36. It's not about you!

It's back to a book that shook me up in a good way - The Four Agreements. (See my #13.) The second agreement is "don't take anything personally."

The power of this idea struck me as I read the chapter, but it floored me once I started putting it into practice. It's an uplifting and liberating mindset - impossible to master, but worth practicing for a lifetime.

It's not about you!

All the things people say and do to you have nothing to do with you. It's their stuff. It's about them - their frame of mind, their backgrounds, moods, neurosis, shortcoming, strengths. It's not about you. So when a friend, relative or loved one says something that hurts you, you have to understand that it was his or her choice to say it based on how that person sees the world, not based on what you've done. That person is projecting his or her reality onto you.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't examine our own actions to help improve our situations. But realizing that people are projecting their realities onto us, we become better protected from needless anxiety and suffering about what people think about us.