How to Stop Taking Things Personally (Part 1)

Sat, Dec 20, 2008

A Passionate Career, Creating Success, Emotional Freedom

Limiting Belief

I take things personally but I don’t want others to know I do!

Playback Affirmation

Even though I take things personally, I don’t have a sense of humor about myself, and I try to act like words don’t hurt me, I deeply and completely love and accept myself…without judgment.

Everyone at some point in their lives (if not on a daily basis like I used to) takes things personally. In our society if we are so caught off guard as to accidentally SHOW that we are hurt, offended, or misunderstood in any way we can expect someone to blurt “stop taking things personally!” Or my personal favorite, “stop being so sensitive!” And then of course what follows is not only do you feel beaten up by someone’s words or actions but now you are additionally beating yourself up for taking things personally. Taking criticism or others’ opinions of you personally can cause your career passion to fizzle, drain your motivation to work on your dreams, and result in losing a great deal of valuable time that could have been directed at creating success for yourself.

From “personal” experience we all know that to stop taking things personally is not as simple as telling ourselves “STOP taking things personally.” Easier said than done!

In a previous post entitled “Affirmations Don’t Work! Without this…” I introduced a video about EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) which is a powerful technique for banishing the things that hold you back in life. If you are new to EFT, I highly recommend watching the Try It On Everything movie first to get a feel for what I’m about to teach you.

If you’re addressing your “taking things personally” issue for the very first time with EFT, it’s good to start with the broader aspect to help you get out of beating yourself up for even having such a problem. The following process is what I have found works for me…

1. First, rate your level of negative feeling towards “I take things personally” on a scale of 0 to 10, “10″ being very intense negative feeling and “0″ being no negative feeling exists towards the issue.
2. Then, tap on the script I used for the first few rounds of EFT on this issue:

* Setup Phrase at the Karate Chop point (KC):

“Even though I take things personally, I deeply and profoundly love and accept myself.

Even though I don’t seem to have a sense of humor about myself, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Even though I try to act like words don’t hurt me, but they do, I deeply and completely love and accept myself…without judgment.”

* Inner Eye Brow point (IE): “Man, do I take things personally!”

* Outer Eye point (OE): “What’s wrong with me I’m so darn sensitive!”

* Under Eye point (UE): “Yes, I do take things personally and it’s SO annoying that I do that.”

* Under Nose point (UN): “It’s just words we’re talking about, what’s the big deal?”

* Chin point (C): “But words DO hurt, or I wouldn’t be dwelling on them like this…”

* Collar Bone point (CB): “Why do I feel the need to take things personally?”

* Under Arm point (UA): “Here I go again, taking things personally…”

* Top of Head point (TOH): “What if I could stop taking things so personally?”

3. Take a deep breath. Drink some water…

4. Again, rate your level of negative feeling towards “I take things personally” on a scale of 0 to 10, “10″ being very intense negative feeling and “0″ being no negative feeling exists towards the issue.

5. If you still feel uncomfortable about “taking things personally”, and you haven’t reduced the negative feeling down to a rating of zero (or at least to a level that brings you some sense of emotional freedom) then repeat the script. But this time skip the (KC) setup phrase and start at the (IE) point.

6. Repeat step (4) until you feel emotionally free (for some people it means feeling lighter, “brighter”, unburdened, anger-free, refreshed, clear-headed, relaxed, happy, at peace, etc)…or to be safe, do at least 3 rounds of the script and see what happens over the next few days.

***

That’s it for Part 1 of “How to Stop Taking Things Personally” using EFT! Although the script outlined above seems vague and almost too good to be true with its simplicity, it is essential that you start somewhere, anywhere, and sometimes it’s the facts that are most obvious in your life that will “break the ice” to allow for deeper work with core issues to surface.

In Part 2 of “How to Stop Taking Things Personally” we will take the script used in Part 1 and expand it to include another powerful method of EFT to install new and more beneficial beliefs.