How to Stop Taking Everything So F*cking Personally, Volume One
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
You have a friend that you’re texting with daily, then you don’t hear from her and you start to think that you said something that upset her so she’s ignoring you now.
You are dating someone that you really like and are certain that it’s mutual, but then he ghosts you. You spend weeks ruminating on what you did wrong.
Your husband comes home from work and is cranky and being short with you. You start asking him what you’ve done wrong. He says it’s nothing you’ve done, he just had a bad day…but you don’t believe him and start thinking about what you could’ve said that’s making him so miserable.
People. PEOPLE!! Listen to me.
Can we please STOP DOING THIS TO OURSELVES?!?! (Oh, spoiler alert…I already have, and I’m gonna teach you how to stop it, too.)
There are all kinds of reasons for all kinds of behavior, and 90% of the time it’s not about YOU. When someone is angry, it’s not always because you did something to make them angry.
And if someone is upset with you and they don’t actually tell you with words but rather by being passive-aggressive, then that’s on them. (Note: If you don’t actually tell someone how you really feel about something, don’t expect them to be able to read your mind.)
Seriously. We need to stop overthinking soooo much. I get it, believe me. I still way overthink things on occasion. And when I do and go say something about it, I tend to create issues that weren’t there in the first place.
People have their own minds to handle, and no one views the world exactly the way that you do. So when you think you have a great connection with someone and turns out that person doesn’t feel the same way, or you thought you’d be invited to a friend’s wedding and they created a guest list where you didn’t make the cut, it says nothing negative about either one of you…all it means is that you viewed the relationship differently. Not good or bad, not right or wrong…just through different perspectives.
Back when I was still running karaoke shows, I had a woman come into the bar one Sunday night and run up to me, apologizing profusely for what she did the last time she was at my gig. I vaguely remembered her and had zero recollection of what she was apologizing for, while she went on to tell me that she had thought about it often over the past two years and still felt so awful about it. This was something that I had forgotten about within a day or two. What a waste of her emotional energy, right?
You are always the protagonist in your own life. And no one thinks about you or your mistakes more than you do. No one criticizes you more either.
What does this have to do with weight loss, Dana? Well, let me ask you this - how many times have you eaten something you didn’t intend to because you felt bad about something you said or did?
Next time you start guessing at what other people think, maybe you can pause and practice considering that maybe the situation has nothing to do with you.
Just some food for thought.
Love and hugs,
Dana