I was driving down a one-way street in downtown San Francisco. The light was green and I proceeded to make a left turn, but first I stopped short of the crosswalk to allow the pedestrians to finish crossing. The sun was in my eyes so I had furrowed my brow. I was thinking about what I needed to do once I reached my destination so my lips were tight with concentration. I looked as if I had been sucking lemons. Just then, I noticed the woman in the crosswalk walking rather fast and making intentional eye contact with me. She spoke in an intentionally-audible tone and said, “We’d better walk as FAST as possible!” Her comment was jarring and it caused me to assess the situation. My car had partially breached the crosswalk and I was poised to complete my turn. Plus, I had resting douchebag face. Perhaps she thought I was irritated with her and pressuring her (with the position of my car) to cross expediently? Who knows!? But, it seemed as if she took circumstantial evidence and decided to make it about her. She broke the second agreement and took something personally.
As is noted above, nothing others do is because of you. My friend will often ask me (about a specific situation) “how am I not supposed to take THAT personally?” In any given situation, we don’t know all angles of the story. With any decision that we make there are various factors at play. When someone else makes a decision, we know very little about the various influencing factors. While it’s easiest to make it about us, that doesn’t make it accurate or fair. Like the story about the parents that planned to leave everything to one daughter while excluding the other. When asked, the parents said that they were worried about the one daughter’s ability to take care of herself. They considered the other daughter independent and strong enough to be successful without any inheritance. That was the parent’s judgment of the situation. It wasn’t for either daughter to take personally.
It’s worth mentioning that there are times when some immature people in the world will do something with the specific intent of getting a rise out of us. Hell, I’ve done stupid shit with such intent in years past. But, even in those cases, actions shouldn’t be taken personally. Let’s take name calling for example. As I’ve mentioned before, No One Can Make You Feel and name calling is the best example. If I were to call 10 people the same pejorative term (take your pick). Not all 10 would have the same reaction to the slur. That’s because everyone has a different set of experiences. What may be insulting to one may make the next person laugh. At that point, it’s important for us to acknowledge our perception of events and not allow ourselves to get butthurt over it.
There are times when people I’ve never met become so angry with me that they allow the bitterness to ruin their day. I don’t even know their names. How can such a thing happen? Because they take things personally, they never take the time to assess personal accountability in a situation. Let’s take the unreasonable request for example. A man came into my restaurant some years back and asked for a booth. That sounds like a reasonable request until you factor in the following details: It was a Saturday night, he had no reservation, he was dining alone (all of our booths sat 4 people), and to make matters worse we were on a 15 minute wait. When my staff told him that we couldn’t accommodate his request he became irate and asked to speak with the manager. He threatened to write a 1-star Yelp review (wielding his iPad as if it were a weapon) if we didn’t give him what he wanted. I told him that I’d help him write the review, but I wasn’t going to let him jump the line and inconvenience others. He was butthurt yet he never took into account (despite my explanation) the lack of reason in his request. It’s not that the customer is always wrong, they just often take things personally.
I’d like to take an aside here and send out a request to all of you (or your friends) that write passive-aggressive post-it notes. When writing a letter to management, be it directly (via email) or indirectly (via Yelp), take a breath and ask yourself some questions. Will my words get someone fired? Do I want resolution or just to complain? Did I make an effort to resolve the issue in the moment with actual verbal communication (see the first agreement)? Did the person with whom I have the beef make an effort to resolve the situation? Am I writing a complaint that will paint a biased portrait of me as a victim without flaw (maybe an unbiased third party should proofread it)? Have I taken inventory of my part in this misunderstanding (like taking up four seats with one ass)? Above all else, am I taking this issue personally when it could have been a simple miscommunication?
I once had to fire one of our cocktail servers over a Yelp review. While what she did was worth getting fired, it was the review that annoyed me. To summarize, the server gave away a free bottle of (expensive) Champagne. In the review, the person pointed out that they weren’t charged and the server gave a laissez-faire response when they pointed it out to her. Now, I can’t speak for others, but the people that I know don’t tell millions (read: post on the internet) when they get the hook up. They tell a few friends, leave a nice tip and keep it moving. If the Yelper felt morally conflicted about not paying for the bottle, wouldn’t it have made more sense to just handle that with the manager on duty? Instead, they wrote it in a review and the owners got wind of it and the server was fired.
I once read a Yelp review wherein a person gave a gym 2-stars. One of the reasons they noted was, “It’s also not the kind of down to earth place you can go in your sweatpants. You better don all the Lululemon ya got.” [The other two reasons were disliking an instructor (not me) and having difficulty finding the place.] So, a person’s insecurities and lack of ability to follow signs yields a bad review? Sounds like a case of projecting personal issues onto feelings about the gym. I could be wrong. I don’t want to make an assumption.
When you take the time to craft a letter to management, you could cause someone to lose their job. In a situation wherein the accused never knew they upset you, there’s a good chance that you’re taking things personally and fucking with someone’s livelihood because of it. How much drama could be avoided if we embraced the first agreement and chose (verbal) communication, in search of clarity/resolution, before we allowed ourselves to break the second agreement?
“Perception is reality.” I’ve heard many business owners say this in reference to the customer’s perspective. The truth is, perception is perception and taking things personally causes unnecessary escalation of a situation. I only raise my voice when I’m forced to repeat myself. So, when I get a complaint that I “yelled” at someone (while using a microphone) I laugh and choose not to take that personally. How many times have you gotten into an argument with a friend or lover because they perceived something differently than what you meant? How many times have we taken something personally when the person that was “attacking” us was just misdirecting their hostility because of their own battles?
I don’t remember the specific quote. But, there’s one that reminds us to show compassion to bullies because they need it the most. I want to take a moment to distinguish between a bully and an asshole. I want to distinguish between legitimate fear and taking things personally. *insert old man voice* Back in my day… the word bully was defined as someone that presented you with a tangible threat while demanding something from you. “I’ll beat your ass if you don’t give me your lunch money!” “I’ll keep knocking your books in the mud if you walk down my street. Find a new way home!” “You’ll get shot if you come in my neighborhood wearing that blue rag again!” Today, however, people use the words bully or bullying to describe assholes that said (or even worse-posted online) something that they took personally. I wouldn’t allow an able-bodied woman to use 3-pound weights in my metabolic conditioning class. I had posted signs on the door about the required weights, this wasn’t shocking news. When I took the weights from her (after witnessing her perform the prescribed exercises with heavier weights) she suggested that I was bullying her. I explained to her that just because I said some shit she didn’t like, didn’t make me a bully. (Remember, no one forced her to take the class and she knew the requirements for participation.) If you take nothing else from today’s post, take away this: Just because someone said/wrote/did something you didn’t like, doesn’t make them a bully. In the aforementioned anecdote, I was an asshole at best. I’ll own that. I was not bullying her. Challenging the muscles of someone participating in a group exercise class isn’t a threat. Bullies make tangible threats, they don’t make suggestions or leave passive-aggressive post-it notes. Here’s a viral throwback and my favorite misuse of the word bully.
Back when this photo went viral, it gained such momentum because everyone called her a bully. Let me get this straight, someone that’s never met you… is bullying you!? Could it be that you’re taking her statement personally and making it about you? Some of the loudest most butthurt people that responded to this picture and wrote nasty things to this woman were people that had never made excuses, wanted to get to her level of fitness, or even wanted to have three kids. So, it stands to reason that she wasn’t directing her statement at her loudest critics that claimed she was bullying them. So, she hadn’t met people that she was accused of bullying. Huh? Back in my Facebook days, I got into a comment thread argument (read: biggest waste of time on the goddamned planet) about this photo with someone that used the phrase, “she thinks that…” in reference to Maria Kang. That’s when I signed off. If you ever find yourself in an argument with a self-assumed clairvoyant that implies they know what someone (they’ve never met) was thinking when they did something, just stop talking. You’re talking to someone that’s taking things personally and projecting their own perception onto a situation.
So, how do you not take something personally? Simple, just stop making shit about you. The world doesn’t revolve around you (or any of us). The next time that someone approaches me with aggression, I’ll approach them with compassion and see how far we get. Maybe we’ll talk with our words instead of angry butthurt letters/reviews. Maybe we’ll seek and reach resolution. Maybe we’ll hug it out and laugh at the misunderstanding instead of walking away assuming that one attacked the other. I won’t take anything personally by not taking things personally. That’s my plan, but as you know following the four agreements is a daily effort.
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