Taking others personally can keep us engaged in a battle of fitting their perception or going against it. Authenticity is lost when we try to change the perspective others may have of us. I’ll get into how we can avoid taking things personally, and also why we do it in the first place; what is really going on in our lives to cause it? Sometimes we use it as a wedge to create distance from some people while we bring others closer. Our interpretation of situations that lead us down this road often has nothing to do with reality. It’s about looking at the situation objectively and asking what alternate scenarios might be true—ones that have nothing to do with us.