The art of not taking things personally

https://medium.dave-bailey.com/the-art-of-not-taking-things-personally-b7a8395ce172

by LoriP • 5 years ago

451 158 5 years ago

I think the world would be better if more people practiced the suggestions in this page. Many humans lack compassion. People on all sides of all issues behave due to similar fundamental reasons: fear, uncertainty, anxiety. If people looked past the superficial and helped comfort people who are unlike them in addition to those who are similar, we might be able to find solutions to more issues.

zwkrt• 5 years ago

As I get older, the less I identify as my current state and the more I identify with the person who transitions through states. My change in perspective has reduced my anxieties and anger significantly. "This too shall pass" and all that. The more of my self image is focused on superficial things, the more I will take things personally. What we are angry about tends to be a reflection of ourselves more than the current state of affairs.

If I see myself as a busy professional I might be much more aggravated by someone at the grocery store holding up the checkout line with EBT (since I am busy they must be lazy!). If I see myself as a social climber I will always be worrying if people are using me for something (since I am using them!). If I identify with my wealth I might develop some neurosis regarding the sight of the homeless (since they represent ultimate failure!).

I don't believe in reincarnation but it is a helpful thought experiment to think about what benefits and drawbacks your particular incarnation of life holds and how those might be different if you were incarnated elsewhere.

mcguire2• 5 years ago

That's interesting and well-put!

I've thought for a long time that the world is, in a sense, a mirror: what you see out there is a reflection of yourself. A social climber worrying about being used is a part of that I hadn't considered before.

scns7• 5 years ago

In psychology it is called projection.

dQw4w9WgXcQ• 5 years ago

There's many degrees of accuracy for truth that have nothing to do with ourselves. What you see and experience generally can reach a high level of accuracy -> "He is already an L6 by 30."

It is the motives and reasons behind events that are most subject to gap filling with our personal experiences "He must be climbing the corporate ladder."

When the Bible (via Jesus) speaks about judging, it is referring to being cautious with assessing motives, not drawing conclusions about factual happenings.

SkipperCat• 5 years ago

So true. I read an article ago where they studied aging and they found that everything about a person degrades, eyesight, strength, cognition, etc with the exception of impulse control and patience. As you age, you mellow out and are less tethered to knee jerk reactions.

For me, as someone approaching 'early geezerdom', I see it in my work interactions. What used to bother me, I can now let pass.

scns7• 5 years ago

This progress can be be sped up with meditation.

foobiekr• 5 years ago

I've had this experience myself. Actually, your description is so much kinder than mine that I think I will adopt it. What I have said up until now is that as I've gotten older, my emotional level has declined very substantially, especially in the last ten years. It's like the volume got turned down. Very few things bother me, and very few things excite me. I'd associated it until now with a sort of depersonalization but instead I will identify as just being the thing that passes through different states of being.

They're kind of the same thing, but I'd feel less weird saying it the way you did.

only_as_i_fall• 5 years ago

You could just be depressed

packetlost• 5 years ago

That's me, except I'm in my early-mid 20s and I've always been like that. I describe it as being 'the opposite of neurotic' in a psychological sense.

weaksauce2• 5 years ago

you sure that's not a depressive episode worth talking to your doctor about? depression isn't just the stereotypical dread and angst that the movies typically display. it's more of a nothing tastes great anymore, I'm apathetic toward life, nothing excites me, etc.

scns7• 5 years ago

Aristoteles wrote this is the goal IIRC. In buddhism they aim for something similar, neither being swayed by your desires nor fears, stay calm enables being able to act instead only reacting to external stimuli on autopilot. Nothing wrong with it IMSO.

weitzj• 5 years ago

I had the strategy/mindset that when you are born you get a fixed credit on how you want to spend your emotions in life. When you are young you still have plenty of credit so you spend it on anger that other kids have a nicer laptop or whatever. When you get older you realize that you only have that much credit left to spend wisely on emotions in your life.

Pro tip from me: this mental model sounded nice in bad times. But I would not follow it again any more today, and I would say you have an endless credit of emotions if you want it. Saving your emotions for “the day when you need it” does not make sense any more to me and makes me more happy.

justinpombrio• 5 years ago

Very few things bother me, and very few things excite me.

In my view, this is perfectly natural. Your emotions are tied to your expectations. As you grow older, you have seen more things, and better know what to expect. The first time you drop your ice cream cone on the ground as a child, you learn that a delicious treat can be destroyed so easily! When you drop your ice cream cone on the ground as an adult, it's like yeah, well, that happens sometimes, and hey, I've had ice cream a hundred times and I'll have it another hundred times.

In other words, since the second time something happens to you is less noteworthy than the first time, fewer noteworthy things will happen to you per year as you get older. Less noteworthy events means less excitement and a faster apparent passage of time.

jareklupinski• 5 years ago

It's like the volume got turned down.

a bit tangental :) recently I was wearing headphones for a zoom meeting, when someone in the same apartment asked me if I could turn down the volume, since it was so loud they could hear everyone on the meeting even with my headset on.

I had not realized how loud I was turning the system volume up in meetings, and after being conscious to it and joining at half volume, I noticed my stress during meetings and around calls in general has gone down a lot.

flippinburgers• 5 years ago

I can relate. Everything is approaching a bland, grey state of "it just is".

Well, I do still talk down on and find myself frustrated by not progressing my career, but I think I am on a precipice of no longer caring. Reading HN too much is not good for my mental health though I suspect.

minusf• 5 years ago

Very few things bother me, and very few things excite me.

the bother part is fine, but i want to stay being excited even by everyday things like a good book, music, a small treat, a cup of coffee or a meal i just cooked for myself.

not worrying about everything does not have to mean not to be excited about everything.

(i guess it also comes down to how one defines "excited")

minikites• 5 years ago

Your comment is very well put and reminds me of this quote from Boethius:

It's my belief that history is a wheel. "Inconsistency is my very essence" -says the wheel- "Rise up on my spokes if you like, but don't complain when you are cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it is also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away".

BurningFrog• 5 years ago

This is a common development for men as we get older. I could write something similar.

I'd like to think I'm maturing and becoming wise.

But I suspect it's really the falling testosterone levels that come with age...

moneywoes• 5 years ago

Have you considered supplementation

annamargot• 5 years ago

Self-awareness is how I look at it. And it is finally taking hold with age :)

I can better manage my emotions by simply being able to recognize them almost from an outsider’s perspective. My inner monologue switches to 3rd person

“Yeah you’re feeling super irritable right now, you better go chill out somewhere before you say something you don’t mean and then create a whole big thing for no reason”

Younger me would have started some shit and created unnecessary problems

jasonladuke0311• 5 years ago

This is similar to how I approach cognitive biases; I cannot prevent them, as they are innate to human nature. But I posit that if I try to make myself aware of the influence of bias, it might be more managable/less impactful when it affects me.

gexla• 5 years ago

Right, I work to keep my identity small and to be adaptable. Making things "always about you" is seeing the world through that identity tainted lens and positioning the world as if you are the center. I instead try to be observational and LARP into any situation as if I'm in an improv show.

TedDoesntTalk• 5 years ago

Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away.

maybevain• 5 years ago

Aside, but for those like me who can't help but wonder: EBT (I believe) stands for electronic benefit transfer, apparently an electronic payment method issued by welfare departments in the USA.

MandieD• 5 years ago

Yes - it is the successor of food stamps. Every time I’m back home and see someone ahead of me paying with it, I say a prayer of thanks that I’ve never had to make do with it and another prayer that I never will.

roystonvassey• 5 years ago

"What we are angry about tends to be a reflection of ourselves more than the current state of affairs."

Absolutely. It is definitely hard to cut through all the fluff when we are emotional but this realization has helped me so many times and, this applies not just at work. Just as we are going through these states and the self-awareness is important, it helps to also realize that others are transiting too through these different states.

I'm reminded of an another thought that was shared here a while back that I try to remember often:

“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.”

― Adam Lindsay Gordon

aomobile• 5 years ago

I think the homeless don’t scare people necessarily because they are a what-might-be but rather because of being a what-is. In the us you might get a bad conscience if you see a homeless person but hey at least your salary is good. In Europe we pay so many taxes that it feels a bit different.

OneTimePetes• 5 years ago

In europe i feel anger on the state whos employees failed to rectify a situation i paid and worked hard so nobody has to experience it.

V-2• 5 years ago

"As I get older, the less I identify as my current state and the more I identify with the person who transitions through states."

This sounds neat, but once you set the states aside - what's left? :) Who's that person? Our identity is a sum of these states. The rest (navigating through states) is an illusion. Just like movement in a video is an illusion created by consecutive frames. The sense of continuity is a magic trick.

I could agree that some (perhaps most, who knows) self-identifications are unnecessary and burdening, toxic even. And possibly cost more than the value they bring into our life, especially since we tend to cling on to them for too long.

"This too shall pass", if meant as a universal motto, isn't an attitude that would inevitably stem from this observation, though (in my view).

Say, being a parent is also a phase, in a way, it's just a state of my life and personhood. Not the essence of myself. But I do care about my son nevertheless. This makes me more vulnerable and potentially frustrated, but well, that's what constitutes being a person.

"What we are angry about tends to be a reflection of ourselves more than the current state of affairs"

That's no different from what we're happy about, etc. Without personhood all is just an enormous cloud of elementary particles floating in the dark

dr_dshiv• 5 years ago

Without personhood all is just an enormous cloud of elementary particles floating in the dark

I don't understand. Dropping personhood and ego doesn't mean dropping feeling, wisdom or meaning. In fact, it is precisely when the ego is dissolved that we can feel most meaningfully connected to ultimate reality. Our personhood is not what makes raw matter ("elementary particles floating in the dark") vibrant, alive and coherent. Personhood is a very useful social-cognitive illusion but, when dropped, the world tends to become richer not more empty. Nah?

momirlan3• 5 years ago

Identity is not the sum of states. You need to transcend the states to find there is something deeper.

runiq• 5 years ago

This sounds neat, but once you set the states aside - what's left? :)

For every graph with nodes, there is a corresponding line graph without nodes :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_graph#Example

throwaway987974• 5 years ago

Fragility comes from insecurity.

Insecurity is both objective and subjective.

On different days you may feel more or less secure.

To not care too much about yourself is the first step. The world is what it is and our desires are just that. Desires. Easy to forget that the world owes or cares. It does not. Luckily it does not care about anyone else.

We only have this life to live.

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.” —Confucius

psychomugs• 5 years ago

"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now" - Victor Frankl

drewcoo• 5 years ago

Throw-away deepities.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity

abbub• 5 years ago

I love that the 'deepities' wiki page has a link to the page on Deepak Chopra... lol

yesenadam• 5 years ago

I don't think that's Confucius. Doesn't sound like him, can't find any source mentioned online. It appears in a lot of places online, like fake quotes do, but no reputable places, and never with a source.

andrewmcwatters3• 5 years ago

What do you mean by "fragility?"

dumpsterdiver3• 5 years ago

Colloquial usage around here means something close to, "An inability to gracefully accept an external perception of ourselves, because that perception is at odds with our own understanding of ourselves."

This "fragility" must always be accompanied by an accusation - otherwise fragility would not manifest. Without an accusation to deny, no one can be fragile in this sense. The opposite of fragility is callousness - i.e. "Damn right, that's what I said. I meant it. I don't care who it hurt, as long as they get out of the way."

The word "fragility", in its current social context, would appear to be a word intended to belittle. It says, "You think you're a big person, but you are a small person. Because you have denied my truth, you are fragile. Because you have proclaimed your innocence, you are fragile."

To me, there is a glaring fallacy in calling people "fragile" this way - and that is the part when the people who engage in this behavior decide to forgo intelligent discourse and presume that they are correct without hearing the other side of the story. Sometimes people are different than each other, and you can't always win arguments just by calling them "fragile" when they disagree with you, because what we're really talking about sometimes when we say the word "fragile" in this context, is "an impassioned personal defense against accusations thrown at people who look like me, but who do not represent my values." It's not okay to do this. The only thing we do when we call people "fragile" in this way, is we internally invalidate their position, and then we burn the only bridge we ever had with them.

throwaway987974• 5 years ago

I meant it as a type of sensitivity. Like, someone reacting harshly to a slight or an insult.

A lack of confidence is what I’m trying to communicate in the first sentence. They need other’s judgement to validate themselves.

drummer• 5 years ago

Interesting how the author avoided sex and intimacy in his "list of common universal needs".

Swenrekcah2• 5 years ago

The list is “common” not “comprehensive”.

echlebek2• 5 years ago

The uncommon need for sex and intimacy?

mcguire2• 5 years ago

"Here’s a link of commonly unmet universal needs at work:"

1. Commonly unmet.

2. At work.

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

This reminds me of a conversation I overheard regarding legality of sex work.

Apparently the individual was in favor of it, but when asked about hybrid options, where a administrative assistant would be available for office support and sex, they weren’t quite able to explain why that should be illegal.

stronglikedan• 5 years ago

Neither is a universal need. Plenty of single hermits are perfectly happy hermitting alone.

pvarangot• 5 years ago

Most of those I know of are very much not alone and rely on a massively alive biome they kinda claim for themselves where they are usually intimate with a ridiculous amount of animals and plants. Intimacy doesn't imply that you have to do it with another human, it's just a feeling of a barrier being lowered for you that wouldn't be someone else. Petting a car is intimacy. I'm not sure it's a universal need but I think most scholars that study "mental health" from different perspectives agree that for virtually all humans being deprived of that leads to suffering.

courtf5• 5 years ago

Counterpoint: enlightenment is overrated and life is meant to be taken personally. In some senses, it is a bit cowardly to run away from the current moment we live in by stepping back and viewing the big picture too often. "Negative" emotions and experiences are valid parts of life. Anger, anxiety, fear etc are all part of being a human being and have evolved over billions of years to reach their current forms. We may not always enjoy these parts of life, but avoiding them completely would mean stunting ourselves.

Learning to observe and not react to the complex interplay of emotional states that constantly dance across our consciousness is a powerful tool, but you cannot survive inside the epiphany. We all must descend back into the messy day-to-day needs of maintaining our bodies, no one is actually the Buddha. I think we should all have more patience with inability to behave appropriately under all circumstances, because we will all fall short of grace.

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

qqtt• 5 years ago

I agree. A lot of discussion and these philosophical quotes about living tend to want to inspire you to rebel against your nature. Think abstractly. Think rationally. Make the right decisions (for some value of "right").

But people aren't really wired like this. Maybe rebelling against your nature is the "right" choice, but maybe just living your life isn't so bad either. Take things personally. Don't take things personally. Be angry, be frustrated. Get depressed. Also, be happy sometimes.

You only have one life. The guy who never gets angry is going to the same place as the guy who fully feels those emotions. Maybe one will be less productive at a certain point in time than the other, but does it matter?

These cosmic balance scale games are at the end of the day silly and superfluous.

courtf5• 5 years ago

It's always a bit fraught to bring up the upsides of irrationality and potentially dangerous/destructive emotions and impulses. Bukowski didn't win a lot of popularity contests. I agree with what you've said here though.

We may be abstracting the conversation beyond the limits of what is appropriate in the workplace here, but I tend to think the workplace should and could be a more relaxed space if we were more patient with the negative emotions of others. At least for me, that starts with recognizing my own emotional states, and not always being afraid to experience them authentically.

scns7• 5 years ago

Khalil Gibran expressed it like this: "You can avoid crying all your tears, but you won't laugh all you laughter then." Highly recommend reading The Prophet by him. A thin book, saying a lot with a few words.

pessimizer• 5 years ago

It's important not to judge the world by its effect on your internal state. The world isn't party to your internal state, although you walk around with an illusion of transparency. People are doing things for their own reasons, not for yours.

Referring to the Buddha in order to make emotional regulation seem like an unachievable perfection is not really a good support, because the argument you're making is that we shouldn't always try to control our irrational emotions, not that we sometimes fail to control our irrational emotions, even when we try. That's just an objective fact.

Getting away from billions of years of reaction is the reason why we have civilization. It's a little more cowardly to interpret the world in terms of how it makes you feel rather than the complicated, messy problem of navigating the world in terms of how it may be making everyone feel.

courtf5• 5 years ago

It's important not to judge the world by its effect on your internal state. The world isn't party to your internal state, although you walk around with an illusion of transparency. People are doing things for their own reasons, not for yours.

Sure, I agree. This isn't a contradiction with my post.

Referring to the Buddha in order to make emotional regulation seem like an unachievable perfection is not really a good support, because the argument you're making is that we shouldn't always try to control our irrational emotions, not that we sometimes fail to control our irrational emotions, even when we try.

One core message of Buddhism is that we fundamentally cannot control ourselves, even when we try. You are correct that I am saying we shouldn't always try, and I stand by that, but the idea is that it isn't actually possible to achieve. Buddha is indeed an unachievable perfection, and supports my point because trying is truly futile in the end.

That is not to say we should always act however we want and treat others terribly for our own amusement, just that we are not actually in control. We can try to steer the elephant, and may have some success with that on occasion, but complete control is not possible. What I am saying, is that it's ok to let the elephant do what it wants sometimes, because ultimately it's going to do that a lot of the time anyway.

Getting away from billions of years of reaction is the reason why we have civilization.

How would you say that experiment is going? Civilization isn't more powerful than evolution is what I would say, and we have seen a lot of man's worst impulses expressed with greater force than ever during the modern period. We haven't escaped evolution yet.

It's a little more cowardly to interpret the world in terms of how it makes you feel rather than the complicated, messy problem of navigating the world in terms of how it may be making everyone feel.

Not sure how this relates to what I said. Sounds like you just wanted to turn my words around. I never said anything about substituting personal feelings for the act of being empathetic with others, and the topic is about not taking things personally, so this is a new goalpost. Nonetheless, I don't disagree. Part of having empathy for others is not judging their behavior from a position of assumed superiority.

sammalloy4• 5 years ago

no one is actually the Buddha

I'm an atheist, but I've studied this, and I think this is a matter of major disagreement in the different schools.

In the west, more contemporary (and often secular) teachers talk about how everyone is a potential Buddha.

There are also close parallels with the more hippie, Christian schools that arose in the 1960s-1970s era (intentional communities) which also taught (quietly I might add), that everyone is a potential Christ.

While this might seem like a trivial point, we do see signs of these teachings arising in the past, from century to century.

These ideas are generally criticized as heretical and repressed because they threaten the hegemonic, institutional nature of religion, which still maintains that the one true interpretation is that there is a single figure (Christ, Buddha, etc) that adherents should aspire to worship, and that they can never equal or match.

The heretical version states the opposite. These adherents believe that Christ and Buddha (assuming for the sake of this argument that they are real, historical figures) did not teach so that they could be worshipped, they taught so that others could become like them.

When you see the religions in this way, then yes, everyone is truly the potential Buddha and the potential Christ, and the vast institutional power of the church disappears, and the roles of priests and clerics vanishes with them.

This kind of change has the effect of emphasizing philosophy over ideology, and places the onus of being a good person and doing good works on the here and now, not on some mythical afterlife or legendary heaven or hell.

courtf5• 5 years ago

That seems reasonable to me, emphasis on "potential."

Whether that potentiality can be realized here on earth, in this life, is where I would start to quibble.

empressplay• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mysticism

Historically, Christian mysticism has taught that for Christians the major emphasis of mysticism concerns a spiritual transformation of the egoic self, the following of a path designed to produce more fully realized human persons, "created in the Image and Likeness of God" and as such, living in harmonious communion with God, the Church, the rest of the world, and all creation, including oneself. For Christians, this human potential is realized most perfectly in Jesus, precisely because he is both God and human, and is manifested in others through their association with him, whether conscious, as in the case of Christian mystics, or unconscious, with regard to spiritual persons who follow other traditions, such as Gandhi. The Eastern Christian tradition speaks of this transformation in terms of theosis or divinization, perhaps best summed up by an ancient aphorism usually attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria: "God became human so that man might become god."[a]

pqs• 5 years ago

As a Catholic, I believe that the imitation of Christ is an obligation for every Christian. We should always aim to imitate Christ. This is a very old idea. The 15h-century book by Thomas à Kempis is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_of_Christ

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

The heretical version states the opposite. These adherents believe that Christ and Buddha (assuming for the sake of this argument that they are real, historical figures) did not teach so that they could be worshipped, they taught so that others could become like them.

That view is orthodox in mainstream Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox), not heretical; its a central part of the mainstream understanding of the purpose of the incarnation; that Christ is, above all, a model.

akomtu• 5 years ago

That's the territory of natural philosophy. The typical answer from "occult" books to your argument would be that there are two almost independent beings posing as one human: the lower one, which includes autonomous body capable of feeling and primitive thinking; and the upper triad that includes abstract mind, also capable of independent existence. Most people are unsure which part they identify with. Your argument is basically identifying with the lower half. This is basically what the upside down pentagram means: a human who chose to go downwards. Of course, you can dismiss this counter-argument as unscientific and forget about it.

thegrimmest• 5 years ago

I would say that the most human experience is one that shares the least with our animal relatives. It is therefore one that maximises the uniquely human aspects of our neurobiology - our ability to reason, introspect and construct detailed mental models. Emotions are just primate social impulses. There's nothing particularly human about them.

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

I don’t know if this is a mental hack or not, but I found years ago that if I mentally sing the comments (that I know would upset me otherwise), it totally removes the emotional impact of other people’s negative writing.

When I was contemplating why this might be so effective, I was reminded that satire of old often involved singing to point out other peoples absurdity. When you think about how much the powerful fear humor and satire, there might be something there…

mkaic• 5 years ago

Wow, I've never heard of this before, I'm 100% trying this next time I'm in Twitter. Thanks for the tip!

hammock• 5 years ago

Love this. It reminds me of the whole "celebrities read mean tweets about themselves on Jimmy Kimmel" thing. Taking a comment out of context really blunts its power

DangitBobby• 5 years ago

Singing and speech are different processes in the brain. It has been observed that some people with a stutter can still sing without any hint of a stutter. So I wonder if your trick is a result of some sort of personality difference in left brain versus right brain.

1. https://www.stuttering.co.nz/news/why-dont-we-stutter-when-w...

bergerjac• 5 years ago

When people try to insult me, sometimes instead of 'taking the insult & emotion in' ("personally")… I purposely hallucinate their words as text like closed captions.

kubafu• 5 years ago

This is exactly the kind of leverage I come to HN for, thanks!!

bittercynic• 5 years ago

Full article: https://outline.com/2wGcn2

totaldude87• 5 years ago

thanks, i hate medium paywall and paywalled posts here in HN

whoomp12342• 5 years ago

This article has a paywall. I will not take this personally and just not read it.

scns7• 5 years ago

When i read the headline, i immediately thought of a talk [0] by a belgian actor who worked as a football (soccer) referee in an amateur league to learn this. Not a fan of videos but glad i watched it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnJwH_PZXnM

tomcooks• 5 years ago

I highly suggest books on stoicism by William B Irwine if you want to learn simple ways not to take things personally, a true gem of an author.

https://www.williambirvine.com/books

sammalloy4• 5 years ago

Every Negative Emotion is Driven by an Unmet Need
When you notice a negative emotion in someone, get curious about what that emotion might be — and try to uncover the unmet need that accompanies it. ‘Are you feeling X because you’re needing Y?’.

I have a sense that this practice could change the world and make life better for everyone. I wonder what it would take for everyone to start doing it.

BeetleB• 5 years ago

I wonder what it would take for everyone to start doing it.

Short answer: Critical mass

Long answer: Probably will never hit critical mass. This is very hard to do on the fly and requires a lot of practice.

TameAntelope3• 5 years ago

I just don't know what to do once I feel I've figured out their unmet needs and it's something they shouldn't need...

sethammons2• 5 years ago

In non-violent communication, the needs (broadly) are: connection, physical well being, honesty, play, peace, autonomy, and meaning. Hard to argue against someone needing those.

https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory

watwut• 5 years ago

This is how abuse victims are often socialized and what they do. The people who stay in abusive relationships/workplaces or move from one abusive relationship to another. They assume themselves responsible for other peoples emotions. If others react negatively, they see it as their duty to adjust everything to that.

And when they talk about abuse with people whobhave this expectation, this expectation, they get blamed to not twist themselves perfectly to abusers wishes.

This is noble and sometimes works. But other times you need to set boundaries. You need to protect yourself even as abuser feels bad about it.

sammalloy4• 5 years ago

I agree, but if you read the full text that I quoted out of context, it briefly concludes with the importance of setting boundaries, so your concerns are taken into account. I think if you read the entire text you'll agree that this isn't a problem.

zz8652• 5 years ago

The problem I'm getting as I get older I'm starting to overshoot and not care about anyone's opinions, turning into a grumpy old man who doesnt care any more. :)

nemo44x• 5 years ago

I think that’s normal. You eventually get enough experience you can’t be bullshitted much anymore and bullshit is everywhere it turns out.

zz8652• 5 years ago

bullshit is everywhere it turns out

First true thing I've seen online in months. :)

cgtyoder• 5 years ago

I have definitely seen that happen before. It's good that you are at least noticing it! If you want to move out of that mindset, talking to a counselor of some sort is probably going to be useful. Change is hard, but it can happen. Good luck.

ljm• 5 years ago

I scanned the page for 'empathy' and there was not a single mention of it.

'Emotional generosity', the thing at the start of the article, doesn't count. I don't know where that language came from but it doesn't sound empathetic, it sounds transactional.

I don't really care for what else the author has to say, having understood that

exo-pla-net4• 5 years ago

This article about a forest doesn't mention the word "tree". I'll be looking for lumber elsewhere, thank you very much.

ogre_magi• 5 years ago

The entire article is about empathizing with others...

smackeyacky3• 5 years ago

Its more a guide for pandering to the narcicissts who infect our lives and make us miserable.

If you find yourself having to perform these rituals in the workspace, stop yourself.

When dealing with emotionally damaged people who never made it to fully functional adult, speak to them in a monotone and don't engage with the emotional manipulation they are attempting. This will confuse them, then enrage them, then finally they will admit defeat.

Do not pander to the emotionally manipulative person ever.

58x14• 5 years ago

from article,

"10. Every Negative Emotion is Driven by an Unmet Need.

Here’s a link of commonly unmet universal needs at work:"

and a graphic with empathy at the top of the center column.

Trivial, but entertaining for me to notice this.

kr154• 5 years ago

you're right, this article is about brainwashing yourself to be forgiving for the abuser.

dolores_tyrion2• 5 years ago

My problem is taking things personally is what motivates me to do things, because of it I'm always stressed or anxious , the social points author mentioning is reasonable but for me its hard to separate things, which to take personally?, which not to take personally?, because the opposite party is commenting my o/p.

The authors mind is what i imagine a peaceful mind look like, ``` yeah i want to be like that someday?```, but its hard to avoid the triggers,

like if my manager arrange meeting with me for certain time, but always late for meeting, so i can imagine two things 1) he does not give enough important for the meeting with me (because on customer meeting he is on time) 2) he is lazy most of the time but on customer meetings he comes on time, so i have to imagine him being lazy

so by the article's point i have to choose 2nd point so i don't take it personally, but my mind knows I'm a subordinate and not as important as client, or he is comfortable with me

--------- above is how my mind try to reason to take it personally, :-) could someone suggest how to escape it?

genezeta• 5 years ago

I don't know if this may help you or not, but...

Let's pick that example of the manager and arriving on time. You have built two scenarios. In the first one you are "less important", in the second they are "lazy". I can see a couple of problems here.

The most immediate one is that there exist other possible scenarios. These may go from one extreme to another. I mean, I could imagine your manager being "evil", doing it on purpose to assert their authority over you, to make you feel who is the boss. I could also imagine some other extreme where your manager is giving you leeway for you to be the one who calls the meeting; they give you time to prepare or to tell them when you're ready. These scenarios may or may not apply, of course -I do not know your situation-. But they are not impossible. And in the same way there may be other possible scenarios.

The second problem derives from the fact that you focused only on those two possible scenarios. What do those two have in common? Both are negative. They put the reason for what is happening either on your manager's character flaw or on your own lack of importance. One might guess that you arrived at these scenarios by "looking for a problem". Given that you were looking for something negative, you only arrived at negative scenarios.

----

What could be done?

You could avoid arriving only to negative scenarios by avoiding looking for "a problem". Looking for a problem easily ends up finding one in yourself. And then as a defence mechanism some other scenario will appear by trying to "shift the blame". In fact, your second scenario almost feels like you came up with it as a response to find a reason so that the problem is not with you but with the manager. In any case, if you start by looking for a problem you will end up finding problems.

Instead you may try two different approaches. In one you force yourself to consider that the originating reason for this situation is not -or at least may not be- a negative one. You force yourself to come up with scenarios where there is a good intention or a positive motive, even if the result is one that irritates you. You don't even have to believe these scenarios are real or correct, just allow that they might be possible at least as much as the negative ones.

The second approach goes one step beyond this. The idea is this one: So there are a number of possible scenarios, but you don't really know which one is the "correct" one. Ask yourself: Do you need to care? That is, does it really matter what is the real reason this happens? Sometimes you may need to care, sometimes not really. This depends on you, mostly. I mean, the delay on the meetings may be important to you but not to me. Or vice-versa.

One small piece of advice here: Sometimes you may think that you do care, that it is an important matter and that you want it solved/fixed, but if you give it some calm thought you will find that you actually don't care that much. So just spend some effort here identifying what is really important and what is not so much.

Either way, you may care enough to want it fixed -or at least to go further- or you may not really care that much. Now, I focused on you caring about it, but there's a second factor you should consider: Can you actually do anything about it? That is, given the various scenarios and possible reasons, can you act on any of those to change them or are they all external/out of reach to you?

Now you have four possible outcomes:

- You don't care that much, and you can't act on it. Then just accept it as it is and go on. You can't do anything about it but you have also learned that you really didn't care so much, so this is something which shouldn't bother you.

- You don't care that much, but you could fix it. Then it's mostly a question of "choosing your battles". you'd have to see how much effort would it take to fix it and balance it with the possible benefit. The benefit will be generally small, because it's not something you really care about. Either way, if it's worth it or not, the outcome should be satisfactory. In one "you don't gain much but it didn't cost you much either", in the other "you don't fix it because it cost too much, but you didn't care so much about it anyway".

- You do care and you can fix it. Then do fix it. It's all in you hands, right?

- You do care but you can't fix it. This one is the problematic one. In a more stoic approach you may choose to "let it be". Accept that you can't fix it anyway so "learn to live with it". Sometimes this is enough. Thing about the meeting situation. You won't be able to change it, all the reasons you find for it are out of your control, there's nothing you can do... but you can still choose not to let it bother you. You might choose to use those minutes for something useful, like mentally preparing yourself for the meeting, or checking the list of things you want to address so you don't forget any, etc. The situation hasn't changed but you have changed what you make of it. Of course, this doesn't always work for everyone, so another approach is this: make it so you can actually fix the situation. I mean, all the possible scenarios you've thought of are... well, in your mind. So, a first step would be to investigate the situation. You may e.g. watch your manager's behaviour with other people: is it only when meeting you that he is late or is it with every co-worker/non-customer? May be it happens with some but not all? What do those do differently? Or maybe your manager is actually expecting you to remind them of the meeting? Maybe you could try doing that once and seeing how it goes?

In any case, my advice would be a mixture of both approaches. Make an internal and honest effort to just accept that you cannot change some things and make the best of how things are. But still keep your attention on identifying things that you might actually be able to change.

The background effect this approach has is that you learn to look for many more possible scenarios other than just "either it's a flaw with myself or I can blame it on someone else". You learn to accept that sometimes it doesn't matter that much why something is the way it is, and that you can still make something out of it, and you also learn to give "positive reasons" a change as the origin of a situation.

----

Im not really sure this can help you much, but I hope it does at least a little.

dolores_tyrion2• 5 years ago

yeah, trying to blame me or others is spot on,its a thing i frequently do, have to work on that, thank you

viach• 5 years ago

Some people can be aware of what you think their emitions are driven by and use it for manipulative reasons when you react accordingly. Probably it is a good idea to treat people as grown adults who can be responsible for their reactions whatever reasons are behind them.

kr154• 5 years ago

fuck this coach and his advices. i wont have any empathy to an angry shouting asshole. my anxiety and insecurity come not from my problems, but from working with such asshole. this is one big "forgive a sociopath" article. fuck sociopaths especially fucking narcissists, god i hate them.

d--b• 5 years ago

Selfnesslessness is often driven by guilt

Ugh, this is an article that tries to explain all human problems from basic formulae. While it may be interesting to know that in some cases, a variant of this may cause a variant of that, in the real world, don’t apply these blindly.

There is nothing more irritating than someone telling you: “oh you’re so selfless, what do you feel guilty about?”

jackbravo• 5 years ago

It does say that this applies if they are damaging themselves by being selfless. If you only read the titles you may be missing some nice and nuanced commentary there.

qwerty456127• 5 years ago

Not taking anything personally is not an art, it's a basic (although not necessarily easy for everyone to develop) skill essential for healthy functioning in today society. There are so many morons and unfortunate incidents and tendencies taking place around, almost everyone is doomed to be exposed to a lot of toxicity regularly so a habit of taking everything seriously almost should be considered a disorder itself. Just switch it off. Imagine you are just seeing it on TV in a fiction movie or whatever. Stop caring about things you can't change and believing misbehaving people to be personally bad, they are just malfunctioning. Some experience of working in tech support, customer care or sales helps a lot.

hnarn2• 5 years ago

Nothing trains you to not take things personally like being put through the ringer of modern day online dating. Forcing myself to deal with rejection hasn't been a very pleasant experience, but I'm absolutely sure I've improved because of it. As soon as you can truly and honestly accept that in the vast majority of cases, you do not have the power to change people's perception or attraction to you, it's not only liberating: you also realize that effort is better placed where you have a decent chance of actually changing the outcome.

Once you understand and feel confident in what you have to offer other people, if they do not want it, what else is there to say? Nobody wants everything, and nobody can offer everything. A single human, or ten humans, is not representative of humanity. There's nothing to be sad about, it's just an interaction among millions, and you just need to find new interactions.

It's based in insecurity, the need to affirm our value through other people. This is of course fundamentally human and is practically impossible to get rid of, but you don't have to assign the same value to every single human you come across in your life. You don't like every human being in the world, so why would you expect every human being to like you?

mettamage• 5 years ago

Back when I was dating (5 years ago) it was also a humbling experience. It does seem to be the case that online dating is a lot tougher.

Then again, I’m old fashioned.

hnarn2• 5 years ago

I'm sure they're both humbling, it's just that I believe the massive difference in selection between men and women is exacerbated by the online experience. There are benefits and downsides to them both, I think.

Lio• 5 years ago

Nothing trains you to not take things personally like being put through the ringer of modern day online dating.

Back in the day this was worse believe me. At least you're not approaching a random stranger and their friends in a public place and then getting shot down in front of all of them.

In online dating their is at least the chance that the person you approach is looking for a relationship with someone. That wasn't always the case back in the good ol' days.

The conclusions are the same though. It's not personal, even when it is.

Your personal worth is not predicated on what others think of you and weirdly once you know that you notice more people that do value you.

jcun4128• 5 years ago

Haha online dating is brutal, idk if you have to pay or what. I just stopped as it was making me sad.

The last bit is true, high standards works both ways.

magicroot75• 5 years ago

I take criticism extremely personally, because I have such a internally critical view of everything that I do. I become extraordinarily hurt when someone rightly corrects me at work. Anyone have helpful tips on this?

icelancer• 5 years ago

Therapy, honestly. I can tell you the truth [0] but it's nothing you haven't heard or thought already - finding a professional that can explain it to you in a way you can connect with is what matters.

[0]: Other peoples' unsolicited opinions are worth very little the overwhelming majority of the time.

tilolebo• 5 years ago

Notice how the way to react to all of these problems involves a mix of empathy and communication.

majkinetor• 5 years ago

10. Every Negative Emotion is Driven by an Unmet Need.

Wow, lets completely avoid biology with that "every". Having high level of specific hormones (like parathyroid) that makes you feel negative is hardly "unmet need"...

svat• 5 years ago

They are just different perspectives, not mutually exclusive. Maybe biology means someone has a higher need for (say) security, or makes their need less easily met (resulting in more anxiety, say, than for other people in similar situations).

I guess one could debate the word "driven"—if my phone fell and shattered, was this event driven by gravity, or by my dropping it, or by the fact that I were careless? Depending on the context and one's preferences one may prefer one explanations over the others, but they are not mutually exclusive; it's IMO helpful to be at least aware of these multiple perspectives.

MacroChip• 5 years ago

Everyone behaves the way they do because of their life experiences, the chemicals in their body, the sun radiating, etc. It's up to you to respond accordingly.

akst• 5 years ago

I feel a lot of this advice is only really actionable if there's trust on the other side for the other person to be comfortable with opening up to you, but also it automatically assumes the other person is in the wrong and this advice doesn't really encourage any kind of self reflection either. To know who is really in the wrong often requires readiness to self reflect and an external opinion who isn't likely to take sides.

I feel it might be best to hold off before giving your coworker unsolicited advice and counselling otherwise you run the risk of making things worse by coming off tone deaf, and in worst cases as trying to gaslight them.

A lot of the time you just need to accept you can't control how other people will react, most of the time you can't fix them, and it's not your job to (unless you're their manager lol). By that logic if you can't control their reactions, to the best of your ability don't let it dictate your mood too, otherwise you're letting them control your mood by proxy with their own behaviour

The art of not taking things personally

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