Don’t Take It Personally

“There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.” - Don Miguel Ruiz

It can be hard to not take things personally.

How can you not, right? If someone is being rude to you or disrespectful.

People’s self-esteems are being put on an emotional roller coaster because every little comment or negative reaction puts their self-esteem up high or down low.

I am here to set things straight. I will help you learn how to stop taking things personally. Here are my tips to stop taking things personally:

1. Don’t be so quick to judge.

There is this old story of a man with his son riding in a trolley on a busy workday evening.

The child was running around wildly making a ruckus on the trolley and the father sat quietly. One male passenger on the trolley was flabbergasted as he watched the father do nothing as the kid made a disturbance on the trolley.

After a couple more minutes, the male passenger had enough. He impatiently stormed across the trolley, pointed to the father, and said,

“Are you not going to do anything about your son??! He is making a commotion on the trolley...”

The father steadily looked up with tears in his eyes. The father took a short breath and softly whispered,

“We just left the hospital. The boy lost his mother. I am not sure how to handle it and I don’t think my son does, either…”

The passenger immediately felt sympathy for the man. The passenger apologized and sat back down.

This story is one of my favorites because it makes you remember to not be so quick to judge. If someone is rude to you, you may feel the need to get upset and be mean back. Sometimes you can just let it go and not let the interaction ruin your day by thinking that the person may be going through some personal issues that caused them to be impolite.

You just don’t know.

Of course, assert yourself and retaliate if the person takes it far and steps far beyond your boundaries, but don’t take it personally. The person could be struggling with something that you are not aware of.

2. Realize they are just reacting to you based on their beliefs.

Isn’t is profound that two people can watch the same exact movie, but completely interpret it in their own unique way based on their preconceived beliefs!?

Have you ever sat and thought about how beliefs are made? How exactly are beliefs formed?

Beliefs are formed through our experiences and social conditioning or what other people tell us to believe. Each individual person has their own experiences and people or things in their lives that helped form all of their beliefs.

So when someone reacts to you in an unfavorable way, it could be because of their preconceived beliefs that they have accumulated. It was just the way they were taught to react.

I knew a personal injury lawyer that once told me that life is about compatibility and incompatibility. That it is your job to boldly express yourself and some people will click with you, while others won’t... and that is okay. They told me it was my job to find the people I was compatible with.

If you are expressing yourself wholeheartedly and you do not get along with someone, you two may just be incompatible. It is okay because there are millions of people in the world. Don’t take it personally. The truth is that some people you won’t get along with.

3. Put yourself in perspective.

Here is another truth that may suck to hear at first but after a little while, you will realize how liberating it is.

Realize that the world was created within billions of years and we are tiny little specks in the cosmic infinite universe…

We are such a small micro portion of the universe... If someone were to make a negative comment to you, why let it bug you? Why spend the time taking it personally?

The scale of the universe may make it seem like human life is pointless... but that is the beauty of this. We are so minuscule. Tiny little specks. How could you let someone’s bad comment or negative reaction to you impact you if we are so small in the grand scheme of things?

Time to put it into practice.

There you have it. Those are my tips to help you stop taking things personally. Heed my advice, and put it into practice the next time somebody is rude to you, mean, or upsets you.

Remember, we are tiny micro specks in the infinite universe and most of the time, it is not about you or you guys are just incompatible.

So, don’t take it personally. :-)