Do you know the cost of taking things personally?
I was talking to a group of coach friends the other day about all the many insights, habits and behavioural change tools we’ve learned in our professional journeys
I asked if they could impart others with one nugget of wisdom what it would be?
We all agreed on ‘not taking things personally’
We’ve all seen the memes that say some version of ‘people’s behaviour says more about them than it does about you’
But reading that and actually landing it as a deep truth in your system and then adjusting your behaviour and responses as a result are two very different things
Most of the people I coach know a lot theoretically but the concepts aren’t embodied meaning that they aren’t living them
In the dating world taking someone else’s behaviour personally results in a HUGE GINORMOUS blind spot that I am starting to believe is highly responsible for people finding themselves in bad relationships
Why?
Because if you take others behaviour and actions personally you are literally making everything that someone else does - about you
And when you do that, you are unable to see them objectively
On The Empowered Relationship Method coaching call the other day several clients admitted that when a man treated them badly through inconsistent and elusive behaviour it elicited their desire to ‘win him back at all costs’
They took his inconsistency personally, made it about them and then came up with a strategy of how they had to work harder to ‘get him’ to be into them
If they hadn’t taken it personally they would have objectively been able to see that this man didn’t want the same things they did and wasn’t prioritising the connection in the way that they wanted and so wasn’t a good fit. End of story
Another client expressed heartbreak about the fact that a man she’d never met but had a lot of text chemistry with didn’t show up for their first date and hadn’t replied to her since
She made his not showing up mean something bad about her, instead of objectively deciding that he wasn’t a value match for her and had kindly ruled himself out early so that she could find someone who was
One of the most common ways I see this playing out is that the masculine partner asks for space and the feminine partner freaks out making it mean that he isn’t into her, the relationship is in trouble or some other catastrophe. In other words, she takes his request personally
What I know from half a decade of coaching masculine alpha types is that they regularly need space! And the women who are able to lovingly recognise and give it to them are a huge relief to their systems
Imagine what a drain it is if you need space to recharge and energetically you can feel your feminine partner’s anxiety and fear and often active contempt for your needs?!
And they may not consciously be able to name all that my Loves but let me tell you they can feel it, they know it’s off and it feels bad. Unconsciously they feel your disapproval
When my clients land this piece, they’ve said over and over it’s been one of the biggest gifts of the coaching
Because it stops them attaching too early to men they don’t actually know (i.e. it’s under 3 months of dating)
It brings a calm and serenity to their lives and right sizes them and their feelings about themselves
It increases intimacy and closeness in relationships because they are much less egocentric and so can value and truly honour another’s needs
And they also get a lot of positive reinforcement from partners such as ‘It’s so easy to talk to you’ or ‘I love how I can really be myself around you’ or ‘I feel really relaxed in your company’
What those comments really mean is that men feel emotionally safe in your presence. Someone who is taking things personally all the time is actually not an emotionally safe person to be around
This often really shocks clients to hear as they believe they are caring, kind and loving people
Thankfully, if you’re willing, you can learn and practice not taking things personally until it becomes second nature
It’s such a sweet relief