In the late 1990s, two Laotian men walked into a Los Angeles bar where an Asian singer performed. After occupying their seats, they felt like sitting more comfortably and spreading their legs but did not realise that their feet were pointing towards the singer. When the bar closed, she followed them to the parking lot and expressed displeasure.
Instead of admitting their mistake and apologising, the tourists started quarrelling with her. As the altercation turned ugly, the singer took out her revolver and killed one of them. Perhaps this tragedy could have been averted had the lady not taken the two men’s behaviour so personally and left them after expressing her displeasure.
Similarly, the two men could have said that they did not mean any insult to her and apologised to assuage her feelings of hurt, but they did not. Why? Like most people, the two men and the lady could not separate people from their unpleasant words or behaviours and took these personally. People often suffer more from their reactions and the negative emotions accompanying them than from others’ behaviours that evoke these.
Shifting your focus from judging what others are doing to you to observing how you respond to it and not taking anything personally can avert many undesirable consequences. There will undoubtedly be times when others may misperceive who we are, misunderstand our intentions or motives, and knowingly or unknowingly say and do things that hurt us. Unless we distance ourselves from our .
