The Second Agreement - Don't Take Anything Personally

what, you mean it's not all about me? like, that other people are living whole, real lives just like me, and they aren't simply revolving around me, for me?

"You take it personally because you agree with whatever was said. As soon as you agree, the poison goes through you, and you are trapped in the dream of hell. What causes you to be trapped is what we call personal importance. Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about "me." During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take everything personally. We think we are responsibel for everything. Me, me, me, always me!

"Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselfes. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completley differint world form the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is inour world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

"Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly , it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds. Their point of view comes from all the programming they received during domestication." (pages 48-49, The Four Agreements).

So we re-program ourselves. And we choose not to let other programs affect, change, blur, ruin our new programs. Life keeps getting better as we constantly increase the quality of our "thought life". Stephen Covey says, in the 8th habit, that when someone is insecure because "they don't have their deep internal act together seek their security from sources outside themselves. Because they're codependent with their environment, they engage in ... destructive, cancerous behaviors."

When we take it personally, we internalize poisonous emotions. This causes us to act in ways that can harm or even destroy our relationships. I've been learning these lessons for years. We are never finished programming ourselves, and we can be inspired by our loved ones. The idea of internalizing was taught to me by Dan a few years ago and really helped me change directions. We do that for each other!