There are two things that have a tremendous impact on our emotional well-being and hinder our relationships:
1. What we take personally
2. How we respond when we take things personally
A few of my girlfriends and I were planning a weekend getaway. During a conversation with one of the friends, she stated that she was not excited about the trip. After the conversation, my thoughts immediately began to ponder:
“Why isn’t she is excited about going on the trip?”
“Is she really saying she is not excited about going on the trip with us?”
“Does this mean she doesn’t value us?”
At that moment, I was faced with the choice of whether I was going to take her comment personally and make it about me or to let it go.
I believe that many things occur during our day that we can take personally. Taking things personally requires so much of us! It requires us to put more thought into the situation than necessary and it also requires us to dig into negative feelings to attach them to the situation. It’s literally emotionally exhausting to take things personally.
In the previous scenario, I decided to let it go. This person was someone I called a friend on numerous occasions–she had been there for me, prayed for me, and I had confided in her a time or two. Her comments were just her feelings about the trip, and they had nothing to do with me. I had to control my emotions so that I would not take it personally.
Additionally, if I had chosen to take the comment personally, I would also have to consider how I was going to behave after that. Was I going to confront her about it, give her a piece of my mind, secretly hold a grudge, stop speaking to her, or gossip about it with my other friends? The biggest question I had to ask myself was is the comment really worth damaging a friendship?
Sis, these are the types of conversations we need to have with ourselves when we are improving our emotional well-being. You see, I once was the kind of person that would immediately end a friendship if someone said or did something that I deemed harmful to me. But, when I look back over my life I realized that I didn’t know how to resolve conflict and, more importantly, I had very few long-term friendships.
Create and then print out the “before I take it personally” checklist. Hang it on your mirror and put it in your journal so that you can review it before you decide to take something personally.
