Seeing Everything as Learning

When I start to reflect upon it, I realize that there are ways to look at things as learning experiences, and ways to take things personally. When I take things to be personal, I literally believe that there is a "person" who is on the defensive or is being attacked. This is a mistaken view, because it suggests that there are these individuals who need to be defended. When I believe this more and more, my body tends to become very tight and tense. I have imagined that there is another person who intends to attack me, and then I become more and more defended inside.
  An alternative view might be to see that I call the self is really a shifting series of experiences, thoughts and ideas. Rather than thinking that there is a "me" that is solid that is in need of defending, what would it be like if I understood that all these thoughts and emotions are just passing constantly, to be replaced by other thoughts and feelings? If I have some degree of insight into the impermanence of this "selfhood", I wouldn't be so invested in the idea of trying to defend a solid sense of the self that is presumably real.
   Sometimes it's important to reflect on impermanence so that a person is not caught up in the illusory belief in a self to defend.  It's scary to realize but it is so important to relax and focus on the things that matter in life and are of importance. But this requires seeing that things are often not as permanent or fixed as they appear. This is a practice that seems to me worthy to contemplate for a while.