Have you ever wondered why people are so easily offended? I'm a psychologist. I've
got some ideas about that. Stick around till the end because I've got 4
specific questions you can ask to stay out of that trap yourself.
Welcome to earth. This planet is populated with people who are imperfect.
Have you noticed? And because of that, we all do stupid boneheaded things
occasionally that tend to offend other people. Even people that we love, even
people that we would never want to offend. Bishop Desmond Tutu said it this
way in his book about forgiveness, "We are all broken. And from that brokenness, we
hurt each other. I kind of agree with Bishop TuTu. We all have flaws and
weaknesses. So, it's going to happen. It's not a question of whether it will happen.
It's a question of when and how much. As we wrap our heads around that, there are
multiple opportunities to be offended to take offence. Many opportunities on a
daily basis. This is the first and obvious reason why people get offended
so easily. One of my favorite things to talk to people about is the concept of
choice. Until you see it as a choice, it's not. There are multiple opportunities to
be offended. See that you have a choice to accept it or not. To buy in or buy out.
I was just asked recently. "Oh, I'm sorry. Did I offend you?" I'm like, "You know what?
I learned a long time ago that it's an enormous waste of time for me to take
offense. If it's intended then I don't really want to buy into it anyway. And if
it wasn't intended then I'd be a fool to take offence as something that wasn't
intended." So, why would I spend my time doing that? Now, notice that it's a choice.
Because until you see it as a choice, it's not. This is how the human mind
operates. See it as a choice. What
if you were to start telling yourself. If you start to feel offended. "Do I want to
be offended right now or not?" Just asking the question makes it a choice again.
This process that I'm referring to is called metacognition. Metacognition is
simply thinking about your thinking. And when you pause long enough to think
about it, do you want to take offense or not? It's up to you. Until you see it as a
choice, it's not. So, why is it so easy to take offense or why do people get so
easily offended?
One of the processes that you have to start monitoring in
your own mind is something that I call the victim mentality or the victim
paradigm. We'll set that up as an opposite to the agent paradigm or the
hero paradigm. Victims want to blame someone or something else for everything
that's going on inside of them. Where an agent or a hero is going to take
responsibility. In fact in my book I break that word into 2 words --response,
ability. It's your ability to respond to things. And not just be driven around by
the things that are happening in your life. Part of this victim mentality has
us taking things far too personally. There is a personal and an impersonal
component to everything that happens to you. Quick example of what I mean by this.
Let's say that I take a little walk down the street, okay? Just minding my own
business maybe trying to take in some of the fresh air. And somebody pulls over in
a car. 2 guys jump out of the car rush over to the sidewalk beat me up, steal my
wallet and my phone. And then hop back in the car and run off. Okay. Should I be
offended? Well, you can do what you want to with that question. But let's take a
look at this event in the light of (now) 4 questions that we can ask ourselves
that will help us to stay out of the trap of being offended so easily. Here's
the first of those 4 questions: How is this about me? How is this about me? Go to
example. I just got mugged on the street as I'm out taking a walk. How is that
about me? It is me. That part we can't ignore. It is me. It's my bruises, it's my
wallet, it's my phone that's gone. This happened to me. That's the personal part.
It is me. Alright. Well, what's the impersonal part?
Because I said earlier there's a personal and an impersonal component to
everything including this mugging. What's the impersonal part? Doesn't
matter that it was me. Oh, it is me. That's the personal part but it doesn't matter
that it was me. What if it would have been somebody else walking down the
street at that time? Then that person would have got mugged. Not about me at
that point. Who is it really about? Well, it's about
those hoods that made a really poor decision to disrespect someone out on
the street. It's not about me at that point. There's a personal and an
impersonal component to everything. So this question helps you to discern or
identify which part is mine. And it probably is you. That's why you can take
offense. People who take offense very easily are over personalizing almost
everything that happens to them. You don't have to. Until you see it as a
choice, it's not. Here's the second question: How did I create this? Notice
I'm not asking how am I at fault for this? How am I the person who's fully
responsible for this? No. How did I create this? You didn't create the whole thing.
But you had something to do with its creation. I get fired for this one. Please
stay with me because this is empowering. Go back to the example. I'm walking down
the street minding my own business. A couple of thugs pull over in a car beat
me up, steal my wallet and my phone, run off. How did I create this? Alright. Now,
you might be tempted to say, "Well, you didn't, Dr. Paul. It's not your fault." I'm
not asking about fault. I'm asking how did I create this? How did my own
creative efforts and choices contribute to this thing occurring in the first
place. I walked down the street. Now, notice. I'm not saying that was a
wrong thing to do. I'm not saying, I shouldn't have done that.
I'm simply acknowledging that's my part. That's all I did to create this event. Now,
other people contributed to, didn't they? But that's not important to me right now
because I could get all caught up in a victim paradigm and start blaming them
for how my day went poorly. Or I can own my part. I walked down the street. Now,
this is that the wrong thing to do? No, it's probably a really great choice
based on everything that I knew at the time. What I've made a different choice,
if I had more information, well yeah. But that is all about hindsight. Because I
didn't know then what I know now. You didn't either. So give yourself some
leeway --a little bit of forgiveness. If you've taken offense,
you did the best that you knew how to do with what you had. But in this example,
that was my contribution to creating what happened. So, don't get too hung up
on "is it my fault?" No. What did I do? What was my part? How
did I contribute? How did I create this? That's question number 2. Question
number 3 is where we start to extract the value from this experience.
"What can I learn from this?" So, be careful with this one because if you get into
victim mode, you might learn something like, "Well, I should just never take a
walk or do anything to take care of me because this kind of thing always happens." No,
do you hear the whine in my voice? I'm in victim mode. Let's not go there. What can
I learn from this? Make sure that it's a question. Not a statement disguised as a
question. A real question: What can I learn from this? Well, I can learn that
there are real risks out there. I can learn that stuff happens. In fact, I think
there's a bumper sticker that says something like that. Now, did I already
know this guy kind of did. There are inherent risks in living our life. Now,
there are things we can do to mitigate or to moderate the risks that we're
facing. That is also true and I might learn some of those precautions. I don't
want to go to the extent of over generalizing. When something happens that
hurt you, your sense it to being hurt in the future increases. It
doesn't mean that you're at greater risk. It just means now you're more aware of
some of those factors. Well let's let that awareness serve us well without
becoming paralyzed by it. What can I learn from this? Extract the value from
whatever the experience is. Finally and this is the wrap-up question. What is my
commitment to myself and others moving forward?
What's my commitment? So, we're taking the value that we got in question number
3: "What can I learn from this?" We already understand what our part in this
whole thing was. We're not taking it too personally we're balancing. Yeah, there's
a personal and an impersonal component to this. Now, what's my commitment moving
forward? Do you know after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 I chose in
October of 2001 to get on an airplane. To go serve a client. I chose to do that.
Well, didn't I learn anything from the terrorist attacks? Yes, I did.
I learned that we are vulnerable. And I also learned that I am not willing to
allow terrorists to determine my choices. That's part of what I learned from that.
My commitment to myself and others moving forward was to refuse to be held
hostage and to continue to move forward with purpose in my own life. If something
like this happens to you, what can you learn from it? What is your commitment to
yourself and others moving forward? If some of this made sense to you, you might
want to queue up that video next. How to forgive someone who is not sorry. That
could be kind of useful as well. So glad that you're here on the channel. Please
take a moment to share this video and some of the others on the channel with
people that you care about. Let's help each other to live on purpose.