The One Realization That Will Change Your Life

It’s not about you.

When I married the first time, I was 23 years old. Old enough to know better but too naive to know anything. I spent year after painful year reacting to another person’s anger, changing my behavior to keep the peace, and watching myself morph into someone I didn’t like.

I’m going to tell you something that will be difficult to hear and understand. But once you realize it, you are free! Forever free to be who you are and to feel what you feel.

How people behave is completely and totally dependent on their own experiences, their personal history, and how they feel about themselves.

It has nothing — -NOTHING — to do with you.

The Futile Question

Too often in relationships, we argue, we fight, we confess, we poke fun, and we experience the whole thing as if what we’re doing is stirring up the reactions of the other person. Under that assumption is the belief that what I’m doing is creating their responses to me.

So when things go wrong we end asking “What did I do?”

Nothing. You didn’t do anything. That person responded the way they did because of who they are, because of their internal belief system, their history and how they feel about themselves.

One night my then-husband wasn’t coming home after going to play pool with his buddies. I don’t know why, but I decided to check his email. There I found conversations and pictures between him and the other woman. My children were in bed and my stomach was revolting.

As the weeks of confrontation drug on, I kept asking “What I had done?” “What was wrong with me?” and “Why wasn’t I good enough?”

Eventually I figured out — it wasn’t me! If someone is going to cheat on you, it’s because of a character flaw in their system, not my system.

Stop asking “What did I do?” or “Was it me?”

These questions are futile and won’t help you figure out the actions of the other person. Because it’s not about you.

Don’t Take It Personally

This is a tough one. When we’re interacting with family members, with spouses, or with loved ones and they gush love we tend to think that it’s because we’re lovable.

But it’s not about us. They love us because they are capable of giving love.

And when they erupt anger, we think it’s because we’re bad and we’ve ignited the flame.

But that’s not true either. It’s because they are capable of releasing negative spew all over their world and loved ones.

But It’s So Hard

Why is it so hard not to take things personally?

Because as infants and children the world revolved around us.

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and pioneer in developmental psychology who showed that young children believe everyone sees exactly what they are seeing. This tendency to believe that ‘the way I see the world is the way you see the world’ fades with growth and maturity. Eventually, we are able to imagine what another person is seeing from across the room and that it’s not what we’re seeing.

The ability to see the world from another point of view is not the same as empathy. According to Dr. Daniel Siegel, the capacity to respond to someone’s feelings develops at a very young age. Because empathy and mono-perception are tied with a bow from birth, it’s difficult for children to sort out where their selves begin and end. It’s hard to know the difference between their experiences and the experiences of those around them. It’s a vulnerable place to be because sometimes the distinction gets lost.

Maturity allows us to realize that we are not the center of the universe and that other people have feelings and experiences that are not ours. Eventually we recognize that our perceptions are not the only ones. What complicates things is that it’s not always easy to figure out the perspective of another person. So we end up taking things personally.

The Right Question to Ask

When things go wrong in relationships, instead of asking “What did I do,” cast the net wider. Contemplate what the words or behaviors say about that person.

What does your mother’s criticism say about her? What does your father’s absence from your soccer games say about him? What does your boss’ daily failure to say hello say about her?

You don’t have to pretend that the person didn’t say awful things to or about you. You don’t have to ignore that your colleagues are sharing water-cooler whispers every afternoon. Ignoring and pretending are not how not to take things personally. The best way to set aside the personal element in your brain is to recognize that their words and behaviors speak volumes about their character and nothing about yours.

Read Your Own Book

Trying to measure your value by the behaviors of others is like going to the library and trying to figure out what’s in your book by reading the books of other people. You’d never do that.

Let them have their books. You read your book.

And when you get triggered to ask “What did I do?” or to take it personally, take out your book and flip over to the page that says, “Other people’s behaviors are not about me.”