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The art of not taking things personally

medium.dave-bailey.com

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Re: The art of not taking things personally

#11

Post by courtf »

Counterpoint: enlightenment is overrated and life is meant to be taken personally. In some senses, it is a bit cowardly to run away from the current moment we live in by stepping back and viewing the big picture too often. "Negative" emotions and experiences are valid parts of life. Anger, anxiety, fear etc are all part of being a human being and have evolved over billions of years to reach their current forms. We may not always enjoy these parts of life, but avoiding them completely would mean stunting ourselves.

Learning to observe and not react to the complex interplay of emotional states that constantly dance across our consciousness is a powerful tool, but you cannot survive inside the epiphany. We all must descend back into the messy day-to-day needs of maintaining our bodies, no one is actually the Buddha. I think we should all have more patience with inability to behave appropriately under all circumstances, because we will all fall short of grace.

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

Re: The art of not taking things personally

#14

Post by mensetmanusman »

I don’t know if this is a mental hack or not, but I found years ago that if I mentally sing the comments (that I know would upset me otherwise), it totally removes the emotional impact of other people’s negative writing.

When I was contemplating why this might be so effective, I was reminded that satire of old often involved singing to point out other peoples absurdity. When you think about how much the powerful fear humor and satire, there might be something there…

Re: The art of not taking things personally

#15

Post by qqtt »

courtf wrote: post #11

Counterpoint: enlightenment is overrated and life is meant to be taken personally. In some senses, it is a bit cowardly to run away from the current moment we live in by stepping back and viewing the big picture too often. "Negative" emotions and experiences are valid parts of life. Anger, anxiety, fear etc are all part of being a human being and have evolved over billions of years to reach their current forms. We ma…

I agree. A lot of discussion and these philosophical quotes about living tend to want to inspire you to rebel against your nature. Think abstractly. Think rationally. Make the right decisions (for some value of "right").

But people aren't really wired like this. Maybe rebelling against your nature is the "right" choice, but maybe just living your life isn't so bad either. Take things personally. Don't take things personally. Be angry, be frustrated. Get depressed. Also, be happy sometimes.

You only have one life. The guy who never gets angry is going to the same place as the guy who fully feels those emotions. Maybe one will be less productive at a certain point in time than the other, but does it matter?

These cosmic balance scale games are at the end of the day silly and superfluous.

Re: The art of not taking things personally

#17

Post by mensetmanusman »

mcguire wrote: post #10
drummer wrote: post #6

Interesting how the author avoided sex and intimacy in his "list of common universal needs".

" Here’s a link of commonly unmet universal needs at work: " 1. Commonly unmet. 2. At work.

This reminds me of a conversation I overheard regarding legality of sex work.

Apparently the individual was in favor of it, but when asked about hybrid options, where a administrative assistant would be available for office support and sex, they weren’t quite able to explain why that should be illegal.

Re: The art of not taking things personally

#18

Post by pessimizer »

courtf wrote: post #11

Counterpoint: enlightenment is overrated and life is meant to be taken personally. In some senses, it is a bit cowardly to run away from the current moment we live in by stepping back and viewing the big picture too often. "Negative" emotions and experiences are valid parts of life. Anger, anxiety, fear etc are all part of being a human being and have evolved over billions of years to reach their current forms. We ma…

It's important not to judge the world by its effect on your internal state. The world isn't party to your internal state, although you walk around with an illusion of transparency. People are doing things for their own reasons, not for yours.

Referring to the Buddha in order to make emotional regulation seem like an unachievable perfection is not really a good support, because the argument you're making is that we shouldn't always try to control our irrational emotions, not that we sometimes fail to control our irrational emotions, even when we try. That's just an objective fact.

Getting away from billions of years of reaction is the reason why we have civilization. It's a little more cowardly to interpret the world in terms of how it makes you feel rather than the complicated, messy problem of navigating the world in terms of how it may be making everyone feel.

Re: The art of not taking things personally

#19

Post by mkaic »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #14

I don’t know if this is a mental hack or not, but I found years ago that if I mentally sing the comments (that I know would upset me otherwise), it totally removes the emotional impact of other people’s negative writing. When I was contemplating why this might be so effective, I was reminded that satire of old often involved singing to point out other peoples absurdity. When you think about how much the powerful fear…

Wow, I've never heard of this before, I'm 100% trying this next time I'm in Twitter. Thanks for the tip!
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