So I don't know who he or she is because it remained anonymous, but if you want to send me a message with your name, I'd love to give you some credit for helping out. So here it is Thoughts about this topic. I'm only halfway through the podcast episode, so maybe you'll cover some of these. Who does production and billing? Do they offer mentorship for new reporters and for how long, and what does it cover? Will they proofread for the first couple of months? What's freed for the first couple of months? What's their preferred communication style? Who do you contact when there's an issue on the job? Believe it or not, I had a firm that I did all production and billing and then had to pay a percentage to them.

2:13 They also wanted me to be available only to them, but they offered no benefits for that. Okay, so that was the the comment, and I did touch on some of those, but there were a couple points that are good points that I did not mention. So, when it comes to communication, what's your communication style and who to contact if there's an issue those are really good questions. That's really important, so I'm definitely adding that. So thank you so much for your input. Another update I want to share is that I just launched a new Instagram page dedicated to showcasing courtroom slash courthouse fashion. I was just on a jury trial a couple weeks ago and the attorneys were really kind, really nice, really cool. Carrie London and Kyle Newman were their names.

2:56 So I learned a lot from that jury trial and I will probably be doing a couple podcast episodes with them in the near future. Carrie London told me that I should start a courtroom fashion Instagram or blog and I took that to heart. It felt like the right thing to do. It really aligned with my values, especially when I consider that it's an opportunity for me to promote something that's important to me, which is sustainability, and I know that the fashion industry does have a large environmental footprint. It does add a lot of issues to the earth's growing environmental concerns. So I want to use this as an opportunity to raise awareness about that, promote sustainability and, at the same time, showcase really cute outfits that you can wear in court. I love working in court because the atmosphere and the environment is very like.

3:39 The fact that you're in a courtroom is kind of like palace style or princess style, like I like to dress like a princess, so I have some cute outfits. And I know in episode five I talked about episode five is called two ways to declutter your brain and in that episode I talked about kind of routinizing your life, where things like getting dressed in the morning or eating can kind of become a routine and you can create your own uniform, so to speak, where you just kind of switch up one thing and keep everything else the same for the most part, to make it a very simple, mindless thing that you just do automatically without having to put so much thought, time, efforts and energy into it. Now you can adopt your own style into that, and that's exactly what I do, and I get a lot of compliments and a lot of people ask me questions about fashion, and so I just felt like this is a really good thing to do so.

4:29 If you want to follow it on Instagram, it is at sustainable courtroom fashion. I know it's kind of a long handle, but it's just those three words no underscores, no spaces, just sustainable courtroom fashion. Alright, so let's get into the topic for today. After a recent jury trial not the one that I was just talking about with Carrie London and Kyle Newman, a different jury trial that I had more than a month ago maybe two months ago, almost at this point. During that jury trial, my real time was very clean and I talked on a video on TikTok about how I was so proud of the way I was writing and how clean it is, especially because, like, the jury was sitting right behind me and they could have easily seen my screen, so it was like exhilarating and exciting to think that they might be watching my screen and that really fueled that fire inside my bones of I should be doing real time, I should be providing real time to clients and getting paid for it.

5:19 Why am I not doing that? So it really got me thinking about what the heck is holding me back, like why have I not allowed, why have I allowed such small obstacles like discomfort and fear to get in my way? It's not something you can just fix overnight. It's not the type of thing where you can have someone just tell you what to do. I can't tell you how many times people have told me what to do. I've talked about this multiple times where I would ask my mentors that do real time like Joshua Edwards or anyone who's regularly providing real time. I would ask them like, how did you do it? How did you get into it? And it was. It's always just like yeah, you just do it. Like, but I just don't understand. Like how, what do you mean? You just do it. Obviously, there has to be some motivation to do it.

6:00 There has to be some preparation involved. Someone has to want it, someone has to request some preparation involved. Someone has to want it, someone has to request it, and then someone has to push you to actually do it. Well, okay, this is. These thoughts might be flawed. I am going to dive deep into why I am not doing real time and what victim mentality is and how I realized that that is what one big of like one of the big reasons that's holding me back on my way back home, on my commute from that jury trial. One day I asked myself. I decided let me just do a coaching session with myself while I'm driving. I'm just going to talk to myself, talk through these issues and figure out what the root is. Because without getting to the root, no matter how much people tell me exactly what to do, they could give me a list of step-by-step instructions on exactly what to do, but without getting to the root of what's really going on, I'm not going to end up doing it.

6:51 And that's what. Exactly what has happened for all these years? People have given me a list or instructions or guidelines, but I didn't. There's no way to follow. There's no way to do it. It's like as if those instructions are sealed for me. Why? Because there's something deeper that's blocking me from actually achieving this. So what is that? We're going to explore this. So, after I did that coaching session, the conclusion that I came to was that I was stuck in victim mentality. So what exactly is victim mentality Number one external attribution of problems. One key aspect of feeling victimized is attributing your problems solely to external forces, basically believing that someone else, like a person, a system, an organization or a circumstance is responsible for the difficulties you're facing, which leads to a sense of powerlessness, because it suggests that you have very little control over your situation and it's all these other people's fault.

7:52 And then that causes you to blame other people. Not engaging in self-reflection or introspection which would lead to the solution, but just constantly blaming without considering my own role, can perpetuate a victim mindset and cause you to not take responsibility. And then also self-pity when you feel sorry for yourself, you tend to dwell on the unfairness of the situation, which creates very negative emotions like frustration, anger, bitterness, resentment and self-pity I guess is another ism and emotion itself. These emotions create a sense of being stuck or trapped in your situation and completely powerless to do anything about it yourself. Some ways to combat this, like after I got to the bottom of this and realized that this is what's happening.

8:39 I had no idea, because I generally don't consciously think these thoughts and blame other people. And like delegate my responsibility and my power to external factors. But sometimes our thoughts are hidden. Sometimes, when we let our brain run on default without cleaning it out, without doing thought downloads and getting to the root of the problems and like just gaining awareness on what's actually going on in there, these thoughts can be running on default without us knowing, holding us back from reaching our goals. So I decided I have to take full responsibility. No one is going to do it for me. That's up to me.

9:19 If I want to make something happen, I'm the one that has to make it happen. So that leads to being proactive, to finding solutions and taking action. Instead of asking why, I started asking myself how. So, for example, I noticed during my coaching session that a lot of my thoughts stemmed from questions where I was asking why? Why is this happening to me? Why am I not doing real time? Why hasn't anyone guided me? Why hasn't anyone pushed me to do it? Why hasn't anyone requested it? Like things like that. Where you're when you ask yourself why questions, you're feeding your brain. You're putting your brain to work to look for the evidence as to why you're not reaching your goals, which further deepens that pathway and belief that you can't accomplish your goal because your brain is going to work to find evidence to support that belief.

10:14 So, by reframing our questions, instead of asking why, instead of saying why am I still not doing real time, I could try how can I take that first step towards providing real time? So, instead of why am I not doing real time? How can I start doing real time? Very simple switch just from why to how this can completely change your trajectory and your results and get you on a better path. This is what I'm doing right now. These why questions. I had so many of them as soon as I asked myself what's going on. Just let it out, let it all out. It's supposed to be a thought download, meaning every thought that's in my mind about this specific topic is supposed to just come out and let it flow freely, and from that I can gain the awareness that I need to fix the problem.

11:00 But instead of thoughts, it would come out in the form of these why questions why are you not providing real time by now? Which translates as a thought of you should be providing real time by now, like, come on, like what's wrong with you. And then why hasn't anyone given me the opportunity, which translates to someone else was responsible to make this happen. And then why hasn't anyone trained or shown me the ropes? Translates to someone. Was supposed to hold my hand, someone was supposed to do it for me. I'm not responsible. And then why hasn't anyone mentored or encouraged me, pushed me to do it Same thing? This is not my responsibility to learn and figure this out. It's not my fault. So all these thoughts are literally taking my power away and giving it to these other people that I'm claiming should be the ones that have guided me to do this.

11:46 So circumstance is that I have been a real-time reporter for nine years but have never been paid for real-time, never provided real-time to clients, and that bothers me. My thought about it was someone is supposed to make this happen for me. It's not my responsibility. The feeling associated with that is powerless. Another emotion that I was thinking of using was frustration Definitely feeling frustrated. So frustration, as it relates to victim mentality, is basically thinking that things are not going my way, despite my efforts, which caused me to believe that external factors are consistently working against me, no matter what I do or how hard I try. I came up with so much evidence that made me believe that I tried too hard and spent too much money to get no results, so it's not my fault.

12:32 For example, I was thinking, okay, maybe stenograph number one, because they took my money for a case view net. I'm going to pause for a second to talk about how much it costs to be a court reporter and to maintain our professional certifications, and just everything about being a court reporter and to maintain our professional certifications and just everything about being a court reporter, maintaining our equipment, having equipment and software support. It's pretty expensive, but that's a thought that I have to get used to and I have to adopt that as, like you know, think about it in a positive way. Yes, it's expensive, but it's worth it. When I pay those, those dues, I become more expensive too. I up level the way I'm thinking. I up level my skills. I up level my abilities to provide exceptional quality service to clients.

13:16 So when I say that I came up with a lot of evidence on how much effort and money I spent trying to up level myself, yes, that includes money, investing money, okay. So, for example, thinking stenograph took my money for CaseviewNet, they didn't even help me to actually use it, so that whole year went by, wasted that money just went down the drain. And then thinking NCRA is to blame too, because I paid a lot of money to be a member and to take tests that I didn't pass. Well, I took the written knowledge portion of the RPR, didn't pass it, remained a member for a couple of years but I felt like I'm not really getting much out of it. I don't know why I'm a member, like what are the benefits? I felt like I wasted money on that and then I stopped being a member. And then I even tried being a member of Star, investing in a full price, year long membership, and even traveled by myself on a plane to attend their convention.

14:02 That's how dedicated I was or I thought I was, that I was willing to buy plane tickets, get a hotel, get on the plane by myself and attend these workshops and try to, even as an introvert. I am an introvert, but I was willing to put myself out there and meet people and try my best to learn something. But looking back on it, I didn't really make a single good connection that impacted my career in a positive way. So that's another couple thousand dollars down the drain. And then I tried Learn to Caption the very day I learned about this program, which I didn't know existed. But when I found out it existed, I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I've been looking for. This is the guidance that I need. This is the person that's gonna like, hold my hand and bring me to the result that I've been looking for for years.

14:43 Immediately, I thought this was the solution, and I got on a call with her. She convinced me this is the solution too, and I was like what, why haven't I heard of this? This is exactly what I needed. So I invested another few thousand dollars into that. I was like this is going to be worth it, because this is going to finally be the solution. I even got dictionary, jumpstart, everything, every add-on that I could get, because I wanted to go all out and I believed this was really going to be the time I would commit. I would make it happen. Well, to make a long story short, I wasn't even able to complete the program. The owner refused to give me extra time when I couldn't keep up with the classes and homework, and she even refused to give a refund, even a partial refund.

15:23 So that's another few thousand dollars down the drain and then, like my real-time coach, I don't know, it was just like boring. I don't understand what I'm supposed to do. I have to put together a program because they have like a bunch of practice dictations in there. But how do I? I need like a structured program with day one, day two, day three. That's what I was looking for. If I leave it up to myself to piece that together and to kind of structure something for myself, I know for me, I know myself and I know that's just not gonna work. I need something, some kind of formula, like I was just telling mark kisslingberry that I really need like some kind of formula Like someone to say okay, if you do xyz, if you do this, then you will Get, you will pass your test.

16:08 Okay, so I invested so much time, money and effort into all these different avenues, only to encounter more roadblocks and disappointments and failures. When I take a step back and look at all this, look at all these thoughts, I see that I'm really putting the blame on all these external factors, giving them all my power and taking it away from myself. Most of this frustration stems from all this evidence that I've gathered about the time, money and trust I invested in these various sources, expecting something in return. So, to recap, when I feel frustrated because I'm thinking that this isn't my responsibility. If I don't believe that it's my responsibility, then guess what? I'm not going to make it my responsibility.

16:48 I'm not going to take the steps to actually solve the problem. All I do is waste money, spin around in circles, blaming other people, having a pity party, indulging in confusion and overwhelm, asking questions on Facebook, complaining in my mind, begging people for help, since I have this belief that everyone else has the answers except me, and I'm just not capable of it, no matter what, no matter how much I try or how much money I spend. So the result is that I victimize myself, take away all my power, give it to other people, and that I have this victim mentality that's keeping me stuck. So this whole thing is a huge problem. In order to solve this problem, I had to get to the root, which now I have done successfully.

17:30 What exactly is the root, which has been growing deeper and deeper for all these years? It's not the circumstance, it's not the action, it's not the lack of action, it's not the feeling or the result, but the root of the problem lies in that sneaky thought that has become such a deep pathway in my brain. It's become a belief, like a firm belief that now needs to be undone. And it doesn't just get done overnight. This whole coaching session was more than a month ago and since gaining this awareness, I have made more progress than I've ever made in my life. I've taken steps I've never taken before. For about seven years I've been kind of like on strike from NCRA membership, but I just finally became a member again.

18:15 Not only that, but I also registered for all three legs of the RPR. Since I'll be at the convention in Louisville, kentucky, as a speaker, I might as well take the test. So, since I've registered and invested in it and I've let go of the belief that it's their responsibility and have adopted these new beliefs and new thoughts or I'm in the process of adopting these new thoughts and beliefs that it is my responsibility and only I can make it happen, so I've taken it upon myself to search for the structured guidance that I believe I need in order to pass the test and hopefully, after all this, I'll be able to put something together for other people. But yeah, I met with Mark Kislingberry, who guided me to speak to Katiana Walton and Allie Hall, and Katiana has been such a lovely resource and Allie Hall.

19:03 I didn't directly reach out to her yet, but but I did purchase her 30 days to certification program and I even started practicing. Yeah, I do still have some thoughts that crossed my mind and I have to be careful to catch them. Like, oh, is this going to be the same as it always was? But no, no, it's not, because I've gotten farther than I've ever gotten before. I have never even registered or attempted to take the skills portion of the RPR test, which I don't know why not. I feel like that's the easiest part that I could have passed, because my real-time skills are great. Like I'm a good writer, but the written knowledge test just threw me out, threw me overboard and made me not even try.

19:45 So this is like. This is a big milestone. I've never even attended an NCRA convention and now I'm speaking at one, so I know that I'm a different person from the one who failed the written knowledge test right out of school. Only God knows what's going to happen. But I invite you all to join me in breaking free from victim mentality, finding where you've delegated your power and your responsibility to someone or something outside of yourself and take it back. Take responsibility, become empowered. Let's do this together here at the courthouse. We've started doing practice sessions together, which really makes a big difference. My practice, uh, the first day was eight days ago and now I'm on day two.

20:26 So one of the things that Allie says in the instructions of the course that I'm taking is she said we like. She said you have to start over if you miss a day. But come on, I know myself I'm gonna miss a day every week. I keep the sabbath day and that's my choice, and I'm not gonna bring my machine to church and be typing. I mean, maybe I could do that, but no, the point is that I believe in progress over perfection and if I miss a day, I don't want to beat myself up about it. I have to start over. In reality, if I say that I have to start over every time I miss a day, I'm never going to finish the program. So day two will come when I resume practicing. I'm just going to continue. Just keep going. Progress, not perfection. If you need some help finding out what's keeping you stuck on any goal you're trying to reach, feel free to book a free consultation by going to my new coaching website, which is wwwbrincimorecoachingcom, and we can chat about where you currently are, where you want to be, and we can explore together the endless possibilities for what you are capable of.

21:23 Hope this has been helpful and I look forward to seeing you next week, tuesday at 8 am. Take care.