STOP TAKING THINGS PERSONALLY
When we experience a less than positive exchange with someone or a negative situation in our life, we tend to immerse ourselves in the experience.
We often find it hard to put the conversation in the past or look at what happened with an objective eye. Instead, we take the exchange very personally.
How could we not? It happened to us, right? Yes, but I’m sure you know people – maybe even yourself – who are still suffering over something that happened to them or that someone did to them weeks, months or even years ago.
It’s natural to feel disappointed, we must move out of it by separating it from ourselves.
We often find ourselves unable to move onto a solution because we can’t get over what happened. To gain perspective when something bad happens, it is necessary to detach from it, to make the effort to observe the situation objectively.
In order to step outside of an event and observe it, you need to increase your self-awareness so that you can catch yourself before you get swept up in and obsessed by the drama of what’s going on.
This means, for instance, stopping yourself before you react to a personal attack or an unwanted reaction or circumstance.
For some people, this can be a tall order – but if you can separate, you’ll be able to avoid letting the situation get the best of you. You’ll be able to form an appropriate response, one that allows you to stretch and become the mature person you want to be in the situation instead of a person who reacts unthinkingly, from primal instinct.
The minute you enter the ‘dangerzone’ with someone and you feel a strong reaction coming on, you need to develop a shield to deflect the bad attitude or harmful words coming at you. You don’t want the situation at hand to push your buttons, so the important thing to do is to get this person out of your space gracefully and without contempt.
The secret to being able to develop that shield and not react negatively is to realise that people come from the limit of their own growth and experience. When you accept that their attack on you is really about them and not you, perhaps you can forgive them, accept them and move on. Granted, this may be easier said than done, but when you do it, you maintain the freedom to keep your life moving forward, towards your best life.
Even when you face a tragic circumstance – the loss of a job or a loved one, or the diagnosis of a severe illness – it is not personal.
You were not branded for hard time.
Feel the pain, experience the disappointment, and try to shift yourself to a mind-set of learning all you can from the situation, instead of surrendering to victimhood.
This is the only way forward.
No one wants these things to happen, but even major disappointments hold the potential to tum our heads in the direction of the blueprint for our best life.
Remember David, our young team leader from the last chapter?
I mentioned he had a nemesis at work, someone who just drove him crazy?
David complained to me that this colleague was undermining him, rushing to be the first one to share ideas with management so David would look ineffective in comparison.
David was interpreting this man’s actions in a way that made them very personal, as if the co-worker was acting not out of his own self-interest, but out of a desire to hurt David.
So, when David and I looked at this situation together, we discovered that certain buttons of his kept getting pushed.
His own insecurities and feelings of not being good enough (that limiting belief and a very real fear) came up every time.
David finally realised that his ‘foe’ was not doing anything to him but rather he was doing it to himself. Once he saw this, David was able to ‘unhook’ by not taking it personally.
He could avoid letting his emotions get the best of him.
David even noticed that there were things he could learn from his ‘foe’, who possessed a level of confidence that David wanted to emulate and yet was the kind of manager that David did not want to be.
In fact, instead of feeling in competition with this man, David began to recognise his own unique strengths, many of which were quite different from those of his colleague.
David stopped trying to match his colleague as the ‘ideas man’ and focused instead on becoming a facilitator for his peers. He bagan to sit back at meetings instead of looking for the place to jump in with a brilliant new concept.
Instead, he was brilliant at helping people hear one another, and he was a master at encouraging his team to express their ideas clearly.
David became the kind of manager and leader he wanted to be.
David’s ability to not take his colleague’s actions personally freed him to use his natural talents and be more useful to his company. David got over himself and his brilliance and wisdom were able to shine through.
Not taking things personally is a lesson I have learned vividly throughout the course of my entire life. Doing so has been something I have had to really focus on letting go and replacing with more resourceful strategies.
It seems that this way of life; feeling as if though things were always my fault, had followed me around for most of my life, it was all too familiar.
It would leave me feeling trampled.
Most of the time I would walk around feeling annoyed, swearing under my breath. Smiling on the outside, yet feeling torn and ripped on the inside.
Every person who got in my way as I was at my best running this strategy was to by punished by the intensity of my gaze and the thoughts that followed. Whilst I would often project to the world that it was everyone else’s problem, deep down I always felt like things were my fault.
It definitely used to bring up feelings of resentment, the more often I ran it.
Then one day, it most certainly just seem to come from out of the blue despite the work, and suddenly I noticed that it was a beautiful sunny day.
It was like the sea had parted and started to let me through. I thought back at all the times where I was carrying around this chip on my shoulder and feeling’s of aggravation I was previously living with.
What was different?
What had changed?
There was only one simple answer that my wisdom could acknowledge.
I had.
This day, although I can’t remember it’s exact and precise date, will be a moment in time I will always remember, I remember where I was, I remember what I was doing and I remember feeling in a happy mood, as if I was emanating a positive energy that glowed at least three metres ahead of me.
That glow now lives within me and radiates out to the world every single day, only this time it is real, how I feel on the inside now matches what I am exuding on the outside.
The times where I felt like I was fighting my way through my every day and feeling just as angry towards everyone else around me has now gone. The sea has parted for me and I am more excepting of those around me, and more importantly myself.
I feel no longer to blame for everything.
I no longer take things personally.
Ease and flow has stepped in and become my every day way of life.
I am so grateful that this day came and for the work that I did to release my own personal attacks on myself.
Releasing being the blame for everything has been a huge catalyst towards the change I now experience and encounter in my everyday life.
Getting over yourself is something I highly recommend to all of you.
Download & complete the LYBL through writing activity in the next activity and watch the video training so you can Release and get out of your own way!
