If I could only have one of the four agreements with me for the rest of my life it would be this one.
How often have we received a communication or rejection or hard feedback and felt like we took a dagger to the heart?
Or, maybe, if we are in protective mode and have built up walls from prior tough experiences in life that have dampened our ability to feel sad, instead of allowing ourselves to feel wounded we react quickly with anger when we feel snubbed or ignored.
The defenses that we present in these situations further disconnect us from others, but more importantly they disconnect us from ourselves.
Similar to the first agreement of being impeccable with our word, not taking things personally requires pausing and creating space to assess a situation before reacting or putting up defenses.
If someone declines and invitation to a party we are throwing, we may feel slighted or worry that the person doesn’t like us or at least does not value our friendship as much as we do, based on the fact that she has prioritized something or someone over us.
In reality, the person may truly be busy on that day, but in our minds we can’t conceive of any alternative explanation other than choosing to believe they intentionally tried to hurt us by rejecting us.
When we take things personally it reveals an insecurity within us, and we will see next week how closely this ties into the third agreement related to making assumptions.
Our job is always to interrogate our reactions to things, trying to understand the underlying motivation for why we feel the way we do.
Even those of us with an abundance of confidence in certain areas of our lives, our career, the role we play in our family, our hobbies or athletic pursuits, can still fall into the pattern of taking things personally.
This can happen circumstantially as well as pervasively.
For those who have experienced abandonment of any kind, who haven’t felt seen or heard throughout their lives, and who have struggled to connect with others or root in their own identity, taking things personally is a pattern that keeps them in victim mode of the “drama triangle.”
If you are the type of person who remembers everyone’s birthday but find that on the day of your annual celebration for another trip around the sun hardly anyone calls or sends a card, you may take it personally that your thoughtfulness was not reciprocated.
You may conclude (and assume) from the absence of attention that you are not as important to your friends as they are to you.
There is a layered issue within this example whereby we often expect others to act the same way towards us, and with the same “volume” of attention we give to them, but this is rarely the case.
When we feel an imbalance in that attention to the relationship and we react by taking it personally, this also uncovers a potential issue with our motives in how we give to others.
If we are seeking or expecting an equivalent return on our thoughtfulness we are acting for the wrong reasons to begin with and can almost certainly expect to be disappointed by others.
We take it personally, putting the burden of proof on the other person, but it’s actually our own “stuff” that causes us to react this way. There was no deal made or broken by the individual to whom we feel “wronged” us. It is merely our own perception.
Many of us have someone in our lives who tends to do all of the talking in our conversations, never once asking us about our day, our lives, our job, our problems, our dreams. We tend to bitch about these people sometimes, relating to others that every time so-and-so calls the conversation is an hour of one-sided talking.
“They don’t care about me,” we conclude.
A healthier way to approach this specific scenario is to make a conscious decision to either accept the nature of these relationships, knowing that we will be the sounding board but never the speaker, or we can call them out on the behavior and point out the incongrous energy exchange, for this may actually be a blindspot for this person.
If the latter fails to create change, we can again either accept the relationship dynamics and relinquish our right to bitch about it as we know rules of the game, or we can decide to stop answering the phone and phase out the friendship.
Regardless of how we handle the situation, the first step and the crucial lesson is to understand that this is not personal. The person on the other end of the line has their own “stuff” and is likely not even aware of their impact on our feelings.
“Nothing other people do is because of you.”
-don Miguel Ruiz
Sometimes we overinflate the influence we have on others; more often than not, people are focused on themselves and their inner world. It is almost egotistical to assume that their behavior is a direct attack on us.
It is a freeing practice to let go of any interpretation of their words or actions as a personal attack.
In yoga we talk about practicing “aparigraha,” which is Sanskrit for “non-attachment.” This is the perfect practice to navigate circumstances where our initial instinct may be to feel left out, attacked, or insulted. Instead, take a figurative step back from the situation.
Imagine a physical barrier between you and the words or actions that have triggered you. Then say to yourself, “this is not about me, this is their stuff.”
In this way we let go of landing on the persecutor or victim corner of the drama triangle and remain in control of our thoughts and actions.
In every life circumstance, WE get to CHOOSE how to respond.
When others say negative things about us Ruiz says they are “trying to send poison” to us. If we choose to take what they say personally, Ruiz says we are “taking the poison.” He continues,
“Taking things personally makes you easy pray for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up….but if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell.”
“Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.”
To reflect back on the first agreement, “be impeccable with your word,” we talked about how our current world and environment makes it a little too easy to have our “word” be misinterpreted or misunderstood, and also too easy for all of us to put words out in the world that can cause harm.
Being impeccable with our word is the first line of defense for creating clarity and peace in our communications.
Not taking things personally is the second line of defense.
When our opinions are challenged we may get defensive or offended. When people don’t agree with us or think like us we can tend to take it personally and retaliate with weaponized words, cutting people off, or even cutting people out of our lives.
We are in a contentious time right now. These agreements are going to be crucial to maintain our own true identity and stay the course on becoming the kind of people we want to be.
This second agreement will also be crucial to maintaining important relationships that could so easily be dissolved when we break these agreements just because we want to be “right” and can’t accept that others’ opinions are not personal attacks on our own.
In one of my earliest posts I talked about “walking the middle way.” This ties in beautifully to this second agreement.
When we walk the middle way, we are not attached to the extremes of emotions (e.g. the “eight worldly dharmas: praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disgrace).
Ruiz’s philosophy aligns with this, as well. In The Four Agreements he writes,
“I don’t take it personally when people say, ‘Miguel you are the best,’ and I also don’t take it personally when you say, ‘Miguel you are the worst.’
Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem…It is nothing personal because you are dealing with yourself, not with me.”
In addition to learning how to control our own reactions to others words and actions, we must also consider how to handle situation where others may take our words or actions personally. We may be called out on the statements or feedback we give others, or told that what we have said or done was hurtful.
While I’d like to believe that none of us would intentionally hurt another person, those who do not practice the second agreement may see our actions or words as direct attacks.
When this happens, we might acknowledge it as a misunderstanding. We may want to accept some accountability and agree that our words or actions were careless and not aligned with the first agreement.
Other times our words or actions may have been perceived as harsh or hurtful, but from our viewpoint they were intentional and even necessary to protect ourselves.
But if the recipient did not see it that way, and decided to take it personally, this is an area where we must draw a boundary and allow for the reality that the other person is taking something personally because of their own perception of the situation, not because of anything we did.
All of this can get really muddy with particularly triggering topics like loved ones with addictions or who have broken written or unwritten rules of relationships.
It is very hard not to feel that a loved one who acts selfishly has hurt us.
The truth is that no one hurt us. We FEEL hurt.
It’s a tough distinction and one that requires us to own our feelings and decide to anchor within ourselves and not seek an easier path, that of claiming a role of victim or persecutor rather than decide that these actions were not personal, but rather a consequence of the other individual’s own decisions and actions that had nothing to do with us.
This work is hard, but it is so worth it when we can even move ourselves a smidge towards letting go of the impact others have on us and when we can feel confident enough to take back the reins, own our emotions and reactions, and decide that we want to let go of attachment to anger, resentment, being “right,” or blaming others.
Over the course of the next week, take your warrior stance and explore what it feels like to not take anything personally and repeat the phrase “nothing that others do is because of me.”
You’ve got this, warriors!
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Next week we tackle the third agreement. In the meantime, here are some blogs to revisit or read for the first time that tie into the second agreement work discussed above.
-Walking the Middle Way:
Walking the “middle way:” The Eight Worldly Dharmas
-The Drama Triangle: