Not being offended is a choice. I work hard every day to make that choice.
Other people’s opinions of me or what I do are not MINE. I have no ownership over that, so there’s really no point in mulling over that. There’s no point in getting offended. That is what I want to dive deeper into in today’s episode. So if you’re someone who is still struggling with feeling offended or if you take offense over every little opinion or feedback towards you, then tune in.
Full transcript below
Episode timestamps:
Show notes:
[1:23] A draining and unnecessary behavior
[3:10] When I stopped getting offended
[5:13] The mindset shift
[7:03] Outro
Watch the video version of this episode:
Get Motivation, Inspiration, and Ideas to Level Up Your Life.
Subscribe to the How’d It Happen Podcast
Want to be the first to know when new episodes are released? Click here to subscribe
Thank you for being a How’d it Happen listener. Please enter your email address below to subscribe, or subscribe on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you like to listen.
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Write a Podcast Review
Also, podcast reviews are important to iTunes and the more reviews we receive, the more likely we’ll be able to get this podcast and message in front of more people (something about iTunes algorithms?). I’d be extremely grateful if you took less than 30 seconds and 5 clicks to rate the podcast and leave a quick review. Here’s how to do it in less than 30 seconds:
Click on This Link – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/howd-it-happen-podcast/id1441722417
Click on the “Listen on Apple Podcast” Box
Click on “Open iTunes” – You will go directly to the iTunes page for the Podcast
Click on “Ratings and Reviews”
Click on the 5thStar (or whatever one makes the most sense to you 🙂
TRANSCRIPT
Mike Malatesta 00:31
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the How It Happened Podcast. I’m so happy to have you here as I am with every episode. If you don’t follow the podcast, I’d really appreciate it if you would. You just go to the podcast on Apple or whatever app, you’re listening to this on and hit the subscribe or the Follow button, which is what Apple calls it now, and every one of the episodes will come to your feed, every time I release an episode. So if you do that, I’d be really grateful. And as long as you’re at it, you can also leave a positive review for the podcast, maybe a five-star review or whatever you’re feeling, again, on Apple or, or any of the podcast apps. It helps. It helps people when they find the show, know that it’s quality. And it also helps, I’m told, with the algorithms and other things that lead people to the show. And there’s a lot of work that goes into producing this. And if you do like it, I would be very happy if you would share your thoughts with the rest of the world.
Now today, I have one of my short solo episodes, so I don’t have a guest today. The guest is me, and today we’re going to talk about something that gets a lot of press. You read about it all the time. And I think it’s something that’s just so unnecessary, and energy-draining and unproductive. And it’s called Being Offended.
So I don’t get offended, at least I try exceptionally hard not to be offended. And it normally works. But it wasn’t always that way. I used to make everything personal. Like everything, I would hear everything that would happen if I thought that it was unfair to me, or something I didn’t agree with, I would make it personal, I would get angry. I would hold grudges for a long time. I wanted justice, you know, I wanted to feel like I was right. And they were wrong. And I wanted to make things right for me. And so I would get angry, and I would get offended. And I would hold grudges and I would do all of these things that kept negative energy around me, and maybe to some extent, to a small degree, it did. But I thought that harboring these offensive feelings would maybe give me the fuel I needed to like get back at whoever or whatever it was.
But as I got older, and I should say as I got wiser, because when people say I got older, like being old is some sort of, I don’t know, natural eye-opener, and it’s really not for a lot of people, including myself on at least some things. But as I got wiser, my story when I told myself about these kinds of things, was whatever was happening was what I was choosing to hear. So in other words, I was getting offended by things that I was choosing to get offended by, even if I didn’t know whether these things were actually intended to offend me or directed to offend. And it was just a story that I was telling myself; I was telling myself a story that whatever this was, I was offended by it. And I realized finally that something that I thought offended me may or may have thought offended me before wasn’t personal until I personalized it. Think about that for a second. So you get these outside forces, whether it be a person or circumstance or a letter or a notice of some kind that offends you. You are the one at that point, that’s making it personal. I was the one that was making it personal; I personalized it as if it was intended to offend me. And when that thought hit me, it just made me feel dumb about feeling offended. Because really, when a person or a group or some anonymous person behind the scenes gives their opinion about something, it’s just that — it’s their opinion. It doesn’t make it something that’s mine. You know, it’s just an opinion. And if I agree with the opinion, great. And if I don’t agree with the opinion, that’s great, too, because it’s something that someone else owns. Regardless of how of whether I like it, or don’t like it, I don’t own it. They own it. And because I don’t own it, it’s not my property. And because it’s not property, it cannot be a part of me. So I don’t have the right. I don’t have any obligation to be offended by anything that I don’t personally own, that I have not made my property. And I would argue neither do you. Being offended is a choice. And it’s a choice that I’ve chosen not to make, and I try I work hard at it. I’ve chosen not to make that choice and it’s a choice. It’s a choice that you just may never have to make either. If you just think about the ownership part of it. Can’t be offended by something you don’t own.
That’s my lesson for today. Hope you got some value romr this, and I will see you next time.
