I’ve read a lot of books on self development in the last 10 – 15 years and love reading about other people’s models for success and trying it out for myself. It’s funny reading about other people’s experiences and trying to relate it back to your own life.
I think the best lessons I’ve learned from books have been the one’s I’ve actually experienced rather than just read about them.
One of these lessons I read in “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. This book was given to me by a friend when I was about 15 and it’s worth a read if you haven’t already! I refer back to this book often and can honestly say at that age, it changed my life.
One of the agreements that I read about and then came to know and apply from experience was “Don’t take anything personally.” It’s funny how many times in my teens I took things personally and felt horrible with these thoughts. I would think people said certain things about me of course they were probably talking about something totally different!
In work and life we do the same to ourselves. Sometimes, despite the reality being totally different, we have thoughts that are so anti-self and negative about ourselves if a person thought that about us we’d probably stop speaking to them!
Instead what I found worked for me was thinking “What else could this mean?” or “What is really going on rather than what my thoughts are making me think?” or more or less “If I wasn’t to take this personally what could it mean?”
You can’t always control what happens to you, all you can control is how you react to what happens to you. One thing I find that works for me is not taking personally anything that happens to me. This I read about in that book by Don Miguel Ruiz but also have experienced and come to know from life.
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