Hello and welcome to the Mindful Kind podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Cable, author of the

Mindfulkind book, Mindfulness Teacher and blogger at Rachelcable.com. Each week this podcast will bring

meaningful tips, tools and strategies so you can manage stress and live more mindfully in the modern world.

Hello and welcome to episode 256 of the Mindful Kind podcast about how to take things less

personally. I've got lots of tips to get through in this episode, so let's dive straight into it.

If you struggle with taking

things too personally, you've probably heard some of the following advice. Don't worry about

what anyone else thinks, just let it go, stop overthinking everything. And while that advice

might have been well-intentioned, the truth is it can often be really hard to do those things. For example,

imagine you've gone out on a walk and it's a beautiful day. You're listening to music,

you're wandering along slowly and you don't realize someone riding a bike is approaching behind

you. You see a bench and think it'll be so nice to sit in the sun for a while and you start

walking towards it. You don't realize the person on the bike was just about to pass you and they

have to swerve to avoid heating you. The person on the bike stops and says, how stupid are you? Do you

realize you almost caused an accident? Pay attention next time. And they keep

riding. Your heart is racing, you feel completely shocked, and rather than sitting in the sunshine

and enjoying the rest of your walk, you turn off your music and rush home. You're thinking things like,

I'm such an idiot, I can't believe I wasn't paying attention,

I'm never going for a walk with music again.

That was a really horrible experience and it was all my fault.

You're taking the situation very personally and shouldering full responsibility for everything

that went wrong.

...