Happy Sunday! I hope you’re staying in good health with your loved ones 🙏🏾
Main points:
We only take the words of others personally when we believe them for ourselves.
We must consistently be mindful of what we take personally.
Only we know our true worth + only we can let someone else lower it.
I’ve been trying to take things less personally for a while now and fortunately, I had a lot of breakthroughs with it in 2020. A lot of my 20’s have been spent unnecessarily reacting to people and things around me. It was mental and socially destructive.
However, I attribute most of my growth this year to a more systematic approach than I’ve ever had before. So in this newsletter, I’m going to share with you what I did this year and what I think you could do over the next few months to take things less personally and feel better with the people around you.
01 Keep a “I took that personally” journal
Being mindful of what we take personally is an absolute minimum for feeling better. I know it’s not easy to face our perceived shortcomings but we will never heal without self-awareness. At the beginning of the year, I started noting down some of the things that I often took personally as those feelings came through.
For example
13 Feb: “I took it personally when person X said Y about Z”
19 Feb: “I didn’t feel great when person X said my work lacked Y”
When you start creating a simple list like this, you will see a pattern glaring back at you.
02 Analyze why this pattern exists
You will notice certain subjects and people that trigger you more than others. I definitely found that to be the case. Upon introspection, I linked a lot of it to specific experiences in the past that made me dissatisfied about myself.
So whenever it’s brought up by others, it triggers the ‘pain’ within me. Again, this is not an easy process, but you will find that you won’t even take the shittiest things personally unless you believed those things for yourself.
03 Decide whether to act or accept
Once you’ve identified certain self-beliefs and constructs that, when highlighted, bring ‘pain’ within, you have a choice - do something about it or engage in acceptance. About half of the things I took personally, I decided to accept. For the rest, I needed to make a plan for change immediately.
04 When it’s time to act
The reality is that most of our dissatisfaction and insecurities that cause us to take things more personally can be wiped out with a handful of habits. Whether it’s about your weight, your income or your lack of viral tik tok dance moves, you know there are habits that you’ve been neglecting for a while. You might be reading this and thinking yeah duh, obviously, but what do I do to move forward.
The thing is, by being more mindful and transparent with yourself about your dissatisfaction, you are more likely to carry out these habits than ever before. You will also engage in more self-compassion because you know exactly what needs to be done. And remember, it has nothing to do with you really, it’s just about more action.
05 When it’s time to accept
Finally, in many cases, there are things from our past and present that we’ll never be able to truly change. With this, I suggest you write down a set of insecurity-related affirmations to read every morning. Even better, write those affirmations on post-it notes and put them up around your home.
These affirmations have been soft reminders for me that I have intentionally tried to accept what I cannot change. It still sucks sometimes that I’m not the person I’d like to be, but each day gets a little bit easier when we have gentle reminders.
That’s all from me today! I hope you found this useful and I hope you try it out for yourself. Let’s work on ourselves in 2021 and achieve a level of self-satisfaction that can help us feel better and achieve more in everything we do. 🙏🏾
Arun.
If you have any thoughts or questions, do drop me an email to hello@arunjayaraj.com or a DM on my Instagram. If you know someone who might find this useful, I would truly appreciate it if you share this with them!
About Me
My name is Arun and I'm a 4th-year medical student at King's College London. I'm also a certified personal trainer and fitness photographer.
How to take things less personally in 2021
Good advice, Arun. A couple of Dont’s
1.Don’t jump to conclusions too quickly when you are being confronted.
2.Don’t make assumptions about judgment or criticism seemingly directed at you. Maybe it’s not about you at all, but about them and their own projected perceptions. In fact, it’s almost always about them, their issues, their needs, and their desire to control you and/or a situation.