This is part three of my series on The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Today, we’re going to talk about the second agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally. Let’s remember the first agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word. These agreements are powerful – they’re as powerful as we let them be – and they’re even more powerful when we make them personal.
Carla Warnock, our faithful sign language interpreter at The Metropolitan Community Church of San Diego (The Met), shared something with me last week. She’s written the agreements in the “I” form and taken out the negative “Don’ts” and then re-written them in the positive. Here’s the first agreement as she has paraphrased it:
“I am impeccable with my word. I speak with integrity and say only what I mean. I only use the word to speak in support of myself and others. I use the power of my word in the direction of truth and love.”
Remember, this is the first agreement. It’s the foundation upon which all of the other agreements are built. We have to keep on coming back to this one – over and over and over again!
On Wednesday nights at 7 p.m. at The Met, we are discussing the agreements from the previous Sunday. We had a powerful discussion this past Wednesday, and I celebrate the diversity we had represented. (I like to say that ‘Diversity is our strength!’)
So, this week let’s talk about the second agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally. What? Are you kidding me? Anything! Oh, this is so easy to talk about, and much more challenging to do. But you can do it! The choice is yours. You can do it!
Breaking this agreement down, it looks like this: Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
This can almost sound as if we have to be cold-hearted and callous to be successful with this agreement. It’s not like this at all. It’s about being self-aware. It’s about knowing who we are. It’s about being secure and loving ourselves and celebrating the fabulous way God uniquely created each of us to be.
What are some of the things we take personally? We take someone’s criticism, their judgment and their opinion all personally from time to time. And, it sometimes hurts us. Sometimes it hurts like hell, and I’m not saying that in a flippant way, but in the truest sense of the word.
Whatever happens around you, you don’t have to take it personally.
Let’s say I see you on the street and I say, “Hey, you’re stupid!” It’s not about you, it’s about me. If you take it personally, then maybe you really do believe you’re stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, “How does he know? Is he clairvoyant? Can everyone see I’m stupid? … and if you agree to this you feel badly about yourself.
You take it personally because you’ve made an agreement with whatever was said. As soon as you agree, the poison power of the word goes through you, and you’re trapped. What causes you to be trapped? Two words: Personal Importance.
Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness, because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.” It’s all about me! Me, me, me! Maybe, you’ve heard someone who’s always talking about themselves say, “Enough about me. What do you think about me?”
How many of us think we’re responsible for everything? We feel responsible for everyone. We feel we have to fix it/her/him. The truth is, we are responsible for some things. We’re responsible for our actions, for our reactions and for our choices.
Toltec wisdom says that nothing other people do is because of you. It’s because of themselves. Everyone lives in their own dream, their own world, and that world is a completely different world from the one you live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what’s in our world, and then we try to impose our world on their world.
If someone gives you an opinion and says, “Hey, you’re stupid,” then don’t take it personally, because the truth is that this person is dealing with their own feelings, beliefs and opinions. That person tried to poison you with their words, and if you take it personally, then you take the poison and it becomes yours. Taking things personally makes you easy prey. It’s like you have a target on your forehead that says “Here I am!”
When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts and drama. Oh, we can make something so big out of something so little, can’t we? Why? Because we have the need to be right and to make everyone else wrong. God, forgive us!
As you see, striving to not “Take Anything Personally” is also much more involved and deeper than you think. Enough so, in fact, that I want to continue this conversation with you next week. Meet me back here at the same place. Just know that if you miss it, though I hope that’s not the case, I won’t take it personally.
Rev. Dan Koeshall is the Senior Pastor at The Metropolitan Community Church (The Met) in San Diego, California, www.themetchurch.org
