The Four Agreements by Don Miquel Ruiz is a great little guide of wisdom. We are discussing each one of the agreements each month to bring awareness to it some more.
The Second Agreement:
Don’t take anything personally
When you make it a strong habit not to take anything personally, you avoid many upsets in your life. Your anger, jealousy, and envy will disappear, and even your sadness will simply disappear if you don’t take things personally. If you can make this second agreement a habit, you will find that nothing can put you back into hell. There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.
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In this second agreement, Ruiz discusses how you can enjoy true freedom when you stop taking things personally. He is talking about the stuff other people say to you (the “good” and “bad” things), including what you believe about yourself to be true; your own thoughts.
Know that anger, jealousy, envy, sadness and other draining negative emotions are all based in fear. They are, on an energetic level, just as poisonous as physically drinking toxic liquid. When you feel these things, ask yourself: “What am I afraid of?”. Is it fear of loss and abandonment; is it because you can’t control a situation the way you like to? Why do you believe the things that make you feel that way? Stop taking it personal. This goes for insecurity as well, the “I am not good enough” syndrome. The good news is, you are good enough! Where is your fear coming from?
At one point this year, I read a bunch of my older journals and it became clear to me that I was ultimately making it all up in my head; I was suffering from my own thoughts. It was years of the same drama, just different versions of it. I decided right then and there to burn my journals as a ritual and stopped believing my own thoughts. The feeling of freedom that came with that was well worth it!
Once you master not taking things personally, you will be immune to the emotional poison (and yes, emotional poison can actually make you physically sick in the long run). At any moment, you can choose how you want to feel. As I mentioned in a previous article, everything truly “Is what it is”. You decide to make it good or bad; it all depends on your level of addiction to drama and suffering. Are you ready to be free?
“Don’t Make any Assumptions”