What Does Don’t Take Anything Personally Mean | The Four Agreements - Part 2
Tera Brown 
Taking things personally makes it easy to make something big out of something small
The four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is a powerful little tool for connecting with yourself and showing up in your life in a healthy way. If you haven’t yet, check out my last post about the First Agreement. The second agreement is Don’t Take Anything Personally.
What does that even mean?
Nothing others do is because of you
“What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds.” ~ Don Miguel Ruiz
Someone else’s point of view comes from the lens that they see the world with.
Do you take things personally? I know people who take constructive criticism as an attack. Or second guess choices when someone has a different opinion or taste in furniture. I also know people who read things wrong or make situations with other people, their motives, energy level, and much more about themselves. Sometimes people assume they know what someone means and that it means they need to change. If you have ever felt like this you might have a case of I take it personally-“itis”.
What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream
When we get right down to it, your opinion of me is none of my business. When you listen and take on what others say about you, you eat all of their emotional garbage. As you take things personally, you feel offended, and then need to defend your thoughts and beliefs; that creates conflict in your mind. Taking things personally makes it easy to make something big out of something small.
When we take it personally, our RAS goes into hyperdrive to find evidence of that belief. Remember the job of the RAS is to find evidence of the story we tell ourselves. So, as it tries to be helpful, it proves your point. Now you have spent time, energy, and effort proving a story to be true that you didn’t even tell! Someone else told you it was true and instead of questioning, you believed and then proved it right!
It’s not what others say that hurts you, it's how it touches a wound inside of you. If I told you that your hair was green and it was ugly, you wouldn’t believe me or care if I thought it was beautiful or not. You know that it isn’t true and so you discount what I say.
What if I said, “ I don’t like people with blonde in their hair because I don’t trust them”. Well now if your hair has blonde and you have ever done something that made you question you own trustworthiness, then you take it personally. Suddenly, your RAS wakes up and being the perfect research assistant that it is, you can become overwhelmed by evidence found by your RAS.
When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
When you take things personally, you set yourself up to suffer. As we really see our own stories for what they are instead of taking things personally, we can never be hurt by what they say or do.
Think about the last time you got cut off in traffic. What stories did you tell yourself about the person who got in front of you?
They are out to get me
They cut me off
they are a jerk
Or dangerous
Instead, consider the following:
They may be having a hard day.
They may be having a hard life.
They may have been traumatized by a past traffic accident.
We may have triggered their survival fear, which led to their fight/flight response.
You actually don’t know why someone cuts you off, including that they might have not even seen you! As you believe the first stories in your head about how they did this thing “to” you, you give them power over you. You give them power to affect your day, your peace, your mood. It’s almost like handing over your personal power to another person and letting them dictate how you are going to feel or react in a situation.
Even the opinion you have about yourself isn’t necessarily true.
It's about your stories too...
“In the end, you will find that you don't need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.”
Unnecessary constant re-evaluation of your self esteem or responsibility in any situation can be emotionally draining! It’s not productive. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to learn to trust yourself.
When you live this agreement and don’t take things personally, you can live with an open heart, sharing when you feel safe and not trying to rescue, control, hide or even hurt someone else.
Let things go, look at situations as learning opportunities. Use hard trials to learn from, change what you can control, and the rest go.
How can you avoid doing the same to others? Speak using I statements
Give yourself space, you aren’t going to be perfect at this immediately.