The One Piece of Advice to Make Life More Manageable

Increase your energy and reduce drama.

Under the best of circumstances, I am a reactive person. I grew up in a reactive household. My father had a temper. He could move a room of people into silence with his seething rage. Like a volcano about to erupt — even people meeting him for the first time could feel when he was about to explode. The worse thing about his temper was that it was unpredictable. Something that set him off one day wouldn’t set him off the next.

And vice versa.

As a result, I was always on my toes, anxious, and walking on eggshells. It gave me early practice and sharpened my skills in reading people’s energy in a room of strangers, which serves me well. When I see crazy coming, I cross to the other side of the street.

But growing up in an emotionally unpredictable household made me a reactive person.

Early childhood experiences can mold you into the reactive or non-reactive person you become in adulthood.

According to Tara Brach, Ph.D., therapist and author of Radical Acceptance, “Neuropsychology tells us that traumatic abuse causes lasting changes by affecting our physiology, nervous system and brain chemistry.”

One piece of advice that changed how I think about reactivity and presence is

don’t take anything personally.

It seems obvious, yet far too often, we don’t heed this advice.

In the book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, by don Miguel Ruiz, there is an entire chapter on not taking things personally.

When I practiced this wisdom, my life and relationships altered significantly. I no longer feel drained. I have a lot more energy for things that matter — like creating.

Non-reaction and not taking things personally.

Not taking other people’s actions personally is similar to non-reaction.

Why?

Because if you don’t take anything personally, you have nothing to react to. In other words, this — insert another person’s drama directed at you — has little to do with you.

(Caveat — I’m not suggesting you have to put up with people’s mistreatment of you)

Even when their drama is directed squarely at you, don’t take it personally.

Someone cuts you off in traffic, it’s not you. It’s them.

Someone disparages you for not doing such and such the “right” way. Not you, them.

Someone writes a nasty comment on your blog post, not you. Them.

Someone calls you an unkind name and gives you the finger after you accidentally turned into their lane because they were in your blind spot. Their reaction, calling you a name and giving you the finger, is not you, but them.

Yes, you cut them off. Yet their response has little to do with you, but with their own place in reality, they are living in their mind, their reality. Which has little to do with your mind, your reality and the fact that you cut them off.

Even if someone has an affair with your husband, it has little to do with you, but them. It is your choice to walk away or not. And how you react to the affair, is you, not them.

Internalizing this knowledge with practice is how I stopped allowing others to control my emotions.

When someone insults you, slams you emotionally, belittles your talent — it’s not about you. Let me repeat that. It is not about you.

It is about them.

What they are going through and what their reality is.

Taking things personally makes you easy prey for those predators who try to send you emotional poison. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you all their emotional garbage. When you take it personally, you eat it up, and now it becomes your garbage. — The Four Agreements

You don’t want their garbage.

Signs you are taking it personally.

You know you’re taking things personally when you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs, which usually creates conflict.

We see this play out often on social media platforms, like Facebook, or anywhere there is a comment section.

Many people defend their beliefs, take strong stances, and take things personally when people disagree with them like it’s a personal insult. The current political climate has only exacerbated the defending of opinions.

How often do you read a comment from a Facebook “friend” changing their mind on a political issue, making a complete 180 and writing, “you are totally correct, I see your point. Wow, my stance was completely misinformed. Thank you for educating me.”

Never.

Because far too often, people take things personally. As if our opinions have to be heard on every single issue and validated, and if people disagree, well then, it’s personal.

It isn’t.

It has to do with the perspective and the reality of other person. As soon as you realize it has nothing to do with you, your life will change.

Stop living reactively.

When we live reactively, we live by other people’s standards, whims, and fears.

Most people live by other people’s terms, but when we practice non-reaction, we live by our own terms and are less susceptible to others’ emotional manipulations.

Why we react the way we do.

Most of the time, we react from our most traumatic self and from emotions that were encoded in our neural pathways — the matrix from which we operate that many of us are not conscious of — programmed from early childhood experiences.

As children, most of us were unable to fully express our emotions, nor did we have the help of an adult educated in the subtle nuances of emotional mastery. For many of us, this often leads to the suppression of emotions and to a reactive self.

Our emotions come forward in reactive ways; when we are over-sad, over-anxious, over-angry, or over-agitated, our machine — our neural network — takes over.

Many of us are programmed to react.

Manage emotions and take down the temperature.

There are a couple of ways to gain emotional mastery and stop existing patterns to prevent emotions from running us, so we gain personal control.

One. Therapy.

This is probably the best way. Especially if you have unresolved childhood issues you haven’t dealt with. It is expensive, worth it, and not necessary a lifelong commitment.

Once you figure out what your patterns are and why they come up, you will have an easier time noticing them and stopping them.

As the psychologist, Carl Jung, said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Find someone you click with and can talk to.

Two. Remain in the present.

Mindfulness and awareness are the keys to re-conditioning our brains to a place of non-reaction and power.

That’s why meditation practice is so powerful, even when you meditate for a few minutes a day. You don’t have to live in a Buddhist monastery to benefit from meditation; several minutes a day is effective.

Three. Get acquainted with your body.

One way to become fully present and not reactive is to become aware of your body and its sensations at the point of irritation, anger, fear, or pain.

If we are not living with an awareness of our body, we are not fully alive.

When you notice that you’re clenching your jaw or your shoulders are up to your ears, you can make an adjustment. Deep breathing offers a natural pathway out of our minds and into our bodies.

Again, Tara Brach says,

“We cannot cut through our chain of reactions if we are not mindful of sensations.”

Listening to how your body feels and what sensations are coming up when you have the urge to react negatively grounds you and returns you to the present moment.

Always return to your breath when you are feeling anxiety, fear, or anger. This will center you immediately. Return to the body and notice where you are feeling tension.

Because our pleasant or unpleasant sensations so quickly trigger a chain reaction of emotions and mental stories, a central part of our training is to recognize the arising of thoughts and return over and over to our immediate sensory experience. — Radical Acceptance

Let go of the stories, go more in-depth by dropping into the sensations of your body. This will ground you and bring you into the present.

When these sensations are unrecognized, our lives are lost in the waterfall of reactivity — we disconnect from living presence, from full awareness, from our heart. — Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

To make this shift, keep the following in mind.

By not reacting, you take back your emotional power.

• Nothing others think or say is really about you, even the good stuff.
• Other people see the world with different eyes.
• Everyone has a different truth.
• Your truth will be different from someone else’s reality.
• If someone gets mad at you, they’re dealing with their own stuff.
• You aren’t in other people’s minds that much, and you’d be surprised how little people’s thoughts are about you.
• When you take things personally, it means you agree with what someone is accusing you of, and you don’t have to.
• You can choose not to allow it to affect you by not giving other people’s opinions any space in your brain.
• Notice how you body feels before you react. Concentrate on relaxing those areas that are tense.

How this shift will change your life.

Being non-reactive to unfortunate events is the least draining way to manage life; perspective is how we handle the roller coaster life has everyone on.

When reactions are involuntary (meaning, when responses are automatic and without forward-thinking), the result is a feeling of disempowerment. Dropping into the sensations of how your body is feeling in the moment will bring you awareness. And lead you away from conflict and drama, giving you more energy to give to things in life that feed you.

Being the only one in control of your thoughts and emotions is freeing and empowering. You can choose to not give any emotion to anything you don’t want to.

When you practice non-reaction you deepen the connection with yourself. It doesn’t matter what others think; it only matters how you react.

More on not the art of nonreaction…

Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.