Don't Take Anything Personally: The Second of The Four Agreements
Blooming Blog Series
“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.”
In last week’s blog, we explored The First Agreement - Be Impeccable with Your Word. This week, we are working on the 2nd Agreement - “Don’t Take Anything Personally.” I remember reading this agreement and thinking - “I’m not sure how this can be accomplished.” Our lives are an interwoven world of people and ideas, aren’t some of them about us?
Yes and No.
People may say or do something towards you - yell at you, talk to you, give you a hard time about something. And it usually would be hard not to take it personally - it’s coming at you!
Let’s think about it through. We all operate off our filters - things we’ve experienced, good or bad, ideas from the past, ideas we’ve been fed by family, friends and tv. Those filters, whether we know it or not, cause the reactions.
So if someone is upset at you, it’s coming at you through THEIR filter. Notice how some people can get upset at one thing and someone else lets it go? It depends on the filter and the lens. We think we are in someone’s head and world and know exactly what they are thinking or what they’ve gone through.
We can’t do that with anyone but ourselves. We are the ones who know our stories and experiences the best, not someone else’s. No matter how well we know someone, we don’t have ALL the information about them.
So that means, if we think about how things in our lives have affected us, how we feel about certain things, couldn’t that be the case for someone else? We can then recognize that it’s not about us, even if it is directed at us. It means they are experiencing it through their conscious and subconscious reactions, not us.
When we absorb things and believe that the reactions are directed at us, we cause suffering for ourselves. Could it be that what we have experienced and learned through old programming isn’t fact but opinion? Should we even take what we say to ourselves as personal?
I’ll be honest, there are times that my mind decides to “play tricks”, to say it kindly. Or at least it tries to say negative things to me because I’ve made a mistake (wow, I was human) and my usual subconscious reaction is to go up one side of myself and down another.
But if I step back, and talk to myself, and say things like “That’s a take on this but that doesn’t mean I failed at a, b, or c completely. Why don’t I try again? Learn something from this? Is this really true?” and I can see as I break it down I may be saying things that I’m absorbing as truth which may not be at all.
We know ourselves the best. Sometimes even asking someone about their reaction or comments can get to the bottom of how the reaction showed up the way it did. And understanding can happen.
Not taking things personally takes you out of the equation of creating hurt and wounds to yourself. Allow yourself to be free of that. Let people keep what they have - you don’t have to take any situation on as your own. Be free of the hurt and focus on your world, not trying to dismantle anyone else’s.
If you missed the introduction to my Blooming Blog Series - you can read it here. It’s about 2 minute read. Or the First of the Four Agreements - you can read it here. Enjoy! - Mary