Several years ago, a friend boarded and kept an umbrella cockatoo in his home. The umbrella cockatoo always had pink lipstick marks on the white feathers of his forehead from his doting human’s kisses…. There was no question in the my friend’s mind that this bird was totally adored. Then one day, the owner’s husband phoned to ask my friend to help find a home for the bird. He was stunned, then realized the sound he could hear was the owner sobbing in the background. The husband explained briefly that the parrot — for the first time in the many years the owner had him — had just bitten his mistress. He said she was so upset because she felt the bite was proof the bird didn’t love her anymore. My friend tried valiantly to get her to talk to him, to explain that these things happen, and to not get rid of a beloved pet of many years just because of one incident…. But she was too upset to even talk to my friend. The husband promised to give her my message and to ask her to call me when she calmed down. I never heard from her again. When you take things personally, you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts.
Did you know that quite often the offense is not real, and the so-called offender never intended to offend you at all?
Sometimes, you might have a wrong interpretation of someone’s words or behavior, due to lack of sufficient information or missing facts.
Does this justify feeling offended? In such cases, the so-called offender might not know what the matter with you is.
On other occasions, even if the other person did try to offend you intentionally, why accept, think, or dwell on what he or she said?
It is absolutely foolish to participate in the game of hurt feelings.
Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set yourself up to suffer for nothing….
When we really see other people as they are without taking it personally, we can never be hurt by what they say or do.
Even if others lie to you, it is okay. They are lying to you because they are afraid.
There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.
Get More Out of Life
The whole world can gossip about you, and if you don’t take it personally you are immune.
Someone can intentionally send emotional poison, and if you don’t take it personally, you will not eat it.
When you don’t take the emotional poison, it becomes even worse in the sender, but not in you.
As you make a habit of not taking anything personally, you won’t need to place your trust in what others do or say.
You will only need to trust yourself to make responsible choices. You are never responsible for the actions of others; you are only responsible for you.
When you truly understand this, and refuse to take things personally, you can hardly be hurt by the careless comments or actions of others.
How to Stop Taking Things Personally
1. Don’t make assumptions
It is easy to make assumptions about what we think a person’s intent. Before we know it, we have decided why and what the person meant by the words they have just spoken to us. You know the old saying, ”don’t’ assume anything, it only makes a ass out of u and me.” Check out the questions going through your mind with the other person. Maybe the person’s yelling at you had nothing to do with you but with the fact they were having a bad day. You just happened to be the person to get their frustration. Maybe they were making a comment with some bad information about you and thought you were to blame for the problem. Maybe ….. you get the idea. We can’t read each other’s minds. By checking out the intent of the person’s comments we can truly understand what is going on inside the other’s mind.
2. Remember, the world doesn’t revolve around you.
One great way to make your life unnecessarily hard and difficult is to assume that the world revolves around you. It might be hard to believe, but most people are not thinking about your feelings or how you going to take in what they are saying. They are more concerned with making their point.
3. Remember, you can’t control the behavior of others, but you can control yours.
You are in control of your own actions and thoughts. Don’t blame others for making you say or do something.
When you blame others you are really giving your power away.
No one can make you do anything you don’t want to do. People many times say “I can’t do that” or “I can’t try that.”
In reality, what you are saying is, ”I won’t do it.”
It is much more empowering for yourself to own your decisions and actions.
and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word and thought throughout our lifetime. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
If You Want to Get More Out of Life
Don’t Take Things Personally
Finally, you are the guardian of your soul. Protect your mind and spirit from letting poisonous words that shame you, stay rent-free inside of you.
Fill your mind and spirit with images, words, and feelings of goodness and love.
God does not want us to be miserable.
Shalom
Jerry