The Human Personality has one major flaw in it… the limitation of taking things personally. We tend to hear and absorb communication through this limitation and make things about ourselves or take things as a personal attack. There is nothing more disempowering then taking something personally…

When I began my true self development work, I began to realize, how this inner flaw limited my growth, limited my perceptions, ensured I stayed in an EGO state, and left me feeling disempowered and off purpose. When I began to gain clarity on what my true values are and what positive emotions I wanted to feel, I began to have clarity that this flaw had to be healed and released in order for me to develop and live my true essence and purpose. So, in order to align myself with my highest values, I set myself a few rules, and here is rule #1…

DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY!

My first step was to gain awareness and understanding as to why I was taking everything personally. I began to observe myself and notice the point of disempowerment. I began to question those feelings and challenge myself… I began to coach myself through the layers of emotion to understand what was going on and what was leading me to take things personally. And as I journeyed into these emotions…there was the EGO, there was the hurt inner child viewing the world from her limiting beliefs…

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the EGO has 3 core fears which shape our perceptions…I am not worthy, I am not loved and I am not good enough. As a child I built a strong limiting belief of feeling not good enough to be loved. I felt that I did not belong, was not accepted for myself, was different to others and was not loved. These limiting beliefs (which seem quite funny now) shaped my perceptions, especially in my relationships because being in a relationship would expose the vulnerability of my fear and therefore when my partner would say something to me, which threatened my EGO or my fear, I would take it personally. I would be left feeling unloved and unworthy.

Worst off, what I did not realize, was that I was giving them(men) all my power, as their beliefs about me defined my self esteem and self worth…if I was loved…I was worthy and if they were unhappy then there was something wrong with me and I would be left to feel disempowered and sad.

And then I discovered the place of Self Love… I discovered who I truly am and what truly makes up my self worth. I gave myself the power back and decided to focus on my true virtues rather then the need to be loved.

The first negative emotion I explored was anger. There was so much anger and resentment buried deep within, and as I worked through that anger I discovered value #1. My first value I defined for myself was Compassion.

Compassion I define as the opposite emotion to anger. Compassion is having a detached love and acceptance for myself…I embrace my strengths and I observe my weaknesses with truth and integrity and access continually how I can strengthen those weaknesses. And sometimes, to lighten my emotion even further, I use good old humour to laugh off those weaknesses.

When I began to have compassion for myself I began to feel empowered and magically I began to have compassion for others. I began to notice, and observe my “limiting belief” from a distance…I began to detach myself from that belief…and when I did I observed how much I would take personally…how much I would miss out on when I slipped into fear. I reminded myself that FEAR stands for FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL and began to notice that there was more going on then my limited perceptions were noticing. I began to become aware and listen to a person from compassion.

What this began to mean was when I heard a comment, which sounded as if it was an attack, I could first say to myself…DO NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY… BE COMPASSIONATE… and as I brought myself to that focus I began to notice a lot more in that other person. As I threw in some great NLP techniques, this became a powerful emotional state I began to embrace. And the more I embraced it the more my outer world began to change…or better said…as my inner perceptions and focus shifted, my outer reality transformed. Now I can break my process of compassion into six steps…

1. Ego Awareness
   The first step is to recognize the EGO and have the self awareness of taking on the energy or emotion and taking it personally. Without this step we subconsciously slip into EGO and negative emotions- we allow the habitual reptilian brain to put us into fight or flight and limit our perceptions and thoughts.
2. Protect my own energy field
   Protecting my own energy field was a powerful first step I learnt to help me not take anything personally as I realized that not only was I going into fear but I was also taking on another person’s energy. As I took on their energy I would experience an energy loss and would be left feeling disempowered. At the time I was seeing a therapist who taught me a great technique of wrapping myself in figure 8’s. I visualize a figure 8 coming out from my belly in front of me and behind, above my head and below my feet, extending from my shoulder to heal and each side and diagonally from each hip. Once I was wrapped and protected in my own energy I was shielded and could observe the situation from a protected and detached viewpoint. It also helped me stay energized and focused.
3. Perception is projection
   One of the major reasons why we take anything personally is because of what I now call the YOU MISSILE. People throw a you missile at us as the say…You always do this ….or You made me so angry or you really hurt me…etc etc… As the subconscious mind hears the word you, we have a natural tendency to first take that personally and then defend ourselves. When we begin to realize that perception is projection we begin to see that when a person throws us a YOU Missile– the you really means I because what ever they are seeing in us is a reflection of what is within them. If someone says to me…you are a very sad person, for example, they can only see sad in me if it exists in them because our inner perceptions create our outer projections.
   This is a complex concept to grasp, however when you do, it is very powerful because you begin to notice that what a person is projecting at us or verbally purging at us, is actually a fear, limiting belief, emotional block or reality within them. And this then leads us to step.
4. Going beyond empathy

Once we observe that what they are projecting at us is an inner fear or belief about themselves we can begin to have sympathy towards them. Then we can move into Empathy as we can begin to relate to what they are feeling.

And from empathy we can move into the powerful place of compassion whereby we detach emotionally and accept them for who they are and their own limitations. The more compassion we build within the more we can return to a state of love- the complete antithesis to fear. In a state of love we can observe that person and move into step #5…

Compassionate Listening

Stephen Covey labeled this best by what he phrased as Listening to Understand, not respond. When we embrace compassion, without taking anything personally, and when we begin to notice that a person is directing their inner fears at us, then we can begin to listen from compassion. We can begin to listen to understand and accept them without making it about us. We begin to look deeper into that person and understand what is coming up for them and what is motivating this perspective. We notice that their intention is not to attack us but their intention is actually to express this inner fear of theirs. We begin to let go of our own perceptions and rise to a higher level of awareness.

We are basically directing the energy or the conversation back to them rather then taking it on board ourselves. Of course there may be a part of us that needs to hear what the person is saying and take it on as personal growth, however we can do that through empowerment and without taking it personally.

Again this involves accepting them AND accepting ourselves, if it is a worthy point of constructive criticism then we can observe it and allow those judgments to be used as suggestions towards our growth. Either way we are not falling into the trap of taking anything personally and sinking into anger. We stay energized, empowered and move towards having compassion for ourselves…step #6. (I will elaborate more on compassionate listening in further posts).

1. Compassion for myself

Self compassion means I strive to be my best self Always and avoid the EGO trap of sinking into habitual, child like thoughts. It means that my expression of this best self moves me into a place of Grace and a place of self respect which speaks louder to me then defending myself or needing to prove myself for the sake of being right.

It means that all my behavior leads me to feeling proud of myself and empowered. It means that I do not let negative people bring me down, so any person which now challenges me becomes a great teacher to push me into this powerful place. It means that I can listen on a deep level to another person which has allowed me to see into their heart and see their pain…therefore I can observe them, protect myself myself, observe what they are reflecting in me and stay in love. Therefore it means I remain in my purpose of BEING LOVE in all times.

I acknowledge that this process is not easy, I acknowledge that the EGO holds on for dear life to feeling angry and wanting to be right. However, when you experience the joy and self satisfaction from being your true values, that overrides the EGO and leaves to great feelings of confidence, self respect and empowerment.

“Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival – to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.” Steven Covey, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’

Enjoy