The things you don’t like about other people…..have nothing to do with them.
Think about this for a second…
The things YOU don’t like about other people………..HAVE NOTHING to do with THEM.
How many times do you get caught up in the things you can’t stand about somebody else?
Your belief that the other person is doing something “wrong”.
Or, that you would never do what that person just did.
Or, the other person SHOULD be doing something else.
How often do you use these feelings of “rightness” and “wrongness” as a way to make yourself feel better?
If you’re anything like me, my guess is pretty often.
So……what if I switched the second part of the first sentence in this email….
What if it read….
The things you don’t like about other people…..HAVE EVERYTHING to do with YOU.
Does this feel different?
My guess is that it does.
One of the biggest challenges that I face in my day to day interactions is to take full ownership of my feelings and emotions.
Many times throughout the week, someone will do, or say, something that rubs me the wrong way and stir up uncomfortable emotions inside of me….anger, sadness, frustration, etc.
And when I don’t claim that I’m feeling one of these emotions, I’ll marinate in the story of self-righteousness and making the other person wrong.
Last week was a tough one for me. A friend said something to me that was difficult to hear; I felt sad, and angry and wanted to blame her for my feelings.
When I spoke to another friend about the situation, he listened, laughed a little bit, and simply said,
“The things you don’t like about her, have nothing to do with her.”
In that moment, I didn’t want to take full responsibility, but he was so right!!
He gave me a gift and reminded me that it was my responsibility to look inside and examine what emotions her words had triggered inside of me.
At the end of the day, her words were just words….
They’re triggers for unresolved stuff that resides inside of me.
As one of my teachers from my Masters program used to say, “Outer experience is a reflection of inner reality.”
Everything that happens in my outside world functions as a mirror, whether I like it or not, for my inside world…
……Everything is a reflection of my inner reality.
And with every look in the mirror, I have an opportunity to learn and grow.
AND….the truth is…….this shit ain’t easy sometimes.
For this week, take notice of all the moments when you start to create negative stories about other people, or feel the need to gossip about another person, or create drama by speaking down about someone else.
Maybe you don’t say anything out loud; maybe you create these stories and keep them within you.
Whatever it may be, take notice…..none of that stuff has anything to do with them.
