My perspectives have changed so much over the last 5 years. I like myself soooo much more now. At least as much as I liked myself at 10 years old. It was downhill from there.
And I have good ol’ self-awareness to thank for this new self-lovin’.
Having picked up a love for reading later in life (don’t tell this to my kids, they must do as I say, not as I did ;)) I was stunned that I’d be so affected by a book. This book – The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.
2 of the agreements are pretty standard.
- Be Impeccable With Your Word
- Always Do Your Best
It was the other 2 that we life altering for me.
- Never Make Assumptions
- Never Take Anything Personally
They’re so understated yet powerful.
So obvious that I thump my head wondering why I hadn’t thought of these before.
To never make assumptions often goes hand in hand with not taking anything personally.
How somebody behaves is all about them.
I personally can’t think of any exceptions on this.
There was one time when a woman almost reversed her car into my daughter. I bent my ring banging on her back window to stop her. Needless to say my emotions were running high. I shouted at her. I started repeating myself in my rant before I ran out of emotion and let her go. I kept it clean, my kid was watching, but even without profanity, shouting just made me scary to her, not necessarily heard and understood.
Had I said to her, more calmly, “you came too close to hurting my daughter, and scared the living daylight out of me” she would have undoubtedly been mortified and apologetic. She would never wish to hurt anyone. She would have been able to respond from feeling my fear and not from fearing me.
Neither scenario gets her off the hook of her own personal responsibility. She is in charge of a great big hunk of metal that can be lethal. She MUST be careful, ESPECIALLY around a school. There is nobody else to blame for her mistake. How I responded to her mistake is the part that is not to be taken personally. Those were my emotions and I could have responded a million different ways.
The fact that I lost my best friend at age 10 to getting hit by a car has made me that crazy parent that screamed at her children in parking lots for being more that 2 feet away from me. I have relaxed on that a little as my kids are now ages 9 – 14 and would never go out with me in public again if I didn’t get a grip on that. But other people in those parking lots (I’m probably notorious in a few) may have made assumptions of what life might be like at home for my kids. “Poor kids with a mother that bellows at them like that”. Which would be a horribly wrong assumption. Just a mother who has a story that makes her a tad crazy in this one situation
So how does this tie in with self-awareness? Because, as well intentioned as we may be, we will still take things personally and we will still make assumptions. And we will slip on being impeccable with our word and we won’t always do our best.
However, as I like to say, when you know better you do better. And now you’ve had these gems brought to the forefront of your attention (and by the way, I love you for reading this far), when you do fall off the band wagon there are gold nuggets of information there.
Where do you still make assumptions?
What do you repeatedly take personally?
What causes the slip in impeccability?
How are you falling short of doing your best?
Aaaaaand I’ve made you a printable. Aaaaand I’ll send you a copy of my own real life examples on there in case you need a prompt.
Download it below and as always feel free to get in touch with me. And we’d love to see you in the facebook group.