When Everything Feels Personal

(button clicking) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) Hey, friends, it's Rosie. Welcome back to Radio Headspace. So, the other week I was texting with a friend, and she didn't reply for hours. Hours. My brain immediately went into detective mode. Did I say something wrong? Is she mad at me? Did she finally get tired of my "Send me memes, I love you forever," personality? By the time she texted back, "Sorry, I was in back-to-back meetings," I had already written the whole breakup speech in my head for a friendship that wasn't even ending. Classic me. And that's when I had to laugh, because I had fallen right into the trap I wanna talk about today, making it all about me. We all do this sometimes, someone doesn't wave at us, so we assume they're ignoring us. Someone cancels dinner, so we assume it's rejection. Someone posts something online, and we think it's secretly about us. (warm music) This, my friends, is called the spotlight effect. It's the tendency to think people are paying way more attention to us than they actually are. Newsflash, most people are way too busy thinking about themselves. But when we get caught in this trap, everything becomes personal, everything becomes a reflection of our own worth. So this self-obsession, it's not narcissism in the "I'm the best" sense, but narcissism in the "everything must be about me" sense. And that's the real danger, right? When everything becomes about me, we lose sight of we, and we stop seeing others clearly, and even stop seeing ourselves clearly because the mirror we're staring into is distorted by fear and insecurity. (gentle music) So, here's a real-life example. A few years ago, I was at a retreat. It was a big group, lots of strangers, lots of silence. One morning during breakfast, someone at the table asked if anyone had extra tea bags. Another person offered theirs, and they exchanged this sweet little moment of gratitude. And me, I sat there thinking, "Wow. They didn't ask me. I guess I look unapproachable. Maybe I'm giving off weird vibes. Maybe I don't belong here." Meanwhile, it had nothing to do with me, they just happened to ask the person sitting closest. That's the trap of "it's all about me" thinking, it shrinks world down to our insecurities and leaves no room for reality. But I think the most compelling thing I found was why things like this hurt us. When we make everything about us, two things happen. One, we create suffering out of nothing. A delayed text becomes a rejection. A forgotten invite becomes exclusion. A random interaction becomes a reflection of our deepest flaws. And two, we disconnect, because when everything is about us, we stop seeing other people clearly, their struggles, their business, their humanity, it all disappears behind the me lens. (upbeat music) So how do we climb out of this trap? One word, my friends, curiosity. Instead of assuming someone's behavior...