

Taking Nothing Personally - bennesvig
http://bennesvig.com/2012/01/27/taking-nothing-personally/

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jayferd
I think there's an important distinction between "not caring" and being
detached from our own opinions. Say you're having an awful day and snap at me.
If I were to "not care", I might just go about my business and that would be
fine. But if I try to dig a little deeper, put myself in your shoes, and
really understand what's going on, then I've not taken it personally, but I've
made it very clear that I _do_ care.

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AznHisoka
Yep, you shouldn't take anything personally from anyone that isn't family.
Most people just want more dopamine, whether it comes in the form of more
money, more sex, or just getting to work in time. You're just a means to an
end for most people. hence, don't take what they say personally.

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djtriptych
Agreeing with Swizec here: "not taking things personally" shouldn't be
conflated with "not caring", as the author does.

Loving the person who is trying to insult you, and understanding why they
might be frustrated, without reacting in kind, is truly a revolutionary way to
think and act. Remember that everyone struggles with their own feelings of
despair and unhappiness, and that their lashing out at you comes from that
place more often than not. I like the idea of "not being there" or being
completely transparent to attacks.

Though the author's advice is good as written, that's not quite the same as
not caring.

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cateye
Are people talking to your brother? If they are talking to you, you should
take it personally.

But how you process the information is up to. Endless looping about some
trivial thing a customer says in an impatient mood, is not something you
should base your life on.

I think what you try to explain has nothing to do with personal versus
impersonal but assessing peoples input correctly and balancing the value of it
on some rational criteria.

A lot of times this can mean that you can filter a lot of noise so you can
focus on valuable input instead.

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hobin
Well, of course people shouldn't take many of these things personally. What he
describes is just slightly modified actor-observer bias (or asymmetry), a
well-understood phenomenon in psychology.

(For those who had not yet heard of the term, Wikipedia has an article on it
that seems to explain the concept well enough:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-observer_bias>)

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hobin
I made a slight mistake there. I meant fundamental attribution error, not
actor-observer bias.

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sliverstorm
Caveat: I take almost nothing personally, but I feel like every now and again
someone will accidentally let something slip in a joking or casual context
that you _should_ take personally. A criticism they would normally be too
polite to say, for example.

You have to be able to identify them among everything else in casual
conversation that should _not_ be taken seriously though.

Also, to be clear, I don't mean "take offense"- I mean, treat it as actionable
critique, for example.

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Swizec
Not taking things personally is a good motto, but an even better motto is
trying to understand the other person.

Ok so they've just snapped something mean at you because you're slow with your
job. Sure, it's mean, but maybe they're in a rush to get to their daughter
who's just come out of surgery after a terrible car crash and they're, you
know, in a bit of a hurry and not in the best of moods.

Because people are generally nice. When they aren't nice it doesn't mean you
shouldn't take it personally, it means you should ask what's wrong.

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powertower
How can "nothing" be taken personally?

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hobin
You can't. If you can, it means you don't give a carp at all what people think
about you (as in NOT AT ALL), which means you're a psychopath. It's good to
take some things personally. At least, I don't really see how one can improve
him/herself if he/she doesn't take anything personally.

And to be completely honest, I tend to be of the opinion that how much one
takes personally is pretty hard-wired and can't be changed easily. <Put
nature-vs-nurture debate here> I don't think you can 'decide' not to take
something personally. (Perhaps you can see it wasn't personal in retrospect,
and make the decision not to take something like that as a personal thing,
after 'deciding' this many times, in the future.)

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draggnar
this article is timed well with all of this hoopla about copying designs

