We had a saying at lululemon athletica when I used to manage their and that was to drop your personal baggage at the door. It will be there for you at the end of the day if you want to take it home with you.

1. http://www.wiggmanscoaching.com/personal-development-coaching-dumping-personal-baggage/ June 6, 2013
Personal Development Coaching On Dumping Your Personal
Baggage
What exactly is personal baggage you ask?
Let me define what personal baggage means to me:
Any negative feelings created by an event and/or person that you are choosing to
hold onto ruining your positive outlook on life which in turn causes you to dump
negativity onto anyone who surrounds you.
In other words you are carrying around with you whatever made you mad in the
past and are choosing to project it onto others. Most likely causing them to have
baggage about you now.
If you have ever had someone blow up at you for no apparent reason there is a
good chance they had some serious baggage with them that day and you just
happened to be the one who had it dumped on them.
To be honest I saw it all the time at lululemon. Guests would be in a frenzy over
something so small you could tell they had other things going on in life and just
needed an excuse to vent. While we trained people to handle those types of
situations it still affected them as people.
Your personal baggage is your responsibility and expressing that baggage by
making others feel bad in their day is unacceptable. No one deserves to be your
personal punching bag when you are dealing with negative feelings. Always check
your baggage at the door or better yet just let go of it when you are presenting
yourself to others.
You can develop baggage about anything in life which can make you feel very
overwhelmed but we will learn a simple way to deal with it very soon. First let’s
look at some different types of baggage.
Professional Baggage
Do you hate your old boss or blame them for your lack of success at your last
career? A lot of you will be holding onto baggage from your previous employment
and applying it to your current job. If your last boss treated you unfairly remember
that you have the responsibility to deal with it and not bring it into your current
place of employment.

2. You may inadvertently project your past negative feelings onto your current boss
leaving them questioning your work performance while you believe you are
justified to feel that way because they are a “boss.”
This isn’t just isolated to previous employment experiences and you can have
baggage about your current job. If you have experienced conflict with a colleague,
been passed over for a promotion, etc. it can all turn into baggage and seriously
negatively affect your performance.
One bit of advice on job interviewing. The last thing you want to do when asked
what you thought about your last place of employment or boss is unload all of
your personal baggage about how you felt it was. If you only express negativity
about your previous employers it sends up a red flag to your potential new ones.
Great leaders will see you as someone who has a lot of personal things to work
through and will avoid you like the plaque. They want to take on people who want
to develop into great employees. They don’t want to deal with all of you past
baggage trust me.
Personal Baggage
Have you ever had one of those mornings that everything felt like it was going
wrong? Woke up, burnt your toast, missed your workout because you lost a shoe,
had a flat and then got a speeding ticket on the way to your destination.
I am going to guess that when you showed up to wherever you were going, you
would have been quite overwhelmed and possibly described as disheveled or
grumpy. At least by the people that were around and got to deal with you first
hand.
Now do an honest assessment of yourself and see how many times you have
carried your morning baggage with you to where you went. Did you snap at the
coffee guy for spelling your name wrong (get over it, Meagan, Megan, Meghan,
see my point), cut a guy off in traffic even though you didn’t even signal (couldn’t
he tell I wanted over, ah no use you signal light next time) and so on and so on.
I am guessing if you are human you have done it numerous times pretty much
oblivious to the fact you were doing it. You know you are letting your emotional
baggage control you when you justify your negative actions based on what others
did, especially when they didn’t really do anything.
Relationship Baggage
Do you feel like you are always attracting more of the deadbeats that you just got

3. out of a relationship with? I will be honest and say it is you, not them. The
baggage you are carrying around about past relationships is guiding you
subconsciously to seek out those relationships. Crazy I know.
You get in life what you think about most in life.
You can also be destroying current healthy relationships because you have
baggage about the last hockey player you dated or the fact you were cheated on.
You apply the thinking that all (insert typical stereotype of person) are all the
same. Your relationship baggage can show up like a prejudice against others.
Letting go is so important to a healthy relationship and always keep in mind that
the person in front of you isn’t the one that cheated, the one that left you or is just
like your ex. They could be the one that will love you for who you are. There will be
times when your personal baggage comes from a lack of closure.
Self-Awareness
If takes a high level of self-awareness to know when you are choosing to toss
your personal baggage around like an airline baggage handler.
You may have been carrying it around so long it doesn’t look or feel like baggage
anymore. Even worse is that you may have developed self-limiting beliefs about
yourself that simply started out as baggage. Now they control everything you do.
No matter what type of baggage it is without working on your personal
development goals it will be difficult to know where all the negativity is coming
from.
Dealing With The Baggage
We always had a saying at lululemon athletica which was to check your personal
baggage at the door. By having this built into our culture it changed the way
people approached coming to work and ultimately how they approached the
baggage in their personal life.
I know for myself that by doing this it changed my view on how I was handling
negative feelings. I consciously thought to myself “Before I walk into my
work/home/business is there anything I know I am holding onto that would make
me less than the best possible version of myself?” and if yes I dealt with it.
If I couldn’t deal with it I would ask for coaching. I didn’t complain or blame others
for what I was feeling as that does not help personal growth. I would ask for help
on how to deal with the feelings and how to let it go.

4. I would acknowledge my feelings and commit myself to not allowing those
feelings to dictate my responses and I would consciously choose to not project
any feelings but happiness towards others. They deserved no less.
Give yourself the mini timeout you need to reset yourself, let go of the feelings
you feel realizing the people you are about to see had nothing to do with it and
start fresh. Even if they did have something to do with your current state of
feeling you cannot create change without moving past those feelings.
Every day is a fresh start on life if you want it to be.
The Power of Choice
I am a big believer in the power of choice. There is very little that I believe can
justify treating others negatively or gives us an excuse to pile our baggage on
them.
If you are the friend who constantly complains about your life to the people
around you commit to creating change in your life. Use the rule of three. If you
have complained to your friends on a subject more than three times without
choosing to change then it is time to just let it go. If you are not going to change
anything why waste the energy talking about it.
Friends do your friends a favor and if they continually come to you with the same
baggage, instead of just listening to their rant, challenge them by asking what
they plan on doing about it this time. Then ask that they only come to you when
they have actually tried to action change. Seems harsh but really do you deserve
to hear about how crappy their relationship is for the hundredth time knowing they
intend to do nothing about it.
Learning to let go plays a big part in choosing what to do with your personal
baggage. If you were mad at someone yesterday, let it go and celebrate you
have another day with them to make things different. Always act like each time is
the first time and see how things go.
Take Action Request:
Before you go into work, your home or a business just ask yourself “Am I about to
apply the personal baggage I am carrying from a past experience into this
situation?” If yes take a moment to acknowledge why you feel the way you do,
commit to letting it go and go into the situation with a new perspective.

5. “Personal baggage is like a holding a grudge and we all know holding a
grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
Get over it and just let it go.” – Darrin Wiggins