|
|
The Four Agreements Part Three: Don't Take Anything Personally  This post was supposed to be made yesterday, but I couldn’t seem to get the words to come out properly. I wrote several things up, but each got deleted because it felt trite. As I mentioned before, The Four Agreements has been such an important book to me; and I’m working to make sure that I portray it as accurately as I’m able here at the Something Good blog, while not just writing up a book report.
I want to say “thanks” to Anthony from the Compost Bin for his comment on part two of our series on The Four Agreements. Of course, I’m always thrilled when you all leave comments, but this one sort of helped me refocus myself so I could do Something Good by getting this post written.
Anthony mentioned that saying only what he really means can often get him into trouble. I remember having a similar thought as I was reading the book for the first time. I wondered how always speaking my mind was going to decrease the drama in my life. I thought, surely that will make things worse. Fortunately, I kept reading the book, and I discovered that being impeccable with your word isn’t just about speaking your truth, it’s also about not needing to speak. The four agreements actually end up teaching you that there’s a lot of stuff in the world that just doesn’t really require any input from you. A major step in learning this lesson is to begin to understand the second agreement.
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.
The author, Don Miguel Ruiz, claims that the first agreement is both the most important and the most difficult. I’m afraid I can’t totally agree with him. Really, each agreement poses its own challenges; and I think that that the second agreement “don’t take anything personally” is not only very difficult to implement, it’s also really tricky to even wrap your brain around. Again, I’ll do my best to share the idea with you, but if you want to delve into it deeper, consider getting your own copy of the book.
The idea of not taking anything personally comes back to some of what we looked at in the first post of this series. Remember how each of us is living in our own dream, whether we are awake or asleep? Well, just as I’m living in my own dream and you’re living in your own dream, everyone else around us is living in their own, too. So, if you live in your own dream, Ruiz explains, then what you say and do is all about you! Even if you are talking about me, you are doing it in your dream, and it really has nothing to do with me.
“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. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.
Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds.”
When someone says something negative to you, they are attempting to send poison your way. Basically, they are not being impeccable with their word. If you accept this poison, then it festers inside of you. When you accept it, you are making an unhealthy agreement with that person. By taking it personally, you’re likely to become offended, and that often leads to expending a bunch of energy to defend yourself from the other person’s words. From here there is conflict and drama and an intense draining of your energy. If you look at it honestly, you very well might find that a lot of your reaction has to do with a sort of childish desire to just be right. All over something that really didn’t have all that much to do with you in the first place.
“Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them.”
I really like the analogy in which Ruiz compares one’s life to a movie. My life is a movie that is produced by me, directed by me and stars me. When you think of it in these terms, it makes sense that I’m going to interpret everything I see and hear as it relates to me. Well, everyone else has their own movie produced by, directed by and starring them; so doesn’t it make sense that whatever they say or feel really has far more to do with them than it does with anyone or anything else?
Not taking anything personally can even extend into listening to our own minds. We often hear little voices in our minds taunting or cajoling us with words like “stupid,” “fat” and “ugly.” It also extends to positive statements. If someone tells you how great you are, it shouldn’t really make that much of a difference to you, because it is their opinion. I have to admit, I’m not quite to the point where an occasional compliment just rolls off without at least a little grin. I take a little solace when Ruiz says, “You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.” We eventually have to choose whether to keep people in our lives who keep directing their poison at us. Just because you don’t take what they're saying personally doesn’t mean that you should continue to allow others to send their poison your way.
“If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.”
I have found this to be incredibly true in my own life. I have had to sever ties with people, and it has been extremely painful at the beginning. That discomfort eventually decreases, though, and the added peace and lack of emotional poison sent towards me has taught me that severing these relationships has been well worth it. Of course, there are plenty of people who will remain in your life that might occasionally make a careless remark or gossip about you. Being willing to not take those things personally can really mitigate the hurt and drama that would usually follow these behaviors.
“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.”
Today I want to challenge you to just try this idea on for size. Spend one day in which you make a point not to take anything personally. When someone tries to bait you or even innocently makes a less-than flattering comment about you, do Something Good by not taking it personally. Remind yourself that whatever that person is feeling, it is his or her own experience (remember the movie analogy) and allow yourself to go on with your day. I suspect that by the time you lay down for bed at the end of that day, you will feel a little more content and relaxed than you might otherwise.
|
|
|