How do I stop being offended by what others do?

How do I stop being offended by what others do?

Hello there fellow travelers, man, it is good to be here.  I admire and respect your desire to look in and do a little work.  I never tire of saying it… your perspective, your understanding, your psychology is everything.  Your question this week is significant importance… you asked “How Can I Stop Being Offended by What Others Say or Think about me?”  this is a great question because it deals directly with how you interact with the world around you, and more importantly with others around you.  In addition, this has a lot to do with your personal psychology and your internal ideas.  

I subscribe to a particular kind of psychology, that acknowledges the importance and power of our personal ideas, beliefs, and philosophy.  I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie inception, but if you haven’t, I highly recommend it.  It is a little violent, but the ideas and the story is original and also carries some powerful elements and ideas that are worth considering and investigating.  There is a specific quote in that movie that reads “An idea is like a virus.  Resilient.  Highly contagious.  And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow.  It can grow to define or destroy you.”  Think about that for a moment… your ideas, your personal philosophies of life, how you perceive others, have a tremendous impact on how you experience and respond to the world around you.  This is the basis for cognitive psychologies… the idea being that it isn’t the events or circumstances that ultimately create your response or the outcomes in your life… but your interpretation of those events.  So in other words, the lenses through which you see the world around you, and that you put on in the morning, and carry with you throughout the entire day, ultimately lead to how you will experience the world and life around you.  Is your world a threatening one, a black and white world of people who are either one way or another?  Is a rigid or flexible world?  Is it a world filled with opportunities for growth, redemption, love, and meaning, or is a world fixed with judgment, condemnation, criticism, and people, circumstances, or even a God who is out to get you.  I’m giving you this introduction because I want you to know two things:  1) Your psychology and perspective have a tremendous impact on how you feel and experience life, and 2) This psychology or set of internal ideas, can be upgraded, manipulated, and become a bit more expansive.  In other words, we are talking about developing the kind of personal psychology that allows you to go into the world with confidence, courage, and wielding friendship and compassion as your sword and shield.  But as always, I digress.  Let’s get to the question and some tips that will help to create a shield and a buffer of confidence, understanding, compassion, and peace with yourself and others.  I believe that these ideas will indeed liberate you from the rudeness, misunderstandings, injustice, ignorance, and unfairness that this life and others may level at you, and by the way, there will be plenty of times, where you will be the genesis or even the cause of this ignorance and suffering.  Unfortunately, none of us can truly escape our own stupidity and lack of poise and wisdom, and as a result, others will hurt as a result of yours and my short sightedness.  In fact we have arrived at idea #1 that will help you to approach life in a more confident, humble, and compassionate way:

1. Realize that we are all toddlers, learning how to best negotiate and navigate this life.  We are all consciously or unconsciously walking around with our biases and our blinders on.  Some of of our personal ideals and beliefs encourage a peaceable walk with life and others, they fill us with confidence, optimism, hope and emotional endurance, while others, carry trauma, history, and ideas and beliefs that promote fear, insecurity, pessimism, and at times a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness.  I’m telling you this because I’m hoping that you’ll go into life with a sense of understanding that we are all functioning with a set of faulty and at times out of focus lenses.  I hope that you can see how this kind of perspective will allow you to go into this world with greater understanding, and an increased patience with yourself and others.

2. Stop looking for ways to be offended!  I’ll be honest, I don’t watch a ton of news.  I try to stay informed by reading a few newspapers from around the country, but I have this sense, especially lately, that some people are constantly looking for the wrong words to be spoken, or for the inappropriate expression, or for someone to make a mistake… and boy when they do, it’s cancel this, or immediate judgment and condemnation.  To me this just doesn’t feel reasonable or realistic.  In fact it doesn’t feel like evolution or like we’re getting better.  It’s as if for a country or a society to heal or grow, we have to erase the past… that doesn’t feel like progress to me, in fact it feels like the opposite.  To me progress feels like, seeking to understand people, or learning to ask better questions, instead of making these huge illogical assumptions, which only provokes more anger and division.  So… what i’m trying to say is this, if you are feeling offended a lot by what others are saying, or doing, it’s possible that your own personal radar is turned up to ‘ultra sensitive,’ and when your radar is turned on to ultra sensitive, you’ll very easily see faults and violations everywhere.  Years ago, I was doing a presentation to a group of men and women, and toward the end I left some time for discussion or questions that they had, and one wonderful woman was brave enough to ask me this question: “why am I so angry all the time?”  It was a beautifully honest and humble question.  After gathering a little more explanation from her about her circumstances, my response to her was… “I think you have too many rules for yourself and others in your life.  You have to many, ‘people should do this, or that, but not this, or not that’.  You have to many rules about how people should believe, and act around you.  When you have this many rules, and people violate these rules, the only possible outcome is anger.”  So my awesome friends, if you are finding yourself annoyed at the people in your home, work, on the road, in your church, or wherever you find yourself, just turn down your ‘ultra sensitive alarm’ and instead, turn on your optimistic and compassionate radar, and begin to see a different world.  

3. If necessary separate, if not, let’s get to work!  Look, I realize that some of you may be in relationships where friends, or family, or co-workers, or bosses, or neighbors, out of their own woundedness, or fear, or insecurity, will be very offensive, controlling, demeaning, and at times even abusive.  If there is a systematic pattern of meanness, where people treat you in demeaning, rude, and offensive ways, it’s possible that you need to migrate to a different environment and a new group of people.  If separation is not the answer to your problem, then we have to work that problem, and the way to do that is to:

1. Educate:  let that person know that their comments and behavior are hurting you.

2. Clarify: Ask questions about what people mean about their remarks.  Sometimes we misunderstand and misinterpret what people are saying. 

3. Create some healthy boundaries: for example “when you criticize me, or use swear words in our conversation, that makes it really hard for me to not be defensive, and attack you back.” In a very real way, we have to teach one another how to be in relationships.  Don’t just expect people to know, or to think and feel the same way you do, instead communicate these things.  

4. Pick your battles.  Not everything has to turn into world war III.  Some things would benefit greatly from being addressed, while others, can be let go, and you can move on with your day, and focus on more important things, than holding on to that grudge or that comment that was said, while you daydream and fantasize about how to respond or fight back.  If something needs to be said, then muster up your courage, and let’s work it, if not, make the deliberate decision that you are moving on, and shifting gears.  

4. Adopt a growth mindset.  My friend, if you haven’t had a chance to read Carol Dweck’s work “mindset”, do yourself a favor, pick it up, and read or listen to the dang thing.  I’m not suggesting that this is going to fix all of your problems, but I promise you, if you begin to see your existence through ‘growth mindset’ lenses, you will very quickly recognize yourself and others as a work-in-progress, instead of finished products that constantly need to be defending their egos.  Be coachable, be open to feedback, keep your heart soft and willing, instead of hard and resistant.  Invest in a confident mindset that allows you to consider what others are saying, and to use it if it’s wise for you, or to simply say… thanks, but no thanks.  

There’s much more that could be said in this topic, and many more ideas that I believe could be incredibly helpful for you.  The book “The Four Agreements” by Don Ruiz for example, has one entire chapter, one of the four agreements in that book is simply “Take Nothing Personally” and by the way, he means compliments as well.  In other words, he would say that what others say is a reflection of their own psychology, and not an accurate representation of who you are.  Anyways, something to think about.  Once again, thank you for your contribution and for being here, now get out there and live deeply and suck out the marrow of life, instead of living in a fickle and fault finding way, and instead reaping bitterness and contempt.  Enjoy!

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