Don't Take Anything Personally

Greetings Peeps,

I didn't realize the last time I wrote was on Sunday.  It was unintentional slacking on my part.  Between working and taking a technology sabbatical, the week just got away from me.

Several times recently the title of this post has surfaced in my life.  There is a book by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements, which I have not read but have heard a lot about.  In it he discusses four agreements to live by, one of them being "don't take anything personally."  In concept I think it is great.  In reality I think it can be hard to do.

At work, I'm still struggling to really grasp what I'm doing.  I've got the basics but speed or at least efficiency still allude me.  And if someone is watching it's like I revert back to my first day.  Yesterday I was having a few moments where I was feeling particularly frustrated with myself, I went in the backroom to get something.  The manager and assistant manager were back there talking.  The conversation stopped.  There was that awkward vibe in the air where people say something to make it seem like the conversation didn't just stop.  I got what I needed and scurried back out front.  I spent the next half hour (or more) berating myself in my head that they must have been talking about me and what a slow learner I am.  I wanted to cry, I wanted to go home.  Now before you say, or think, I'm being too hard on myself please consider that voice in your head.  The voice that says things to you that you wouldn't for a second consider saying to someone else.  We all have one. 

Ultimately I would like to figure out how to turn that voice in my head off permanently though I'm not sure total annihilation is possible.  So in those moments when I'm not feeling good enough, I try to talk kinder to myself and I also try to keep doing whatever it is my head is telling me I can't do.  Yesterday I just got on with my work.  Crying or going home weren't viable options. 

As it turns out, that voice in my head didn't know what it was talking about.  Indications later revealed that the conversation I walked in was most likely about the fact that another employee had to be let go.  Don't take anything personally!  The things people do and say have so little to do with us.  And unless there are hard facts to support it is about us, it is best to tell that voice in our heads to pipe down. 

In addition to the "Four Agreements" I would like to add a fifth.  Don't believe everything that you think.  It's so much better that way.

Until next time...
Peace, Love and Payday!
Hope