The Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Take Things Personally

When someone says something offensive to you, you might brush it off, on the other hand, you might also take it quite personally. The reason why you feel hurt, essentially, is that deep down inside you believe what others say about you. You agree with them. Really, it can only affect you if you believe it yourself. If you are confident about who you are and self-empowered, then the opposite will happen. You will brush it off and move on.

Why does this happen? Why do you always seem to take things personally? More importantly, why does it affect your mood? You know taking things personally isn’t helpful, but it still happens regularly. I’ve been there, still am sometimes. It’s hard NOT to take any personal attacks personally, but it really speaks to something more. Who you are inside and your personal mindset. Here are three reasons you should stop taking everything so personally, as well as how you can stop in the future.

The Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Take Things Personally

Because We Don’t Know Everything

People often make the mistake of taking things personally because we are convinced that we know all about a person or situation. The problem with this is that we really don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, or what they’re thinking, and it takes humility to actually listen and pay attention to what is going on around you. Perhaps they didn’t mean what they said, or it came out wrong or you misunderstood the tone of an email or text message. Whatever the reason, don’t automatically assume you know. Take the time to understand. Think before you speak and react. Respond with intelligence not impulsively.

Our Perception Is Often Wrong

Taking back your power includes perception checking. This includes being clear about what your perceptions are and how they compare with other people’s realities, this will give you the big picture rather than the one that you’ve created in your head. If you take things personally, really you are letting your feelings dictate how you see the world. This is not healthy for your mindset, experience or for your worldview. It can lead to feelings of anger and sadness. It’s much better to focus on reality, not as you perceive it, but as it really is. This is empowering because it makes you a better communicator and allows you to let go of what’s holding you back.

Our Expectations Shape Our Reality

It’s important to be realistic with your expectations in order to avoid being disappointed. There is one thing that can stand in between you and your life goals and that’s your expectations. Life can be one of two things, it can suck, or life can be a great experience. It’s really up to you, yes you. You manage your life expectations by not sweating it, by going with the flow and by letting go. Not so simple, but totally possible.

We all have an idea about how our lives should be and how things should turn out. When they don’t, we have a challenging time with it and stress about not being where we want to be, when in reality, we are forcing something that isn’t where we should be. On the other hand, if you set realistic expectations for yourself and work hard at achieving them, then it’s more likely that they will come true. Managing expectations gets you there.

We often waste our life in worrying about the “shoulda, woulda, coulda’s” when we can be living our lives to the fullest – empowered and happy. Taking things personally is a complete waste of your time and profoundly affects your mental health when it would be better to not worry about it because, really, you don’t ever know the big picture, your perceptions aren’t always accurate, and you don’t manage your expectations. Letting go of taking things personally will give you your power back and send you on the journey you never thought was even possible!

I will end with this quote from one of my favorite books, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz,