How Not to Take Things Personally At Work

Human mind which is capable of achieving amazing feats isn’t without its limits. Out of thousands of thoughts that run through our mind every single day, 80% are negative. 

This tendency to give extra weightage to negativity makes our mind, which is a meaning-making machine, attach meaning to things that don’t even exist. We start taking things personally even when it’s not about us. Even when the other person says or does something that has nothing to do with us, we assume a central role in their story and believe they are out to get us. This happens because we frame everything from our own perspective—creating stories that justify our beliefs while disregarding all contradicting evidence. 

A coworker cancels a meeting at the last minute. He doesn’t like me. 

A team member disagrees with your opinion. She thinks I’m incompetent. 

Your manager shares constructive criticism. She hates me. 

We take things personally all the time. 

Taking things personally evokes a strong negative emotional response—we feel hurt, rejected, insulted, disappointed and let down. Left unhandled, these emotions create a downward spiral of negativity and rumination which takes a toll on our mental health and personal well-being.

Negative emotions also cloud our thinking and turn us into victims—we offload our personal responsibility to others. We assume others are responsible for how we feel and they are the ones to blame. 

But why do we take things personally? 

Simply because it’s easy to do—it’s the default setting hardwired into our brain that gets invoked most of the time without our conscious awareness. 

Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds—that sacred place of reason, action and will—and throw off our compass.
— Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way

Instead of taking things personally, becoming defensive and wasting productive time in proving our innocence, we can spend that time solving problems with a clear head. 

4 practices I recommend to stop taking things personally:

Don’t let your ego get involved 

The biggest culprit to taking things personally is our ego. When ego gets involved, we focus only on ourselves without regard for anyone else.

Ego magnifies our desire to be right, to be recognized, to prove others wrong and justify why we are right in feeling a certain way.

It’s that dark voice inside our head that scans the environment for threats and alerts us the moment it senses something that might be potentially dangerous. Since ego is designed to blow things out of proportion, it turns disagreement into disrespect, feedback into criticism, refusal into rejection and assertiveness into arrogance. 

It keeps us delusional and locked in our own view of the world while disregarding alternative viewpoints and perspectives. 

To avoid taking things personally, the first thing you need to do is get ego out of the picture. When ego is no longer involved, everything stops being black-and-white. Not classifying everything into ‘good or bad,’ ‘right or wrong,’ leaves room for balanced perspectives. 

Whenever someone passes a hurtful comment or says or does something that evokes strong emotions, pause and take a deep breath. Don’t let your emotions cloud your thinking. Don’t fall for extreme thinking. 

Instead of letting your mind’s default setting turn it personal, consciously engage in deliberate thinking by asking yourself “Is the situation really the way I see it? How am I sure that it’s not my ego making me feel this way?”

The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.
— Eckhart Tolle

To stop taking things personally, don’t take your ego lightly. Left unchecked, it can make you lose touch with reality. 

Consider their intention 

Others don’t live in the same world as you do. Their dreams and desires are also not the same as you. 

Many factors play a role in determining why they think and act a certain way, most of which have nothing to do with you. Things get personal because you assume a central role in every person’s story and evaluate the situation from your biased view of the world instead of making space for understanding and exploring alternative perspectives. 

To stop taking things personally, don’t jump to conclusions or be opinionated. Reframe the situation to explore alternative explanations and possibilities:

• What can cause them to behave this way?
• Under what circumstances can you see yourself or others behave in a similar manner?
• What situational factors could have contributed to it? Consider different circumstances, pressures and constraints that might be influencing their action. 
• What alternative explanations are possible?
• How can you shift from a negative to a positive outlook?
• What would an outside observer say?

For example: Let’s say you approached a teammate to get some help on your task, but he outrightly rejected your request without even listening to the problem. You feel hurt, which is natural. But taking things personally makes you attach unjustified meaning to their behavior “They are so arrogant to not help me out. They’re disrespectful and rude.”

Taking things personally shuts down communication and reduces opportunities for collaboration because feeling this way makes you unconsciously decide that you are never going to work with them ever again. 

Instead of taking things personally, let’s try to reframe this situation:

• What can make them turn down your request—could they be swamped with work, dealing with a personal crisis or they’re simply in a bad mood?
• Think about a time when you said no to someone. What made you say so and how did you behave?
• What other possible explanations might explain their behavior?

Reframing encourages you to say, ‘Let’s look at this another way.’ By changing the frame around a situation, you not only change your perception of it, but its meaning for you as well. If you were to take one painting and view it in three different frames, each combination would offer a completely different presentation. Your perceptions work the same way.
— Susan C. Young

To stop taking things personally, question your default setting to assume bad intent and look at the situation or the person through a more positive frame. 

Speak up and share how you feel

Many biases invade our mind that determines how we experience the world around us, what we make of it and how we react to it. 

Illusion of transparency is one such bias that keeps us locked in our worldview without validating how others feel about it. 

It makes you assume that your internal thoughts, feelings and emotions are apparent to others. Mistakenly believing that your inner experiences are more transparent or obvious to others than they actually are, assuming that others can easily understand your emotions or needs without clear and explicit communication leads to misunderstandings, misinterpretations and difficulties in communication. 

You fail to speak up and share how you feel because you assume that others can easily read your mind. 

To stop taking things personally, factor in external feedback:

• State how you feel clearly and explicitly without judgment or blame. 
• State it as an observation and not a verdict. 
• Inquire about others’ perspectives. 
• Set boundaries and hold others accountable.

When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
— Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Speaking up and expressing how you’re feeling is not only liberating, it’s a great way to push your biases aside, explore truth and reset expectations. 

Accept what you can’t change and let it go

Sometimes, none of the above strategies might work. 

This may happen when your ego, biases or inability to explore alternative perspectives have no role to play in taking things personally. 

You felt personal because it was indeed personal directed at you with a malicious intent—to hurt, demean, knock you down or bring you extreme anxiety, sorrow or pain.

Even when it’s personal, taking things personally does not help, it only exacerbates the problem. It makes you want to control everything—even things that you can’t change—leading to disappointment, frustration and feelings of helplessness.

Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher said “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” In other words, you can’t change how other people think and act. The only thing within your control is you.

To stop taking things personally (even when it’s personal):

1. Identify what’s within your control and what you can’t change.
2. Purposefully act on things within your control.
3. Accept the outcome whatever it may be and just move on.  

By focusing on things within your control, you reclaim your power to choose your response and not let others determine how you should think, feel and act. 

This final thought from Marcus Aurelius sums it up “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”

Summary

1. Taking things personally is something we do all the time even though “making things about us” harms us more than being helpful. 
2. Ego plays a big role in determining what you make of any situation. When ego gets involved, you exaggerate, blow things out of proportion and start taking everything personally. Removing ego from the frame is the first step to think clearly. 
3. Things also appear personal because you assume bad intent without exploring alternative views, constraints and situations that might contribute to someone’s behavior. Show curiosity to explore a different perspective than your brain’s default answer.
4. What goes on in your head is not apparent to others. Explicitly state your feelings and emotions, understand their viewpoint and reset boundaries and expectations. 
5. When things appear personal because it wasn’t a creation of your mind but indeed an attempt to hurt you, stop wasting time on things outside your control, identify what you can change or do and act on it.  

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