How To Not Take Things Personally

Every time something someone says or does starts to affect me, I think of the phrase “how to not take things personally” and I find that the mere act of thinking this grounds me back into reality.

To not take things personally, you just have to distance yourself from what’s said. Find the phrase that distances you from a situation and then remember a few things:

1) No matter what, you are not the most (annoying/bad/mean/sad/pathetic/insert your own mean-to-yourself word here) person in the world. A lot of the pain we feel is mostly what we do to ourselves and less what the situation actually does to us. No matter what some person says/does, other people see you differently. The person that said/did this thing to you is also the same word in someone else’s eyes.

2) If you truly don’t like a part of your personality, work on yourself. This does not mean that you should take every input as something you need to change though. Filter your thoughts and filter the inputs from external sources.

As a writer, editors give us some great advice that I think applies in real life as well.

– Don’t get random beta readers for your work. Asking a nonfiction reader to read and critique your sci fi/fantasy novel will not be great. Having someone whose values you don’t agree with or who doesn’t have a significant role in your life (and thus has limited view of who you are) critique you will be just as futile.

– Don’t edit something until three people say something about it. Now three is no magic number, but essentially this advice is saying that if you take every single input and change based on it, you will never stop trying to edit yourself. Nobody will like 100% of anything. Figure out meaningful trends and assess how your actions align with your values.

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