During the week I had a haircut. I often wonder- when you get complimented on a haircut, is the compliment for you or the hair stylist? I think there is an unspoken hair compliment etiquette. If you are still in the Salon, it’s a compliment to the stylist. Once you have left the building, it’s all yours. So I was left with a quandary this week. As I opened the door to leave the salon, one foot outside, I heard the words from inside the salon, “Nice haircut.” It made me smile. I didn’t know whether to take it personally or not!
Life is full of opportunity to take things personally. Every look, word and gesture is an opportunity to make a situation mean something about yourself. Someone greets you a little less enthusiastically than you would like, and you imagine that it means that they are upset with you. Conversation shifts when you walk in the room, and you imagine that awful things were being said about you. Your partner refuses your affection, and you imagine that they are no longer attracted to you. Your kids forget your birthday, and you imagine that they don’t care about you. Your parents divorce and you imagine that it is your fault. Your children forget your birthday and you imagine its because they don’t care about you. Every day is full of moments and events that can be taken in all sorts of ways.
What is behind this tendency to take things so personally?
Why Do You Take Things So Personally?
- Human desire for drama is insatiable. Last week, I had a very minor strain in my right shoulder. When I got an itch on my back, my right shoulder couldn’t stretch around to scratch it, so my left shoulder had to fill in. The problem was that by stretching my left shoulder so far around my back, I strained a muscle in that shoulder too. So, here I was with two strained shoulders. I became intrigued with the pain and during the week the pain lessened. I bent myself into the shape of a pretzel. Meg asked me what I was doing. I said, “Im searching for the pain!” Searching for the pain. I guess I have some unconscious dependence on pain. I guess we all do.
- Even other people’s drama is enticing. An Irishman once came upon two people brawling in the street and asked, "Is this a private fight or can anyone get involved?"
I remember a situation in my church in Auckland. One day I overheard a volunteer on the telephone saying my name with a sneer in her voice. I got agitated and began muttering under my breath, “Who does she think she is talking like that about me like that? What have I ever done to hurt her? I wanted to listen in. So can you believe I planted myself on the wall next her office with a glass against the wall. Sure enough, I got exactly what I was looking for. She said some really nasty things about me. I was livid and carried the anger around all day. Who was I kidding? There was no surprise there. Yet I went out of my way to enter into her drama rather than get on with my day.
It seems to be part of the old agreement to seek out drama, but why?
- To live in the delusion that life is all about you. You think that other people are going out of their way to cause you pain. Truth is, most of the time, people are so busy bending themselves into their own pretzel shaped drama, searching for their own pain, that it probably has very little to do with you. People don’t usually cause you pain, but they do remind you of your pain, intentionally or not. They remind you of pain that may have decades of history behind it, and its too painful to really address, so you imagine that this most recent drama has caused the pain. You react out of unresolved pain and remind another person of their pain, and so the cycle continues.
Is life a private brawl, or can anyone get involved?
There has to be a better way- avoiding the brawl in the street, avoiding the gaping hole in the sidewalk that you have only just clawed your way out of. The new agreement is to stop taking things so personally, and this is a powerful agreement. It can open up all sorts of freedom and power in your life.
Liberation from Taking Things Personally
Liberation from taking things so personally comes in a series of realizations-
- Quit imagining that you can read other people’s minds. Your mind is good, but not that good.
- Quit imagining that you have the whole story. Your intuition is good, but not that good. If you have strong intuition, trust your gut but verify your assumptions. Verifying your assumptions will save you from all sorts of unnecessary pain.
- Quit depending on drama to remind yourself that you are alive. You are a child of God. Your petty dramas don’t serve the world. You were born to make manifest the glory that is within you. Let your light shine. Quit being defined by drama.
- When a situation or person touches pain in your life, quit projecting the pain onto them. Try out a new agreement. Own the pain as your own. Embrace it. Love it. Immerse it with acceptance. Quit allowing your pain to show up as drama for everyone around you.
- When you perceive that others are projecting their pain onto you, try out the same thing. Offer love and acceptance to those around you. They are not that different from you.
Here is a compassion exercise that could transform your relationships. Imagine God, or Ground of Being or whatever words you use to describe the Ultimate Reality, as radiant light. This radiant light has infinite sparks that fire off in every direction, and they reside in every person and every thing. Remind yourself that the essence of every human being is a spark of the Divine, so that when you are interacting with another human being, it is one piece of God interacting with another piece of God. How could you not be gentle and forgiving with a piece of God?
According to the new agreement, life does not have to be a street brawl. When life is a street brawl, you can choose to not to get involved.
What about When Things Are Personal?
Of course, some things really are intended personally. I came across an exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “Sir, if you were my husband I'd give you poison.” He replied just as quickly, “Madame, if you were my wife, I'd drink it.” Some words and actions are intended to hurt. You know the people in your life that just rub you the wrong way. They are a shiver in search of a spine to crawl up, usually yours.
The important point about this agreement is that you don’t have to TAKE everything personally. Even if something is intended personally, choose not to TAKE it personally.
It’s also important to receive feedback. Take feedback seriously, but not personally as far as possible.
I heard a beautiful analogy for receiving feedback without taking it personally. Maybe this will help you as it has helped me.
Picture yourself as a harp with all kinds of large and small debris swirling around you- words, feelings, innuendos. Some float toward you, passing right through the spaces between the strings, and glide on by. But others seem to be hurled at you and hit the strings, striking a chord that reverberates way back to your past, bringing up old hurts. It strikes a long, discordant note that jangles your nerves and throws you off balance. Ride out these encounters and try not to get so unnerved- try to reorchestrate and find your balance. First of all, notice whether they stick or pass by. If they pass by, notice them but don’t chase them. If they stick, say to yourself, 'Okay, what can I do to make this noise musical?'
Or else you could try what a life coach once taught me- ask yourself a series of questions about a situation you are taking personally-
What happened, or what was said? (minus the interpretations and mind reading)
What am I making that mean?
What am I making that mean about myself?
Separating what I understand of my pain and my understanding of the pain of the other person, what can I learn from this situation?
Choose a new agreement to not take things so personally by checking the way you see life, and by changing your reactions to situations.
Is God Personal or Impersonal?
I wonder if the tendency to believe that life is personal comes from an unexamined belief that God is a personal being. Whether you believe that God is an active agent who brings good or ill on your life, or whether you believe in synchronicity, either way many people believe that life has a meaning that directly relates to them.
Now I haven’t believed in a personal, supernatural God for many years (if ever), but I have been drawn to a belief in synchronicity. It never ceases to amaze me that life arranges itself so that the right people turn up in my life at the right time. The problem with believing that life has some personal agenda like this is that when I perceive that the right people have not turned up, I lose my faith in life. God is not personal, and life is not personal. Life may be full of meaningful coincidences, but it has no agenda either in favor of me, or against me.
Life happens. And it shows no partiality. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is recorded as saying- “God sends the sun to shine on the good and evil alike. God sends rain to those who do good and those who do not.”
Leaving aside the theistic language that was all they had to describe God in those days, this is a profound acknowledgement that God does not have a personal agenda towards particular people.
So if God is not personal, does that mean that God is impersonal? Does a belief that life is impersonal leave you a little cold? Where do you get your commitment to morality, compassion and justice from an impersonal worldview? Where does your personal experience of life fit in?
Let me suggest a third option. God is neither personal, nor impersonal. Life is neither personal, nor impersonal. Both God and life are transpersonal. That is, every moment, every person, every event in life is related and part of a whole that is greater than its parts. Everything that happens reflects everything else that happens. My reaction of fear or anger reflects the world’s fear and anger. In that sense, it is highly personal, and at the same completely impersonal. It is transpersonal. Every projection from another person is reflecting something within me while at the same time being an aspect of their own fear and the world’s fear. It is all related.
If this is a helpful connection for you, then consider the liberation that is inherent in this perspective. You can have a thoroughly personal experience of life, without taking anything personally. You can take life seriously, without falling for the illusion that life is a giant drama being performed with you as its lead actor and lone audience member. It’s not about you alone, and yet you are related intimately to the whole. You can feel the pain of others, seek justice for the oppressed, without imagining that the injustice is some cosmic agenda against you personally.
Choosing Non Personal Responses
Finally, consider your reactions to people from the perspective of the Sermon on the Mount, this most practical teaching of Jesus.
Jesus lays out the old and the new agreement with his teaching on turning the other cheek. He raises the highly practical question about how to deal with conflict.
There are many ways to resolve conflict. One of the most creative I have heard of is captured in this story. A minister asked his congregation one Sunday- "How many of you have unresolved conflict with other people?" Everyone raised their hand, except one elderly lady.
The minister said, "Mrs. Jones, that is very unusual. How old are you?"
"Ninety-eight." she replied.
"Oh Mrs. Jones, would you please come down in front & tell us all how a person can live ninety-eight years and not have an enemy in the world?"
This tiny, sweet looking lady tottered down the aisle, faced the congregation, and said: "I outlived the lot of them."
Back to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lays out the situation- if someone slaps you on the right cheek, you have a choice. You can act according to the old agreement, and allow the situation to escalate. Buy into the drama, and slap the person back even harder. If you choose to take the situation personally, you can be assured of escalating drama. On the other hand, you can choose not to take it personally. If you make this choice, you can be assured that the whole situation will be transformed.
Consider the slap on the cheek in its first century context. A back handed slap was a sign of superiority. If you turn your cheek to a right handed person, they have only one option. They must hit you with an open hand which was a sign of equality. To turn your cheek was to demand to be treated as an equal. To give someone your cloak was to stand naked in front of them which in that culture brought shame on those who saw the nakedness. To go the extra mile was to force the soldier to break the law.
Each of these situations was an example of not taking things personally, and by not taking them personally thereby transforming the situation. It was to force the aggressor to consider how far they are prepared to push their projections, and to not buy into drama.
They are the type of creative solutions that you can only find when you don’t take things personally. They are choices available to you at every moment. Use humor. Use a well placed, non defensive question. Verify your assumptions. Question the person about their true intention. Consider your own unresolved pain. Take nothing personally.
Choose to live by a new set of mindful agreements. There is a hole in the sidewalk and you can choose to take a different road, because you know that the hole is full of drama and your life is worth more than drama. There is a street brawl taking place and you can choose not to participate. It’s not about you. Maybe you can resolve the conflict creatively, and maybe you can’t. Either way, choose not to take it personally.
Some days you will still fall in the hole, and some days you will join the street brawl. If that happens, don’t judge yourself lest you take even your own failure personally and turn that into its own drama. Just notice what you are doing and renegotiate out of the drama as quickly and painlessly as possible. As always, do your best, speak your truth impeccably and don’t take anything personally.
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