[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat would you do if your best friend randomly slapped you?
a) Slap them back?
b) Turn away and cry?
c) Turn the other cheek?
d) Ask them to lets talk about it, in order to find out why,
You know what? I could add loads and loads of options to this list right? I had this happen to me in the last week, it was pretty amazing really as I was totally blindsided.
So what would you do? When we go about out daily life, whether its in our business or our personal life, it often easy to forget that we do not necessarily have the same goal desires as the people we interact with or we have interpreted the same goal differently. In my case the latter was true, and so the slap to me came as a big shift in how I perceived my relationship with this person. So I did not take the slap personally, because that is them, reacting to how they see the things, what they want, its not about I wanted or about how I saw the goal. Eric Worre in his book Go Pro, tells you that the first rule of going pro in your networking marketing business is to detach yourself from the outcome, as in you you are not looking for a new customer you re looking to help someone or to educate them. Now don’t go off thinking well that does not apply to ones personal life because it does. I know we are emotionally invested in our family and friends, and so when we don’t agree or are not on the same page it can hurt, but that does not mean that we can’t apply his principle. Lets put it another way, Don Miguel Ruiz in his book the Four Agreements, has agreement no 2 as Don’t take stuff personally. When you take it personally you are agreeing with what is being said or what you feel it implies, so you need to think about how you act in response to it. You are only in control of your own thoughts and your own actions. If you feel a particular way due to the actions of another person, you are not only giving that person control over you, you are making yourself easy prey for other negative feelings that can bring you down.
How not to take things personally
- Stay calm
- Recognise that people act on their own desires, thoughts and feelings, their actions and statements are about them, not you.
- For any negative feeling that may arise, examine the evidence, what is the truth in what has been said? What is the context around this evidence? Have you made assumptions about what the other party may be thinking or what their rationale is?
- Look at the situation for what it is, do not bring in past events that are not relevant.
- Know your own self worth, and understand that you are not defined by other peoples’s opinion of you.
- This may be hard, but think that you may actually have deserved the slap, although having said that, the reverse is also true the other party should not be taking what you have done personally, and so on and so forth.
- Have you made assumptions about your position, i.e the value the other party places on your relationship.
There are not many situations that have to be deal breakers in relationships, but if we take everything personally and make lots of assumptions, jumps to conclusions etc then many more things do become deal breakers or at the very least make relationships more tense than they need to be.
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