Most of what gets said about not taking things personally is about protection, not letting other people’s bad behavior get under your skin. But someone in the group, Bill, asked a sharper question: what about the good stuff?
He put it this way: what about praise and respect coming to you, including opportunities for really rewarding engagement in projects that promise positive satisfaction? These experiences caress one’s self-identity very seductively. So shouldn’t we equally not take positive praise and regard from others personally?
My honest answer is that there’s a developmental process here. In the ultimate, we’re able to see praise and blame as equally empty, ownerless, impersonal, and non-binding. Most of us are not that far along. And I’ve known a number of people who pretend that they’re so far along, they’re not, they’re still vulnerable to getting triggered, and they’re still carrying a fair amount of suffering embedded in emotional residues deep down inside, somatically, in their body.
Most of us would be really served by deliberately looking for opportunities for praise, respect, inclusion, loyalty, and valuing, and internalizing those experiences, to heal ourselves deeply inside, as a major way to reduce craving for those external sources of self-worth.
I’m the king of taking in the good, so let me tell you what that actually looks like in practice. It’s continually being in the present where things are arising and passing away, arising, releasing, arising, and releasing, and deliberately sustaining the beneficial experiences, because the brain needs sustained experience for it to lead to lasting change inside. I think of it more like a standing wave. The river is fluid, continuously changing, and yet there’s a stability to it that is healing to the body and mind.
We’re giving to ourselves what we would love to give to the little child we once were, if we could go back in time, or to the person we were in a previous marriage, or job, or friendship, or neighborhood. There’s a natural givingness of goodness to others. It’s good and wise to give it to others. It’s also good to take it inside for yourself.
And as you do that again and again, then when the oatmeal hits the fan, it doesn’t hurt so much, because you already feel full inside. A sense of fullness already, fullness of being, fullness of presence. You have to work up to it. But to the extent that fullness is already present, with a kind of lovingness underneath it, you’re much more able to be direct and real about what actually matters.
The content in this article has been adapted from my spoken word.
I've been told that the route to being humble lies through accepting.humiliation. I've found some truth in this: if I am always doubling down on being right, I don't become humble. It may be good to stop avoiding the dreaded experience.
However, I have also found great benefit in following your guidance to take in the good.
I wonder how you would resolve, with specific detail and nuance, this apparent tension between useful teachings.