Don't Take Anything Personally

As the old saying goes, “Sticks and Stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you.”

In today’s world, rejection is a part of daily life. One of the best skills you can integrate into your life is how to detach from other people’s rejection—to not take it personally.

You see, the very personal fear of being rejected is the fear of not being good enough. You must detach your self-concept from others’ opinions about you.

If you take other people’s words and actions personally, you are doomed because internally you feel like a victim. If you get rejected, a part of you is saying, “I am not good enough, poor me; I am not intelligent enough; I am not worthy.”

These are damaging and false beliefs. What do they do to your creative energy? They squash it!

We judge and punish ourselves for not living up to our own arbitrary image of perfection. No one is ever going to be perfect. By not being perfect we often reject ourselves. We wear social masks to keep others from seeing the real us. Deep down we feel inauthentic and don’t accept ourselves. We are our own worst judges.

Trying to be perfect is unnatural and destructive.

It takes a great deal of courage to challenge your own beliefs about rejection and perfection. Accept that thoughts of insufficiency are fear-based and that they waste your creative energy and power. Use your energy to change those thoughts and you’ll change the feelings behind them and reclaim your personal power.

A massive amount of freedom and energy comes to you when you take nothing personally.

You become immune to negative people and negative situations and to rejection of any kind. Understanding the game of life, you simply go forth and do not let anything bother you.

No one has the power to hurt you unless you let them. Do not give your power away to others—ever! Detach from other people’s worlds. You live in your own world.

Author Don Miguel Ruiz explains that it’s selfish for us to take things personally because when we do, we’re assuming that it’s “all about me.”

Ruiz says, “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.”

He is telling us that taking things personally assumes the other person is privy to what’s going on in our world and at the same time, forces our world on them.

When a situation seems very personal to you, it may have nothing to do with you at all. When others offer their opinions, they are coming from their own programming, feelings, beliefs, and views of life.

We do not have to let others’ opinions be part of our inner world.

People’s opinions are simply the way they see the world. Nothing they think about you has anything to do with you. They see you from their own beliefs. They see situations or reality from a different lens than you do. If someone is upset with you, they are really upset with themselves. You are just a focus point for why they are upset with themselves.

For example, I recently found myself annoyed with my mate, Clifton, because his home office was an out-of-control mess. Later, I admitted to myself that by being annoyed with him, I took the focus off the very annoying fact that my office was a mess. I had to admit that I was angry with myself for not being more organized in my own life. It was easier to lash out at him than to face my own disorganization. I had moved the focus off myself and projected my anger at him. It was my office mess and myself that I was truly mad at, not him, but it was so much easier to find fault with him and focus my attention on his mess.

Understand that you must trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you. You must trust yourself to make the right choices about what to believe. If you feel rejected, ask yourself, “Am I taking this personally? Why? This situation has nothing to do with me at all.” Give up guilt or self-judgment.

You can lose the fear of being ridiculed or rejected by simply understanding that you are never responsible for the actions of others. You are only responsible for yourself. When you refuse to take anything personally, you cannot be hurt by comments or actions from other people.

Here is a short synopsis I came across, of the material covered in the book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. If you adopt these agreements, you will find you are less stressed and have fewer negative people in your life. You will be far more at peace with yourself.

1.????BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

?Speak with integrity.

???Say only what you mean.

???Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.

???Use the Power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.

2.????DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

???Nothing others do is because of you.

???What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.

???When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3.????DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

???Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.

???Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, & drama.

???With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4.?????ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

???Your best is going to change from moment to moment: it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick.

???Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

Life is way too short to work for an organization or be in any relationship that you feel out of integrity with.

My Best to you,

Lee Milteer

Life and Business Strategist

www.milteer.com

P.S.

You're invited to join me at the upcoming Live, Monthly Life Mastery Training at the Lee Milteer Auditorium (aka ZOOM), by joining the Millionaire Smarts? Club. Click Here for more details.