“It’s just business.
Don’t take it personally." 

— Lame and care-less phrase 

I think it is pretty much impossible to not take it personally if we are experiencing something. Of course, that doesn’t mean we need to stay in that place for very long. Becoming upset is a normal, natural, and generally automatic occurrence, but staying upset is purely a choice.

I know this from experience; however, it is my desire to stop the automatic response as well as choose my thoughts and thereby my feelings in every interaction. It’s not that the auto-response is bad, it is simply that I prefer to not have that happening in my life. Yet, it does, and I am playing with it, having some fun with it, toward being as perfect an allower and lover that I can be.

The whole essence comes down to our giving power to the other person by valuing what they say and how they say it as more important than we think about ourselves. All of my life, my nemesis has been criticism. Someone is critical, disappointed, angry, or disagrees with me, and I feel embarrassed, crappy, dejected, unloved, cast off. You could say, and rightly so, that I have been working on letting that go all my life too. My ears turn red, my face turns red, and my emotions are not only inside, but obvious on the outside.

We all want to be loved, approved of, supported, appreciated, and valued. When things turn against us, or at least our perception of them being against us, we want to run away and hide like a little dog hiding under a bed. We don’t want that. We want love.

But, I am part of the problem too. It is my need to be right, to have the other value my opinion or contribution, to be leading, to be in the limelight maybe. When I am this way, it is so much easier for others to find fault, criticize, and generally shun me. You could say that I’m deserving in this scenario. It’s just that in the earlier days of my life, my ego was so much more in charge because I just didn’t know any better.

Now I know better. I realize when my ego is in the forefront, and now knowing that I am in charge and not my auto-response ego, I have far more control generally. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel the criticism, it’s just that it is nowhere near as strong as in years past. Now, I would like to have total control, and I’m playing and having fun with that.