If there’s one thing that we can do as human beings is to learn how to not take things personally.

As our entire experience of life gets better, our joy increases, our stress goes down, we have more space to deal with everything in our life, and we can actually start to get some real enjoyment out of the things that we can do. We can ultimately start to pursue some bigger ambitions and goals, and actually create more meaningful and deeper relationships.

Imagine as you grow older and your relationships mature, people mature as well. You became closer, more intimate, and more expressed, instead of what usually ends up happening — which is getting on each other’s nerves to a certain degree. In most cases, this is because we all tend to take things too personally every once in awhile.

Taking things personally robs you of the ability to control your emotional state, your decision making process, and as a byproduct of those two things, the ability to live your life to the fullest.

People that are more narrow-focused see the smaller picture of things in life, which overall, shows that they won’t be able to live their life to the fullest unless changes are made. They kind of lose sight of the bigger picture and because of that, they end up taking bigger risks that may hurt the people around them. They start to defend their position because it’s the default reaction when you’re defending yourself and your beliefs, which could create more conflict in the end. Not only can this cause the people around you to dislike you, but it can create an inconvenience and imposition in your own life. This reinforces the feeling and belief that you need to serve yourself to an even greater degree.

You can see that life kind of lends itself to tempting us to take on a small picture, which ultimately, doesn’t have us do the best thing we can do — which is imagining the bigger picture. We have to raise the bar and increase the level of the way we look at things. We have to think to ourselves, “Is it all about me, or is it about the bigger picture?” and imagine what that bigger picture looks like.

So how do you strategically raise the bar while handling relationships, situations, and unexpected things that come up in a way that allows you to maintain yourself? You have to get rid of the small minded thinking of “it’s all about me.” Typically when you get into that state, it becomes a pretty competitive tit for tat sort of perception.

I like to break things down to make sure I’m really getting the essence of what I’m thinking about. To do so, I get into a small mindset. This helps me hone in on what I need to do to change myself for the better.

To learn more about how Shane Krider breaks things down, visit his podcast here.

Shane Krider is a successful personal development life coach, producer, speaker, author and entrepreneur. Along with his wife, Shane is the co-host of Born to Prosper’s Mind Power, which is a self-help podcast which challenges its listeners to delve deep into their minds to find success. In addition, Shane travels the world in luxury to speak to aspiring entrepreneurs at conferences and workshops to inspire them to find their own pathways to success. Shane Krider is part of The Prosperity of Life Network, a United States-based personal development business with a presence in 52+ countries.