It’s Not Me, It’s You: 3 Ideas To Help You NOT Take It Personally

by | Jun 11, 2017 | Transition

I was catching up with a girlfriend recently and I shared with her a situation that left me with both a reality check and some hurt feelings about said reality. As I was licking my wounds and lamenting, she shared a similar situation in which she was left feeling some kind of way. During the course of the conversation, we pretty much came to two conclusions that were reflective of both of our situations.

#1 It’s not us, it’s them

#2 We Shouldn’t Take It Personally

Although I knew both of those things in my mind, my heart had not yet gotten the memo. The situation haunted me for days. Eventually, I thought of the Toltec Wisdom book by Don Miguel Ruiz, “The Four Agreements”. One of the agreements is, “Don’t Take Anything Personally”. Easier said than done. I re-read that chapter and here are some of his messages that resonated with me.

  1. “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.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
  2. “Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don’t need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you” – Don Miguel Ruiz
  3. “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.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

The truth of the matter is that we’re just all trying to get out shit together. Whether intentional or not, sometimes we’re caught in the crossfires of someone else’s shit (their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and perceptions). That’s just the way life goes. We learn to recover and move forward.

As for my situation? It is what it is but I am at peace with the new reality and my hurt feelings are dissolving day-by-day. After all, as Ruiz says, “there is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.”