Take Nothing Personally
In Chapter Six of The Not So Big Life I explain a different way of looking at everything in your life, by seeing all of it as a kind of reflection that’s showing you to you. All that happens to you and all the people who are a part of your life are really there to show you what you can’t see about yourself.
In 2013 I did a TED-X talk called Life’s Invisible Feast that includes this teaching, and may be helpful in bringing this understanding home.
Once you start to look at things this way, it changes everything. You will find that you become much less reactive to what happens to you and around you, and that you no longer take things personally all the time.
Instead, you’ll be asking yourself “What is this situation in my life to teach me about myself?” Although we are still looking at what the meaning is for us, this kind of ‘personal’ inquiry embodies an entirely different meaning of the word.
Life is indeed a feast, and we’re seated at the most amazing banquet table. We’re only just beginning to realize that what we normally react to and push away from us, is in fact food for our own growth. When all of humanity learns to see in this way as part of normal mature adult behavior, we’ll be living in a very different, and much more peaceful world.
