How to Stop Taking Things so Personally
TAKING THINGS PERSONALLY
It’s difficult not to take things personally, isn’t it? After all, you spend your life relating to your special identity as a separate self. Everything you experience is reflected back into the personal identification with the “I.”
Think about it for a minute. When someone you know is telling you a personal story, do you reflect it back to yourself? Do you wonder what you would do in that situation, or what it would be like to experience it yourself? If someone explains an experience they have had, do you share your relatable story? Do you take things personally? Are you easily offended when someone has a different opinion than yours?
If you are being honest with yourself, you probably answered yes to all of the above questions. At least for some portion of your life. This is a very natural response for the ego mind. The ego only knows itself. Therefore, anything you encounter with your ego mind, will certainly become personal. It will become part of your personal unique story of life.
During spiritual awakening and transformation, the awareness within becomes so strong you begin to see the ego clearly. This doesn’t mean you will be able to detach from it immediately. In fact, you might even notice the ego rising up looking to make itself even more important as you begin to see through it. Don’t be alarmed if this happens. It will simply give you a greater opportunity to learn the inside scoop of your ego’s game of trickery.
ATTACHED TO EGO IDENTITY
If you think it will be easy to detach from your ego, think again. For people who don’t think they are attached to their identity, just watch what happens when your life starts to unravel, or you are thrusted into some sort of awakening process, a tragedy hits home, or life decides to do the unexpected. You will soon realize just how attached you are to your identity.
When you begin to lose things in your life, the ego may become devastated. However, nothing is more devastating than when the ego begins to lose itself. Losing yourself, totally and completely will bring you into a whole new level of understanding of just how strong your belief in your personal story truly is. It’s only when you begin to lose it that you begin to see it. Until then, the illusion of life is believed to be real.
There are two basic concepts the ego uses to keep you attached to this entire personalized system.
Separation Between All Form.
Making the Illusion Real.
Separation Between All Form: The ego uses separation as a main object of defense against you waking up to your spiritual nature. Having a separate body, separate mind, along with a projected divided world all around you, makes it difficult to realize the connection you have to spirit.
Using separation repeatedly in life through groups, status, ethnicity, religion, culture, gender, politics, education, financial earnings, endless competition, and opposing beliefs makes the ego the center of attention. All the demographics, categories, and labels people are thrown into keeps the ego’s need for division alive and well.
Notice if you find yourself getting attached to a specific group you identify with. It’s one thing to enjoy being around like minded people, yet quite another to believe others are wrong for thinking or believing differently.
Making the Illusion Real: The ego uses its main tool of separation to make the illusion feel as real as humanly possible. And what a glorious job it does! Look at how the world of form appears solid, it appears real. Yet even science will tell you that the objects we see are simply made up of particles and the solid object is not inherently real.
The ego has created one giant distraction. An enormous world stage full of constant theatrics and you are playing a different role on any given day. Watch in your daily life how quickly you get sucked into the drama, how quickly you stand behind your position, and how personal you take a comment from a stranger. It’s automatic.
Because the eyes see form and separate objects everywhere, it reaffirms to the ego mind that each one of us is a special individual self disconnected from the whole. Everything you see is reflected back inward into the center point within, or the “I.”
Not only does the physical world reinforce this is real, but your mental positioning, beliefs, and opinions provide even more support for making the illusions real. Ideas, ideologies, philosophies, and theories set the tone for making everything in this dual world real.
During awakening, you are shown the complete opposite. Your identity is slowly stripped away, your beliefs are blown up before your very eyes, and what you believed to be true no longer holds up. Now you are questioning anything and everything. Your attachment to yourself and the world around you is slowly dying, and the supposed real world in front of you, seems like one giant contradiction.
IT’S NOT PERSONAL - REMOVING THE “I”
If you are waking up from the illusion of the small personal self and you are actively looking at your ego mind, the first thing to remember is don’t beat yourself up when you act out of from the ego’s position. The mere fact that you are seeing it is all that is necessary.
If you are striving for perfection, what part of your mind is still involved here? You got it! Your ego! Be aware of how easily the ego will slip into your own spiritual journey of awakening too. Anytime your mind is taking ownership over something, seeking an expected outcome, or actively judging your current experience, you know this is the ego at work.
At some point in your undoing process, it will hit you that even the hell of losing your identity is not personal. The only aspect making spiritual awakening personal is your ego. When you are truly joining with your spiritual side, there is nothing personal about it. You realize the greater essence is part of the whole, it is part of all things, and no one has ownership over it. You feel joined with others no matter what the external world is trying to display.
Here are a few things to think about if you are taking things personally and seek another way to experience life:
Listen to others explain their story and notice when you are personally interjecting yourself. Watch when you want to one up the other person with a better story. Work to listen to another person completely detached from yourself. When you do this, you will be much more available to help them if they need it because it won’t be about you.
If you become offended by what someone has said to you, if you are taking something personally, acknowledge that you are bothered by the comment. Then, when you are ready, look to see:
What is it exactly that triggers you to react in this way?
Are you relating the comment to a previous experience that is no longer happening?
Are you holding onto something you no longer need to?
Why do you care what they think of you?
Does it matter what they think?
Can you respect why the person is taking this position?
Can you get into their mind and understand why this situation has occurred?
When you become angry, upset, or bothered by what someone else is doing, or what they are saying, or what a group of people is doing, you are taking it personally. Ask yourself the following:
Why does it matter to me what they are doing?
Do you think you know what is best for them?
Do you think you know more than them? Do you see yourself from a superior position?
Do you see how they could do something better or more efficiently and you want to inform them? Yet, maybe they need to go down a certain path to wake up?
Do you need to waste your energy worrying about what someone else is deciding for themselves?
Can you trust that spirit is not only available for you to relax and not take this personally, but spirit is available for them as well?
Is it possible that you see yourself in this person and you don’t like what you see?
CONCLUSION
Taking things personally is rooted in your ego identity. It doesn’t know any other way. When you begin to wake up from the ego’s dream, you will slowly but surely notice when you are taking things personally. You won’t like it, and you will work to observe yourself, detach from the story of becoming so involved in your mental theatrics, that taking a step back will become natural.
Inquiring within your own mind will become habitual and eventually matters you previously attached to will no longer have meaning. You will prefer a de-personalized life experience with your spiritual boundless nature.