“What comes out of a persons mouth says more about them than it does about you.”
My mom taught me this a few years back, but it has taken all of those years to grasp it and apply it consistently in conversation.
This one simple piece of knowledge can completely shift your perception of a conversation with someone else and it can also give you great insight into your own worldview.
One of my love languages is positive affirmation.
This means I feel totally loved when I get compliments, and totally unloved when I receive an insult or criticism.
When I finally realized this little bit of gold information about myself, I was able to see why my self-doubt quotient is so high, and why I had been a people pleaser… I was begging for their approval in order to get compliments to feel loved.
Understanding that what comes out of a persons mouth isn’t about you, but it is about them, will allow you to stop taking what they say personally, to stop making everything about you, and to get insight into who the other person is.
It will keep you from getting emotionally charged.
It takes the sting out of insults and the fun out of compliments (note…I personally choose to allow compliments to be about me because who can ever get enough love compliments).
When someone calls you selfish, phony, greedy, happy, or loving… it really isn’t about you at all. It’s about how they perceive what you’re doing through their lens.
I used to only translate the stingers (insults) in a conversation back to who the other person is in order to stop myself from reeling into a space of unlovable-ness, but I’m realizing now that practically every single word that comes out of their mouth… is about them.
Listening to someone speak, or processing a conversation from this angle, really helps you to understand who someone is, what their fears are, what they believe about themselves, and what their true priorities are.
And it takes the focus off of you, which is always good.
“The reason you’re suffering is because you’re focused on yourself.” – Tony Robbins