It's not me, it's you
The subtle art of not taking things personally 👌
A major cause of stress is when we take things personally.
An example of this from early in my career, was when someone in the team resigned and their manager reacted very angrily. He was furious about how unprofessional it was for her to leave, and got extremely defensive. All she had really done was take an offer to work at a different organisation, but the manager had let his mind and emotions get out of control and taken it as a personal attack on him. He didn't realise this was about her decision to progress her career, and instead viewed it only through the lens of his world view - as if somehow her career decision was based on how it would impact him.Â
In Don Miguel Ruiz's bestseller ‘The 4 Agreements’ he explains how when people say or do things, they are expressing their own reality, not yours. By not taking things personally, you avoid being affected by others' opinions and behaviors, which are reflections of their own experiences, which have nothing to do with you. Ruiz suggests that when you take things personally, you become vulnerable to unnecessary suffering and stress.
1.Thinking
When something happens that we see as unacceptable, we would ideally have a rational response. But before we can process things in this way, our mind bypasses the Amygdala (which is what helps our thoughts process rationally), and we react. It may be anger, for others they retract completely, and someone else might seem calm but then the negative emotions come out in other ways.
And when the physiological response to the stress of the situation kick in - such as fight or flight hormones like adrenaline & cortisol - things escalate.
Our mind reacts to the drama, we come up with stories in our head, which adds to the stress.
2. Unthinking
As it's usually the thoughts about the situation ( not the situation itself) that cause the issue, we may not even realise that it's happening.
We take things personally when we see things only from our perspective, failing to realise that it's not about us at all most of the time.
We can learn to unthink about the way we respond and reduce our stress levels.
In the example above, the person resigning was doing it for their own reasons, not to spite their manager. But that's not how the manager saw it, or how it felt.
We can learn to unthink and shift the view from how it affect us to instead consider that it may be nothing to do with us at all. We can detach from these thoughts and not take these things so personally.
We can do this by taking a few deep breaths or literally removing ourselves from the situation in that moment. Then ask the question ‘is this a reflection of their experiences and not a commentary about me?’ Just by recognising we are having these thoughts is a helpful step towards detaching from these emotions and not taking things personally.
You can use some of these methods of staying out of your head here.
3. Aligning
Rather than resisting the situation and fighting against the reality of what is actually happening, accept the situation. You may not like the fact that they resigned but they did. It may be because of your managerial style, but it may be to do with their own career based decisions.
The facts here are:
They resigned.
That's it. Their decision. They didn't do anything to you. Accept the situation for what it is, not how you think it should be.
When we don't take things so personally, things become a lot less stressful. It can take practice to make the shift, but it can make a big difference.