Staying In Your Own Business
by Byron Katie
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 I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. For me, the word God means "reality." Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that’s out of my control, your control, and
everyone else’s control — I call that God’s business.
Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, "You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself," I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation.
I noticed this early in 1986. When I mentally went into my mother’s business, for example, with a thought like "My mother should understand me," I immediately experienced a feeling of loneliness. And I realized that every time in my life that I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else’s business.
If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what’s right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve your problems for you. If you understand the three kinds of business enough to stay in your own business, it could free your life in a way that you can’t even imagine.
The next time you’re feeling stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you’re in mentally, and you may burst out laughing! That question can bring you back to yourself. And you may come to see that you’ve never really been present, that you’ve been mentally living in other people’s business all your life. Just to notice that you’re in someone else’s business can bring you back to your own wonderful self. And if you practice it for a while, you may come to see that you don’t have any business either and that your life runs perfectly well on its own.
–Byron Katie
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Staying In Your Own Business
What does staying in your own business mean to you? Can you share an experience of a time when you gained insights from realizing you had strayed from your own business? How do we develop the awareness needed to avoid mentally living someone else’s life? |
| Kristin Pedemonti wrote: Good advice. When we stay focused on Self (and not in a selfish way) we can become more aware of how our own attitude & actions impact others. We can be mindful of how we interact. this mak… |
| rahul wrote: This reminds me of the classic ‘circle of influence’ and ‘circle of concern’ which is always a superset of the first. Our greatest power is always in our circle of influence, but we often disco… |
| Kristin Pedemonti wrote: Agreed! Change yourself, change the world. so deeply True! … |
| Abhishek wrote: In my experience, the three businesses merge and trickle into each other. My business is often influenced, at a subtle level, by the business of others (i.e. their expectations of me, whi… |
| david doane wrote: The article is simple, basic, and true. AA calls it taking your own inventory rather than taking anyone else’s. To me it means to focus on myself, on what it is that I want, feel, like, d… |
| aj wrote: I am hearing the author perfectly. In trying to understand and support a friend, I have left my own business. My personal anchor (with each person I aid) becomes less rooted i… |
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