D’you find that your emotional buttons are easily tweaked? Others may say you are “too sensitive’, and, you worry if that’s true.

D’you tend to take things personally?

Or, can you have a good laugh at yourself?

When we take things personally, we’re saying that what another person thinks of us is more important than how we feel about ourself. And so we allow another to determine our value.

Taking things personally can have us fall into self blame or feel sorry for ourself, neither a great place to be! We can feel overwhelmed, we think “I just don’t know what to do”, our emotional body says “Poor me, I’ve got to do this all on my own… I just can’t go on”. And so we become a victim.

We might say we don’t want to feel sorry for ourself, however it can be easier to do that than take responsibility and change things.

We can look at things from another perspective. We all make mistakes; nobody’s perfect. We can ask ourself – what are the first steps I need to take to pick myself up? There’s a good chance that practically you will need to learn to do things differently, to do things that stretch or challenge you, in which case its good to learn to risk!

And … we can have a good laugh at our self. When life gets tough, it can be one of the few things that makes things better, it’s a sign of resilience.

If your sense of value has been knocked sideways and you want to make a new start, we’re offering a free exercise that will make the prospect of doing something new a lot less scary. You can get that here.

And… in our monthly newsletter, we offer questions to ponder, tips to help deal with stress and change, news of any special offers we’re making. If you’d like to receive these, you can sign up here. Change is part of life. Accepting change, we learn and grow and find we can rely on ourself. When we resist it, when we stay in our comfort zone, we stagnate.