Agreement #3 Dont take everything personally by Miguel Ruiz | paigemarshall23's Blog

Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally. Using an

earlier example, if I see you on the street and I say, "Hey, you are so

stupid," without knowing you, it's not about you; it's about me. If you

take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe

you think to yourself, "How does he know? Is he clairvoyant, or can

everybody see how stupid I am?"
 

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 responsible for everything. Me, me, me,

always me!
 

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of

themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they

are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we

take something personally, we make the assumption that they know

what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your

garbage. But if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the

middle of hell.
 

Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.

When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your

reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make

something big out of something so little, because you have the need

to be right and make everybody else wrong. You also try hard to be

right by giving them your own opinions. In the same way, whatever

you feel and do is just a projection of your own personal dream, a

reflection of your own agreements.