Choosing personality

For those of you who missed joke at the closing of yesterday's post, here's a link to the video: Anoop Dogg - Drop It Like A Fob

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So, as we discussed yesterday, taking things personally is a somewhat odd habit of people. Here's the kicker: we choose to take things personally.

If someone offends us, we do actually choose to be offended. It's not as if you can't just dismiss the comment. No, instead, we identify the verbal attacker, and choose to think of what they're saying as having some sort of validity. Then, we get upset at the offender and take action from there. Honestly, it's really not that hard to just think about the comment.

Thinking about the comment gives us some benefit. We can be cool and calm, and think about the fact that the comment may, in fact, have some validity. We often immediately dismiss comments completely. This is not a bad idea, especially with derisive exclamations of the "f*** you" variety, which though they make the speaker feel better, they offer no sort of content to the argument at all. However, when actual content is provided, we need to sift out the attitude and try to empathize, so we can accurately judge our actions. After all the negative stuff is stripped, we can see if there is any small bit of truth to the comment, and from there we have a way to better ourselves. In this way, every insult (with proper form) can be an opportunity to better ourselves.

From there, if the comment does not have any usefulness to us (say, the person doesn't know you and made an incorrect assumption entirely, or it was of the aforementioned variety), we can dismiss it as insignificant. Why should we accept the insult? After all, so many of us are our own worst critics.

How many people do you know who hate compliments? Polite humility is one thing (and in many ways pointless, but that's a different argument entirely), but I know many people who hate having nice things said to them because they're insecure. They're so unhappy with themselves that they simply cannot accept the compliment as having any truth to it. It's really amusing to me, because I used to be very cynical. I mean, if most people are self-centered and conceited, how is it that so many people prefer to accept insults as truth and compliments as false? It's easy to find self-centered, conceited people. You don't need to see their self-praise to know how they are. On the other hand, it's more difficult to identify self-loathers, unless they take it to a very dire extreme.

Instead of hearing an insult and immediately going with "initial" feelings like hurt and anger, it's more useful to try to stay calm and analyze the insult itself. Just because someone opens their mouth doesn't mean you have to listen to them. It's much harder to do with people who know just what to say to get you pissed off, but really, isn't that a better opportunity to learn to control our responses?