Best way to do not take things personally

Stop Taking Things Personally

What will be your first reaction if someone tells you that such and such a person is speaking badly against you? Before you read on, stop and think for a second!

Of course, different people may react differently, but most of us will take it "personally" and explain to the person that I am not that kind of person and that the person who criticized or said bad things is wrong. The raw material will be opened and kept. And after the person is gone, we will continue to wonder why this friend/relative said that about us, and even now the brain will fill in by creating a powerful "negative story" around it. Finding meaning and creating imaginative stories around things is a specialty of the human mind. But how not to take such matters personally? And why do humans do this?

Most of the time we deal with behaviors such as lying against others, criticizing unnecessarily (if it is right, it is not wrong to criticize), or making fun of others, causing pain. There are many reasons behind this, often people's biases, insecurities and ulterior motives that lurk in the subconscious for which the German language has a very apt word, Hintergedanken.

How should we deal with such situations?When people's words hurt you emotionally, understand that you have taken their words personally, you feel an attack on your self. This habit of taking it personally has deep roots that take you back to childhood, poor self-esteem and various insecurities that make you take criticism personally.

The first step to this is to practice changing your “point of view”. 

That is, every time you start taking criticism on yourself, take a few seconds to look at the same issue from another point of view. For example, if your boss criticizes you, if your mind is used to taking it as a personal insult, then immediately explain to him that the criticism may be about your performance and not because the boss has a personal grudge against you. Look at the criticism from the company's point of view, evaluate your own performance and clear your mind. Get used to seeing everything from different angles. Your child is not going to be born from perfect humans and are you perfect yourself?

Make a habit of separating fact from fiction. As I said the mind is a master of making up stories, it can contaminate reality with fantasy, then if someone criticizes you or makes a remark, you feel like the whole universe is conspiring against you along with family members. You don't know what's going through the mind of the critic or passer of the remark, and you don't need to know, and you can't, so you blame yourself. There is no need to create myths around the criticism. Mindfulness meditation can also be useful for this. During this meditation you can examine your thoughts and mental myths.Learn to separate truth from myth. The previous paragraph referred to the mind and its habit of creating stories around criticism which is related to your thought process, while in this one I am referring to separating truth from myth, i.e. what happens to you. 

Not every criticism or remark is unwarranted, of course most people's criticism is the result of Hintergedanken, their insecurities, biased thinking and nefarious motives, but it does not mean that every criticism is wrong. Before you take a criticism personally, take a few seconds to pause and think, is this really true? If it is, then it can be a source of learning and if it is a myth, there is no need to take it upon yourself. All this takes time to practice, make it a habit to pause for a few seconds before reacting or responding.

Dealing with such matters, try to read this quote once a day, Epictetus says: If someone tells you that such and such a person is speaking badly about you, then there is no need to give him explanations, rather say to him in reply that 'that person is not aware of my other faults, otherwise he would have mentioned them to you. '. "

Imagine someone coming up to you in a very sensational way to discuss a criticism against you and you giving him an Epictetus response, think how much time and energy could be saved. It all comes from practice, of course.

"A quote from American novelist David Foster is very close to the truth, Foster says, 'You will stop worrying about what people say and think about you if you realize that people rarely do. Since we are very ego-centric ourselves, we think that people only think about us and that's why we take what they say personally, when the reality is quite the opposite."