It's hard to believe we're already more than 3 months into this project. We started out with the intent to follow the four agreements for a year, focusing on one every three months. We've been trying to use impeccable words since March. I have been surprised that there are so many angles to that challenge, so many questions about the way we live arise when we try to speak and think impeccably.
Now, for me, comes an even greater challenge: Don't take anything personally. Ruiz writes about this second of the four agreements that no matter what another person does or says to you or about you, it is not to be taken personally. This is because, Ruiz argues, everyone is the protagonist in their own drama, the star of their own movie. We are nothing but secondary characters. Ruiz says that to take another's actions as personal attacks is to assume that we are more important to their life drama than we actually are. And taking things personally also inhibits our own ability to live our own lives, and to make decisions based on our own understanding of truth and love.
If ever there was a challenge for me, it is this one. I take the weather personally, for crying out loud! If there is a bad mood in a meeting, or a party that isn't fun, I believe it is not only my fault but my responsibility to make it right. My personality has become larger than life with my continual efforts to arrange circumstances so that everyone I meet will be happy, or at least will like and respect me. Oh sure, I've learned to speak a hard truth or to make the unpopular decision in my vocation, but don't think it doesn't tear me up inside. I recently had to tell a man he was fired from his job and probably would not work in his chosen profession again. I did the job as well as anyone could, but inside I was thinking, "how can I get out of this and still be likeable to this person? How can I make him smile?" I realize this is absurd, the desperate thoughts of a person who does not want to dispense consequences (however well deserved) for fear of how she herself will be judged.
This type of thinking is debilitating. And at its root is the fact that I do, indeed, take nearly everything personally. It's going to be a long three months, but hopefully, I'll learn some things along the way that bring some relief to my desperation to please.
It seems like it is hard to not take something personally when it concerns certain aspects of my life, self, whereas when it touches on certain other aspects of my life, self, I have no problem not taking something personally.
ReplyDeleteI am very rational, well-balanced in many areas of my life and thinking and self-understanding, but there are these shadow sides of the self that don't appear too often, but when they do, I have no better self-understanding than a possum. Question is: can we anticipate when one of these lurking demons is going to be provoked or has perhaps escaped from the barn and needs to be caught, tied up and locked up again? Or, maybe it is possible to bring these shadow sides of the self to the light of day so that they are seen for what they are: not some big, bad demons, but just some petty parts of our selves that don't deserve the attention they often get when provoked.
It is hard to admit to being petty. At least when you are admitting to some evil, there is some real drama to it that feeds the need for self-importance.