Each and every minute of every day, we find ways to give our power away to others. I remind myself daily, “What other people think of you is none of your business.”
There are three types of business. Your business. Other people’s business. And God’s business. When we get into other people’s business, we give away our power. When we get into God’s business we drain it.
Your business is your life. Other people’s business is their life. When someone is upset with you, it is important to clean up your end of your business. Your potty mouth. Your criticisms that were uninvited or unnecessary. Your ideas of their better life. Your end. Their end is none of your beeswax. If they don’t clean up their end, then they are showing you that they are like many adults and are not adults. They are five years olds in grown man suits. Do not be confused by titles of jobs, degrees, and grown man suits. Listen to the five year old speak. Some are wise. Most are still playing in their sandbox..ready to throw it in your eyes. Have some love and compassion because at some time or another, your age won’t match your wisdom either.
I know you secretly want to control what your boss thinks of you. What your spouse feels for you. What your family reveals about you. What your friends say about you. However, it is none of your business. When you accept this, you will feel free. Your ego will try to mess with you and get you to try to convince everyone you are as hip and awesome and loving as you wish you could be, but remember it’s a trap. Maya Angelou once said she never picked it up, so she never had to put it down. When people said she was the best, the greatest, the icon of this and that; she wouldn’t let herself pick it up because she knew one day those same people would be able to say you are the worst, the most awful, and she’d have to put it down.
It doesn’t mean this gives you carte blanche the right to act like a donkey. It just means, you clean up your part, you show up with your 100%. It doesn’t mean you do not care someone is hurting. It means you do not care if someone thinks you are a bad person. When you have healed your childhood fear that you are not good or worthy, then no one can hurt you when they proclaim otherwise. It simply won’t resonate with you. If you continue to hear a pattern from others, be fearless and exmaine your ugly parts and heal them. We all have them, so who cares. All you can do is focus on being the best you. It is not about being selfish. It is about not personalizing and injecting yourself where you don’t belong. Anyone else’s opinion of you is most likely only to do with them and their pain, so keep your mind out of it. If you are invited into a sacred relationship and are blessed to experience that kind of sharing, then that is special and different. However, what they choose not to bring into the relationship is still none of your business.
Other people’s business is their life in entirety. What they are doing. Who they are with. Why they do what they do. This is ALL none of your business. Every time you want to dig deeper into your denial ditch, just pull yourself out and say NO this is not my business. If your boss is a donkey, then donkeys are donkeys. They do ass like things, so stop dissecting why they are an ass. Donkeys are asses. Period. So, when he is rude, don’t analyze the donkey. Your analyzing will not change an ass to a prince. He will always remain a donkey and do donkey like things. He will kick you for no reason. Always. If he is nice, do not assume nice is in there inside him buried beneath the bravado. If he’s truly an ass, realize when he was nice he was simply having an off day. Kind of like the days when you’re an ass, but just reversed. So don’t analyze donkeys or complain about them. Remember donkeys do what donkeys do and no amount of you saying donkeys should be like cats will make them another species. It’s a precious waste of your energy. Accept the donkey. And kick yourself first and walk away. Run actually. And you can always outrun a donkey. Just keep reminding yourself that you do not own a zoo, so donkeys are none of your business.
When it comes to someone hopeless, they are also none of your business. It’s often just a way to make ourselves feel better or distracted from our own hopelessness. Do not let people who do not want help to take over your need to show you are a Mother Theresa who can’t mother herself. Showing people how you create your reality and inspiring them is better than giving them your attention so much that you sustain their reality over yours. I have a rule. If I recommend something three times and a person doesn’t take action after asking me for advice, I simply say the next time, “Oh you know what I think about that.” And I release them to it.
We often control others because we feel there’s a better way for them to conduct their lives or be happy, but again this is not our business. Just focus on how you can show up for those who want to share with you and are growing, but not those who are dependent upon you for survival. We often think we are stronger and can handle keeping another afloat, but you aren’t teaching them how to swim. If someone is hooking you emotionally and using you as a need versus a caring, then you need to let them swim on their own. You may be trapped in codependency versus real love and it can feel good to those who weren’t recognized in their childhood. We all want to feel needed, but we need to see the manipulation we fed into. Their happiness or sadness is not because of you, no matter how flattering they claim. It is God’s business not your own.
When I went through a break up many years ago with a great childhood sweetheart, I was terrified he wouldn’t be okay without me. I was worried about his addiction and his life spiraling out of control. One day, I had an epiphany and thought, “Who the hell am I to think I can keep him alive and think he actually needs me? God kept him alive before me and will do it after if that’s the plan”. I let him go that day. His life was and always is God’s business and his own. It wasn’t mine. When your help isn’t helping or it’s draining you, you can bet your life you are in somebody else’s business.
Even if your husband is cheating on you. That woman and what they do is none of your business. If you focus on healing your relationship, often that woman will disappear. If not, then surrender because your business is about to get a whole lot better.
When you see earthquakes, droughts, horrors on the news, pending doom, this is all God’s business. Volunteer to help out and do something that you feel called by God to do. If you don’t feel called, then stay out of it. Don’t fuel the fear. Let God handle it. Turn off the news and go pour love into the world instead.
So remember, stay in your business. The business of making yourself a better you. Loving yourself for who you are and not worrying what other people think. If you make yourself the best you, then the world will improve because of it. We can’t change others by worrying about their business. Give them the freedom to take a hundred more lifetimes to learn they lost a priceless friend or to come back as an actual donkey. Let it go. Master teachers don’t spoon feed. They offer wisdom and let go. Do the same for yourself.
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Excellent article!
Hahaa this is great! Perfect timing. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. X
Thank you love!