Don't Take Anything Personally

So everyone has an “I Love Me” wall in their office, with all the diplomas and certificates and shadowboxes. I have a wall in my office that has all of my book covers on it, blown up and framed. I like looking at it. Recently, we had company over to the house, and they trekked up to my wife’s office, and it should be pointed out that my wife has three books of her own, so they asked, “Where are your book covers?” She said, “I don’t need to stare at my books all day.”

Later I asked her point-blank: was that a shot at me? She assured me that it wasn’t. I didn’t take it personally. I don’t take anything personally, unless someone intends for me to take it personally, and then I just ignore it and get on with my life. Too busy to deal with the haters.

So again:

1. Don’t take anything personally, ever

2. If someone clearly wants you to take it personally, disregard it. Life is too short for grudges.

I want to talk about the concept of a slight. Easy example. Someone has a party, but doesn’t invite you. But they invited Dude A and Dude B and Dude C, so you see this, and you can run around inside your head about how your friend likes the three dudes better than you, and what an asshole this guy is, and you stew on it forever, and maybe someday five years from now, you bump into him, and confront him about it, and he’s like, oh shit, I forgot! My bad! And you were pissed off for five years for no reason.

In my experience, 99% of slights are completely unintentional. People are slobs, they fuck shit up, they’re not thinking about you all the time, and you shouldn’t take it personally. I got left off the invite list for a wedding last year that I probably should have been invited to—didn’t take it personally. Still friends with the guy. Someone begs off out of my book signing but goes to someone else’s book signing—no big deal, I don’t take it personally. There is a guy on Twitter who follows 3,247 people but doesn’t follow me. No big deal, I don’t take it personally. Have a birthday party at your house and invite the couple up the road and they make the lamest of lame excuses? I don’t take that personally, either. Nothing is a big deal, and I don’t take anything personally. You may think that all these people are plotting to slight you and get you all riled up, but I assure you that they are just slobs and thinking about themselves instead of you, just like every other human being on earth.

This is all part of being a “big” guy (or gal). You want to rise above all this petty bullshit. I mean, look. At the end of the day, your close friends will show up for you time and time again, and the people who don’t, are not your close friends. And that’s ok! You don’t have to have a hundred close relationships. I have seen people get nuclear meltdown pissed off over the tiniest things, like, turning into homicidal maniacs. Which brings up another point: you have to decide if this is a big deal or not. Very, very few things rise to the level of “big deal.” Maybe profound political differences. Maybe willful harm. Maybe character assassination. The list is pretty short. Your soul should be like a duck’s ass: watertight. I can’t think of one person I have a resentment against at this particular moment in time. There are some people I wish would be a bit better about keeping in touch, but that doesn’t rise to the level of resentment. I make mistakes, too. I made a big mistake about two years ago, wrote something that I shouldn’t have, and pissed a lot of people off, and you know what? It was an accident! I was just being a dumbass. So I hope that the people I pissed off would show me the same grace that I would show to someone else that did something stupid.

Remember, and this is very important: always assume incompetence before malicious intent.

There are right-wing people who get all mad at the government. The government is evil and does malicious things. Well, the government does do malicious things, but it is because it is dumb, and not malicious. I used to work in the government, and I will tell you that I had some great friends in the government—outstanding people! But it is a big, dumb organization and does incredibly stupid things that seem malicious on the surface, but are actually just incompetence. I mean, sure, there are some bad people in government, but there are bad people in every industry. I don’t think any one organization has a monopoly on bad people. Wall Street does bad things. Is it because people on Wall Street are bad? If you work on Wall Street, you know this is not the case—nice people work there—it is usually a case of misaligned incentives. The whole financial crisis was because of misaligned incentives. And I think this is one thing The Big Short gets wrong—you want to look at why people are doing bad things, look at the rewards system. If you pay someone 5 times as much to originate a ninja loan versus a conventional loan, what do you think they are going to do?

So I always, always assume incompetence before malicious intent. I screw things up, too. I’ve gotten better about it, but in the past, I used to be pretty bad about my calendar. I’d forget shit all the time. I’d have a podcast scheduled, and I’d leave some poor sap sitting there like a chump waiting for me to log on. Incompetence, not malicious intent. Funny, I just went out to dinner down in Georgetown. Got some shrimp and grits at Root. The waitress was a bit distracted, to say the least. Took about 10 minutes to bring out water. Took another 10 minutes to bring out tea. My food was delivered by someone else, and she didn’t even realize it had come out until I had finished. Then, the check. Waited a good half hour. She’s like a lost ball in the high weeds. Finally, I get out of my seat and stand next to my table with my arms folded. The bartender asks if I need anything—yes, the check! “Been waiting for a while,” I said. More pointless running around. Anyway, the point here is that there isn’t much use in getting mad at incompetence. You can’t grab someone by the shoulders, shake them, and yell “Stop being stupid!” They will still be stupid. Save getting pissed off for the important stuff. And there really is no important stuff.

And to reiterate, occasionally people will do things to intentionally piss you off. Doesn’t happen very often, but it happens. Like water off a duck’s ass. Disregard. Don’t give them the satisfaction. Pretend it didn’t even happen. Like on Twitter—occasionally people say things to try to trigger me, and sometimes they are successful, but if I take the bait, they win. As one of my Lehman friends used to say, kill them with kindness. If someone is being an asshole to you, the best solution is: be nice to them! And if you can’t be nice to them, ignore them. And if you can’t ignore them, whatever you do, don’t take the bait. If you are ever watching an argument from the distance, you can always tell who is losing without even hearing what is said. It is the person who is yelling.

I’m human. Especially on LinkedIn. I see myself getting left out of collaborations or opportunities, and it tweaks me. I get tweaked. But I don’t take it personally. If I want to be doing stuff with other people, it’s on me, not on them—right? I should be putting myself out there. So I don’t take it personally. I don’t take anything personally. My serenity is my responsibility, not everyone else’s.

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Well, we’re getting close to the finish line. On Tuesday, June 24^th (next week!), RULE 62: Meditations on Success and Spirituality will be released. The only thing I can really say about this book is that it will change your life for the better. And you’ll have a few laughs along the way.

I’ll send out a reminder on Tuesday. Please launch the Amazon sales rank into the exosphere.