It's not about me

My neighbors were talking about a poker game that they had played in the night before. Poker game? I hadn't heard a whisper about a poker game. My first impulse was to wonder what I had done that made my neighbors not want me at their game. Then I took a mental step back. Have I ever expressed interest in playing poker? Is it possible that they just weren't thinking about me when the poker game came up? Other explanations for my exclusion that did not require active social rejection were relatively easy to identify when I stopped looking at the situation as a commentary on me.

I'm getting ready to take a trip for work. My relationship with my wife usually gets a little strained before I leave on these trips. I recently recognized that I usually take her (entirely justified) frustration with the lead up to these trips as frustration with me. She not frustrated with me, at least not initially. She's frustrated with the situation. My response to her frustration, which is usually overly defensive as I interpret her displeasure with the challenges of my being gone for several days as displeasure with me, makes a difficult situation even more stressful. I'm approaching this trip differently. I'm not taking her frustration personally.

I once wondered why I didn't feel that my status was threatened at work but felt constant threats to my status in my personal life. I don't feel threatened at work because I don't take things personally. It's easy to discern the complicated web of agendas and pressures that prompt unpleasant behavior at work. My manager may appear aggravated at a meeting. That behavior was probably prompted by something that I had nothing to do with. There is no need to get defensive. My immediate response anytime somebody is short with me in my personal life is defensive. A defensive reaction implies that the the situation is all about you.

Making a situation all about you blinds you to the myriad of other concerns that swirl around every social interaction. You cut yourself off from the rich web of social interactions and relationships when your reactions to a situation have an overt personal bias. As a teenager, I was so obsessed with protecting myself from the pains of rejection that I never stopped to consider what other people might be feeling. How many relationships did I lose as a result. How much did I stunt my own development? Disregard for my wife's feelings has damaged our relationship. That disregard, which is usually rooted in an overwhelming focus on what I'm experiencing at any given point in time, pollutes our relationship. How much better would our relationship be if I had acted differently?

It's not always all about you. It's rarely all about you. It's almost always about something that has nothing to do with you.