A central idea in Stoic philosophy is to focus on what you can influence and disregard what you can’t. This is your locus of control, to use a more modern term. If there’s something in your life you don’t like, determine if you can do something about it. If it’s out of your control, there’s no point worrying about it. If it is within your control, you have the power to change it. Essentially, it’s an argument against complaining about your life. If you can’t change something, what’s the point in complaining? If you can change it, stop complaining and change it. Once you determine what’s within your control, endless possibilities open up and you can make great strides in self improvement.
For example, if you don’t like your boss, you won’t be able to change them, but you can look for a different job. One thing isn’t within your control (your boss), while another is (finding another job). Another example would be the fact that you can’t make any one person attracted to you, you can’t make someone love you; but you can make yourself more generally attractive.
If you find yourself blaming the world for your problems, take a moment and think of any way you might be able to make it a little better. If you’re overweight, you could blame the food industry for pumping out cheap, hyper-palatable foods that are very easy to buy and eat. You could blame restaurants for making their portions too big. You could blame your parents for not teaching you proper nutrition when you were growing up, or allowing you to watch TV and play video-games instead of encouraging you to play outside. These things could all be blamed for your overweight problem and the thing is, they could truly be factors for you being overweight. None of those things are your fault.
It might not be your fault for where you initially end up, but it’s your fault for staying there.
You could play the victim and lament about fast food, junk food, soda, and how they’re engineering these things to be addictive. You can stay angry at your parents for not teaching you about food and getting you hooked on junk and a sedentary lifestyle. But that doesn’t solve your problem. None of those things were within your control; what’s within your control is choosing what to eat, how much exercise you get, and what food you keep around. It’s within your locus of control to change your lifestyle.
In a sense, everyone’s a victim of their initial circumstances. Generally, everyone has had something horrible they’ve had to go through in one form or another. Everyone has been a victim.
But there’s only one question you have to answer: are you going to stay a victim, or are you going to make your life better?