How Not to Take Things so Personally
Do you get sick and tired of the way you take things so personally? It’s a really common problem for many people, be sure you are not alone here! You might have already tried millions of times to grow some thicker skin. You’ve told yourself almost like a mantra “I’ll pay no attention no matter what,” but it still doesn’t work for you? When we do our best to overcome that disastrous thing that is followed by “too personally,” oh, really it seems like a curse, isn’t it? It looks like you are doing worse than it has been before, as you became angry and irritated. Of course, you are! How can anybody keep still when any possible thing might drive you crazy because you get used to taking everything close to your heart?
We do know the way you feel. Let’s try to figure out what can be done as this problem isn’t an easy one to solve for sure.
How Not to Take Things Personally: A Practical Guide
The suggested tips are the ones that will help you to reduce the hurt, anger, and stress in your life. We must fight with negativity and nervous attacks once they appear in our lives and stop taking even minor burdensome too personally.
1. Breathing helps
All you need is just to concentrate on your breathing, even a few breaths make the difference. Amazingly, but it does calm down and quiets you and your body.
When you concentrate properly on the air which should go in and out of your nose, you simply forget about anything else. Doing this everything goes in the background, your breathing that the only thing now that really matters.
By the way, it’s a great tool to overcome the possible attack of anger and irritation with all their consequences. It’s like boiling water which you take off the stove before it gets its boiling temperature.
2. Keep in mind that you might have just misunderstood.
Say “No” to immediate conclusions, get clarification instead. It may be just a misunderstanding so it’s much better to ask again than let that crazy stuff to piss you off. The other person might have never meant that you’ve heard. Don’t base your conclusions on the doubtful arguments. Don’t feel like you got it right? Ask again to clarify everything, that’s so simple, isn’t it?
3. It isn’t about you, poor thing.
Such a common situation when you believe that everything that has been said a while ago is about you. It’s like someone was talking about the naughtiest child in the supermarket and you surely start worrying. Are you serious? It’s okay that you don’t have any children?
Not every verbal attack or stream of criticism that you receive relates to you! In addition, in 99% it has nothing in common with you! The world doesn’t revolve around you, just in case you might have thought this way.
It may be about someone else just having a bad morning or their naughty child. Remind yourself that the next time even the slightest thought to take things personally will come up.
4. Take it as a push to improve yourself.
What if a particular attack of criticism is something so obvious for you, but you never want to work on that, let’s say your weak point. In this case, it may be an extremely useful thing. What if it’s something that could actually help you to grow and become a better person ever?
You can’t even imagine how greatly “this push to action” helps! You are stimulated to move forward and continue working on your personal growth. You know, sometimes this received attack of criticism is the best help you could ever be given! Because you do have motivation and reasons to move forward and be unstoppable in your exciting process of transforming.
5. You need to work on your self-esteem.
Once you start improving your self-esteem, everything around will unexpectedly gain another meaning. No one says that it’s bad to get under your skin, no, no way, but you should limit that sort of thing. Especially when taking things too personally is your daily habit.
To deal with this bad habit, you need to learn how to keep a distance from things and have a healthier perspective on them.
Think of yourself as about your best friend, be kind and soft, treat yourself nice, because if not you first do it to yourself, who else will do that?