Mind Your Own Business!

At first, “mind your own business” might sound harsh, but, it is actually a gentle reminder to all of us to stay in our own lane, so to speak. ‘Minding your own business’, at its heart, is focusing on what you can control and letting go of what you can’t. It is taking responsibility for your own thoughts and actions, and letting other people take responsibility for theirs. We sometime try to control other people, their lives, control the world around us, and basically control everything and everyone but ourselves.

The most basic way to start minding your own business is to remember that:

• Your thoughts and actions are your business
• Other people’s thoughts and actions are their business (NOT yours)
• External circumstances i.e. weather, natural disasters etc. are not your business)

Ironically, the only thing we CAN control is ourselves. And even then, it’s sometimes imperfect control.

KEY Examples of NOT Minding Your Business:

• Judging, blaming and criticizing others for their actions and feelings
• Reacting to circumstances and others instead of being conscious
• Seeing others as separate from us (separation vs oneness is also a core tenet of conscious living)
• Attempting to “fix” others problems without being asked
• Refusing to accept others as they are

Now, we shall make an attempt to understand how to actually Mind our Business:

1. Assume Your OWN responsibility

First and foremost, taking responsibility for you means that nothing comes as top priority as you. Fix yourself first and knowing that no one makes you do or feel anything. It’s not letting someone else have authority over you. You always have a choice. Minding your own business is choosing not to be the victim of the family or society around you and completely taking ownership of your decisions. You choose to do those things because you want the result.

While doing the above, you don’t have to act outside of your integrity or you don’t have to treat other people poorly, or be narcissistic. You’re just not free from the consequences of those decisions.

2. Accept People As Is

This does not mean that you accept or enable other people’s destructive behavior without doing or saying anything. It doesn’t mean that you neglect to set boundaries for yourself or that you stop advising your siblings or children. It does mean that you accept that people are not born identical and that they are different. They can’t be your own Xerox copy.

When we refuse to accept others and their identities as they are, we say “I don’t want to know you, I want you to be who I want you to be.” We can accept that some people are high strung, they talk loudly, are sometimes late, they like things we think are boring, believe in things we don’t believe in, or do things we don’t agree with. We can accept that as a reality and part of the diversity of this planet.

3. Stop Judging, Criticising & Fixing People

When someone talks to you about a problem, keep in mind that there’s nothing to fix. No one is broken. Your role is to listen. I always ask my clients to learn to become patient listeners and develop and improve their listening skills especially when someone speaks, and instead of judging, think “How does this apply to me? How can I learn from this?”.

After all, human experience is universal. We’re all in this together, and judgment, criticism and our internal urge of fixing others only prevents us from connecting with others. When someone talks to you, listen and try to understand instead of assuming that: “This person is broken, thus, he/she needs help and I can fix him/her.”

4. Install a Filter in your Head

When we mind our own business, we save a lot of mental and physical energy for ourselves because we are focused on what we want instead of what we don’t want. Let’s use an example of email sorting. Think about how much energy it takes to go through every piece of junk mail, all the special offers, all the sales flyers. It would take all day! Instead, most of us just take a quick glance at the mail each day to see what actually needs our attention, and we recycle and trash the rest.

Thoughts are like that. Thoughts can bounce around in our heads all day, and they won’t necessarily be helpful. Part of minding our business is figuring out which thoughts are just, useful, and important instead of being distracted by every thought that goes through our minds. This is also the case with feelings. Some feelings are fleeting and don’t require attention while others can be useful. Ask yourself whether your thoughts and feelings are true, useful, and important, or whether they’re just noise. Sort them out exactly the way you deal with junk email.

5. Make Yourself Aware

Self-awareness is the ability to tune in to your feelings, thoughts, and actions. Being self-aware also means being able to recognize how other people see you. People who are self-aware recognize their strengths and their challenges.

Minding your own business is also an act of observing what’s going on inside of you. It’s being self-observant. It may be helpful to think of ourselves as two “selves”; the part of us that thinks, and the part of us that can observe the part that thinks.

We can observe ourselves, our activity, and our state of mind. Minding your own business means being the self-observer. Observe and accept the fact that you’re thinking those thoughts. Then you can move on.

Final Word

Minding your own business is actually difficult because it keeps you away from cheesy gossip, getting involved in others’ businesses but on the contrary, it involves great labor, confronting your mistakes and inner demons, working out relational conflicts, practicing self-discipline, and making sacrifices. It’s so tempting to cast blame for the world’s problems on other people and circumstances, but that mentality inherently ascribes all power to fix things to outside forces as well.

For most of us, minding our own business does not come naturally. This is a practice, like everything else in conscious living. Practice observing yourself and noticing when you’re not minding your own business, and practice bringing your attention back to your own lane. As you do this more and more, you will find it easier and more automatic. As you do this more, you will take more ownership of your own life, thoughts, and decisions, and grow in acceptance of the humanity in all of us.

Learn how sometimes smaller things in our lives make huge impact and you can take some learnings on a personal and professional level by following me on LinkedIn and Evolve HR’s website.

Muhammad Sajwani is the Founder and Managing Director of Evolve HR which aims at transforming, enriching and evolving Human Capital of Pakistan, At Evolve HR thrives in challenging assumptions that hinder organisational aspirations, by creating innovative solutions that yield maximum impact, scalability & benefit to a wider base of stakeholders. As a Business Coach and Organisational Consultant, Sajwani knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.