Let’s start off with a simple question:
Why do we always take things personally?
There are admittedly quite a few valid reasons to consider. But the one Marc and I have found to be most common through 15 years of working with our coaching clients and live event attendees is the tendency we all have of putting ourselves at the center, and seeing everything — every event, conversation, circumstance, etc. — from the viewpoint of how it relates to us on a personal level. And this can have all kinds of adverse effects, from feeling hurt when other people are rude, to feeling sorry for ourselves when things don’t go exactly as planned, to doubting ourselves when we aren’t perfect.
Of course, we are not really at the center of everything. That’s not how the universe works. It just sometimes seems that way to us. Let’s consider a few everyday examples:
First, imagine someone storms into the room in a really bad mood and addresses us in a rude way. Immediately we think to ourselves, “What’s going on here? I don’t deserve to be treated like this! They should know better!” And we’re left feeling offended. But the truth is the other person’s behavior likely has very little to do with us. They got mad at something outside the room, and now they’re reactively venting their frustrations in front of us. We just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This reality doesn’t justify their behavior, but it needs to be consciously acknowledged so we don’t waste too much of our energy positioning ourselves at the center of the situation and taking things personally.
Now, let’s assume for a moment that a person’s actions actually do seem to relate to us directly — we inadvertently did something that annoyed them, and so they’re reacting rudely to us. A situation like this might seem personal, but is it really? Is the magnitude of this person’s rude reaction all about us and the one thing we did to trigger them? No, probably not. It’s mostly just a statement about this person’s reactions, snap-judgments, longer-term anger issues, and expectations of the universe. Again, we’re just a smaller piece of a much larger story.
And likewise, when someone else rejects us, ignores us, doesn’t call us when they said they would, doesn’t show they care, or flat out disrespects us… these reactions have much less to do with us than they have to do with the other person’s history of personal issues. We can learn to acknowledge their issues and set healthy boundaries without taking their words to heart.
But because we see everything through a lens of how it personally relates to us — a lens that often does a poor job of seeing the bigger picture — we tend to react to everyone else’s actions and words as if they’re a personal judgment or attack. Thus, other people’s anger makes us angry, other people’s lack of respect makes us feel unworthy, other people’s unhappiness makes us unhappy, etc.
If you’re nodding your head to any of this, it’s time to start gracefully deflecting the senseless negativity around you. When you sense negativity coming at you, give it a small push back with a thought like, “That remark (or gesture) is not really about me, it’s about you (or the world at large).” Remember that all people have issues they’re dealing with, and sometimes it makes them rude, anxious, and downright disrespectful. They’re doing the best they can, or they’re not even aware of their issues. In any case, you can learn not to interpret their behaviors as personal attacks, and instead see them as non-personal encounters (like a dog barking in the distance or a bumblebee buzzing by) that you can either respond to gracefully, or not respond to at all.
Of course this doesn’t come naturally — NOT taking things personally is a daily practice…
It’s time for some “Notes to Self.”
I’m only human and sometimes I still take things way too personally when I’m in the heat of the moment. So I’ve implemented a simple strategy to support the practice of watching my response. In a nutshell, I proactively remind myself to not take things personally. Anytime I catch myself doing so, I pause and read a couple “notes to self” like the ones listed below (I have them pinned on my bulletin board and saved to my phone). Then I take a deep breath…
If you’d like to practice along with me, I recommend copying a few of these notes, tweaking them as you see fit, storing them in an easily accessible location (like saving them to your phone), and then reading them whenever you catch yourself taking things personally. (Note: For the sake of not being tediously redundant, I only wrote “Note to Self” as a precursor on the first note below.)
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Thoughts on addressing offensive people.
When someone insists on foisting their hostility and drama on you, just keep practicing — reading your “notes to self” and setting a good example. Do your best to respect their pain and focus on compassion. Communicate and express yourself from a place of peace, from a place of wholeness, with the best intentions.
With that said, sometimes handling offensive people directly is necessary! As mentioned earlier, Marc and I have worked with hundreds of live event attendees and coaching clients over the past 15 years who have struggled through this very predicament. And we gradually guide them through several useful strategies that work wonders. I want to briefly review a few of these strategies with you here, in hopes that you find value in them too.
1. Take positive control of negative conversations.
It’s okay to change the topic, talk about something positive, or steer conversations away from pity parties, drama, and self-absorbed sagas. Be willing to disagree with difficult people and deal with the consequences. Some people really don’t recognize their own difficult tendencies or their inconsiderate behavior. You can actually tell a person, “I feel like you ignore me until you need something.” You can also be honest if their overly negative attitude is what’s driving you away: “I’m trying to focus on positive things. What’s something good we can talk about?” It may work and it may not, but your honesty will help ensure that any communication that continues forward is built on mutually beneficial ground.
2. Proactively establish healthy and reasonable boundaries.
Practice becoming aware of your feelings and needs. Note the times and circumstances when you’re resentful of fulfilling someone else’s needs. Gradually build boundaries by saying no to gratuitous requests that cause resentfulness in you. Of course, this will be hard at first because it may feel a bit selfish. But if you’ve ever flown on a plane, you know that flight attendants instruct passengers to put on their own oxygen masks before tending to others, even their own children. Why? Because you cannot help others if you’re incapacitated. In the long run, proactively establishing and enforcing healthy and reasonable boundaries with difficult people will be one of the most charitable things you can do for yourself and those you care about. These boundaries will foster and preserve the best of you, so you can share the best of yourself with the people who matter most, not just the difficult ones who try to keep you tied up.
3. Make extra space for yourself.
Difficult people who wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions are obviously hard to handle. They want others to join their 24/7 pity party so they can feel better about themselves. And you may feel pressured to listen to their complaints simply because you don’t want to be seen as callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a compassionate ear and getting sucked into their emotional drama. If you are forced to live or work with a difficult person, then make sure you get enough alone time to relax, rest, and recuperate. Having to play the role of a rational adult in the face of relentless moodiness can be exhausting, and if you’re not careful, their negative attitude can infect you. So remember that even people with legitimate problems and conditions can still comprehend that you have needs as well, which means you can politely excuse yourself when you need to. (Note: Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the Self-Love chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently”.)
4. Let them know that you, respectfully, do not care.
This one is essentially a last resort. If you’ve tried your best to communicate respectfully with a difficult person, or to gracefully distance yourself from them, but they insist on following you around and attacking you for whatever reason, it’s time to speak up and tell them that their words are meaningless. In such situations, I challenge you to make this your lifelong motto: “I respectfully do not care.” Say it to anyone who relentlessly passes public judgment on something you strongly believe in or something that makes you who you are.
5. If their offensive behavior becomes physical, it’s a legal matter that must be addressed.
If you’ve survived the wrath of a physical abuser, and you tried to reconcile things… if you forgave, and you struggled, and even if the expression of your grief had you succumb to outbursts of toxic anger… if you spent years hanging on to the notions of trust and faith, even after you knew in your heart that those beautiful intangibles upon which love is built would never be returned… and especially if you stood up as the barrier between an abuser and someone else, and took the brunt of the abuse in their place, YOU are a hero! But now it’s time to be the hero of your present and future. Enough is enough! If someone is physically abusive, they are breaking the law and they need to deal with the consequences of their actions.
And obviously, this is just one short essay that doesn’t cover every possible scenario.
Most of the time, though, it’s just a matter of reading your “notes to self” and giving yourself some extra breathing room.
Now it’s your turn…
Before you go, we would love to hear from YOU.
Which “note to self” above resonates with you the most today and why?
Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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