Taking something personally is a universal human experience. You can take literally anything and make it into a personal offense against you.

• The guy driving the car ahead of you who didn’t move when the light turned green? Doing it on purpose.

• When your mom responded with, “okay,” to your text? So pissed off at you.

• The fact that Disney+ raised their prices dramatically last year? Fucking with you.

The question, if I were to rephrase it slightly, is not how you stop taking things so personally (the ego mind will forever see things in this way), but how you recognize when it’s happening and respond differently to it.

Your mind is obsessed with you. There’s no way in hell it will never stop making everything about you. I once heard a quote that said, “A mind is smart, but it is not wise,” and I think that applies here. Your mind wants to do whatever it takes to protect you, but since it lives inside your skull and can’t physically fight off a predator for you, it has to relate everything back to you.

Thankfully, you are not your mind. You are not your heart, your lungs, or your legs. None of these things define you in any way, they simply exist as body parts. You, if you want to get really technical, are the consciousness observing your mind. Have you ever had that experience, whether in meditation or in a moment of your daily life, where you really see your mind? You see what’s happening and you remain completely unaffected by it? That’s the you I’m talking about.

This part of you is constant - it’s always there, witnessing everything. When we talk about getting to a place of not taking things so personally, we’re really talking about accessing that witnessing part. The part that notices without reactivity.

Let me make something clear though: The goal is not to get to a place where we never react. That’s impossible and quite frankly, not helpful. You will need to react to life, that’s just how it goes. The goal is to be able to recognize when your reactions are helping you or hurting you. Every response we have to anything is the result of a mind-made story. Even if the response is helpful or informative, what’s leading to that response is a story your mind made up.

The mind loves stories.

When you are taking something personally, you are usually caught up in a story that your mind is spinning. You might not recognize it in the moment, but it’s there. The story goes something like this:

“I can’t believe this happened…this shouldn’t be happening…this is unfairly happening to me…this is happening purposefully to me…I don’t want others to be this way…” and on and on.

All minds do this, no exception.

The reality is that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the mind’s story. Where it goes off the rails is when we default to it, believing what it’s saying, and not stopping to explore if what it’s saying is actually true.

Byron Katie’s work is superb for helping us not take things so personally. Her four questions are:

1. Is it true?

2. Can you absolutely know that’s true?

3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

4. Who would you be without that thought?

What I find useful about these questions is they help us begin to see through the narratives we hold onto and expand our self-concept.

So, the guy who cut you off, is it true that he’s an asshole? You might think so. Can you absolutely know that’s true? No, you can’t. Why? Because you don’t know him or anything about why he did what he did. The goal isn’t necessarily to give him the benefit of the doubt, though you can, rather it’s to help you see that you can’t actually know truth with absolute certainty. How do you react, what happens when you believe that the guy is an asshole? Well, you probably tense up, it’s possible that you go through the next 20 minutes on edge, and maybe you start to believe that everyone is self-serving and this impacts how you show up in your life. Who would you be without that thought? You tell me. Who I would be without that thought is a person with a little bit more freedom, more grace, more openness.

Questioning the story is one way in. But there's another entry point that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, and it has nothing to do with your thoughts at all.

Are you connected to your own power?

Beyond just the fact that a mind loves to tell stories and is very ego-centric, another reason why you take things personally may have to do with the fact that you are not connected to your own sense of personal power.

Read more

What I love in this question is that there’s a genuine desire to find a way forward, but this person is innocently looking in the wrong place. Most individuals who have a desire to get over the past, but haven’t done so, are likely still hanging onto what happened, getting stuck in a story rather than getting to know the feelings underneath.

The past isn’t a problem until we turn it into a story about who we are.

This happened to me, therefore I am a (fill in the blank).

• “I got bullied, therefore I’m a loser”

• “I was dumped by the love of my life, therefore I will forever be alone”

• “I made a mistake, therefore I will always live in regret”

• “I denied myself what I wanted, therefore I can’t achieve happiness”

None of these stories tell the truth. The only thing that is being revealed is what happened and the meaning you ascribed. They don’t define you and they really have no power over you, other than the power you (innocently) give them.

Even the language “get over” is rooted in shame.

What happens when you hear the question, “How can I grow from my past?” or even, “What lessons from the past can I take and apply them to how I want my life to be now?”

There’s less struggle in those questions and elicits a sense of hope in the form that you are still a growing and evolving human being. The question, “how do I get over my past?” isn’t a problem, it just sets you up for a lot of resistance and frustration. And ironically this is what keeps us stuck in the past because we’re only looking to “get over” and we’re not really defining where we’re wanting to get to.

Take a minute and inquire within: Where do you want to get to? What would it mean to arrive there?

This question is going to help you take steps forward rather than looking backward trying to flick off residue from your past like it’s dirt. The past will remain what it is, but we get to grow from our past experiences by learning from them.

My guess is that a person who asks this desires freedom ultimately. They want to expand into the versions of themselves that inspires them, rather than remaining stagnant in a story that isn’t serving them anymore.

To achieve freedom we must be able to see that the stories we tell ourselves are just that, stories, not defining features or truths about who we are. They are literally the brain’s way of making sense of experience by assigning meaning, but meaning is not inherent in anything.

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The fastest path to freedom is through acceptance.

To resist anything is to be shackled to it. The famous expression “what we resist persists” is true in this context. The more we try to free ourselves through contraction and white knuckling, the more we are actually digging ourselves into a hole.

Acceptance is just another way of saying non-resistance. Acceptance does not ever mean being okay with something that you’re not, allowing harmful behavior, or doing anything against your own values system or boundaries. Acceptance means welcoming your experience as it currently is.

Welcome the pain, the sadness, the anger, the joy, the hope, the courage. Whatever it is, welcome it all. And the more we welcome even our past, the less it is going to demand attention.

Usually when the past feels as though it’s still lingering in the now, there’s something that is desiring our caring attention. You might be remembering the time you were bullied and feeling as though it was happening right now. Instead of trying to think your way into a different reality, name the pain, feel the emotions that are there, and welcome that part of you into your being.

It could sound like this:

“That was such a miserable time in my life. I feel both the fear I felt then and the rage. It wasn’t fair to me at all. I hate those guys.”

And then we welcome that part:

“I see how vulnerable I was. How afraid. How much I just desired to fit in and be part of the group. I love that part of me. This part is welcome to stay with me for as long as it wants. For forever even! It has a safe space within me. I love you. Welcome home.”

The somatic component might be:

Breathing with the feeling….tracking the sensation in the body, noticing how it changes. Being curious about each sensation as it shows up. Stretching if that feels right, moving the body if that is what is being asked for, or sitting still.

So, how do you get over your past?

You don’t get over, you move through and you grow from. You accept the feelings that the past brings up, letting the story float away because you no longer need it, and tuning into the part of you that needs your loving attention. You welcome the part of you that hurts from the past. You acknowledge its pain without making it wrong. You end the cycle of shame that says you’re failing if you don’t get over this thing. You meet yourself with the love you didn’t receive back then and you keep going.

The moment we meet ourselves fully is the moment we transform. This is your reminder to love yourself unconditionally right now, as you are, as you were, and as you are working toward becoming.

Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes only and not professional advice. Please do your due diligence and support yourself with qualified professionals. You deserve it.