Habits for Healing, page 11
What It Means to Mind Your Own Business
The phrase itself sounds harsh, but as a healing habit, “mind your business” is a gentle reminder to redirect your focus to yourself. Life is distracting enough. You have work to do. You have a purpose to fulfill. You have a past (or present) to heal. There are so many commitments that seem to pull us in every direction. Part of your healing work is to focus on the people and efforts that bring you more peace and joy and enable you to stay in your power. Nothing will do that for you better than avoiding the temptation to mind other people’s business.
Minding other people’s business looks like
•Making absolute statements about things that have absolutely nothing to do with you
•Getting so hyperfocused on what someone else has going on in their life that you neglect your own
•Prioritizing the peace, happiness, well-being, and successful outcomes of other people over your own
•Being more invested in the relationship, career, or health of another person than they are themselves
•Attempting to keep up with the lifestyle, relationship status, or career of others you admire
You can mean well and want what’s best for others and still take things too far. Being consumed or preoccupied with someone else’s life is where the line between supporting others and projecting is drawn.
Resistance to Minding Your Own Business
Social media has reprogrammed our ideas of what real life looks like. In real life, you ask your real friends which outfit to buy. In real life, only your close friends and family know who your spouse or partner is, and whether your child looks like them. But since many of us now live a portion of our lives online, real life has been expanded to include friends and followers from social media.
I have nothing against social media. Many of you are likely reading this book because that’s where you discovered me and my work. Connecting with people online is valuable. You can find love, friendship, and career opportunities that evolve into real-life connections, or just remain connected on the internet and still feel a sense of belonging. But the rules can get fuzzy, and boundaries can be crossed.
Consider your specific relationship with social media:
•Have the websites or applications you use to consume content changed the way you view real life?
•Has the ability to peek into the lives of strangers influenced whom you consider a friend?
•Has receiving an invitation via social media to get all up in other people’s business created an opportunity for you to connect with people in your head?
•Do you feel like you know those people enough to share your opinion or give unsolicited advice?
•Have your beliefs about your relationships, career, or yourself in general changed because of how you’ve been comparing them to your social media “friends”?
Social media is not entirely to blame for our inability to mind our own business. I come from the era when mamas and aunties would sit on the front porch gossiping and exchanging unsolicited advice while kids like me sat nearby pretending not to listen in. What was said on that porch stayed on that porch—whether it was an opinion on who shouldn’t be dating whom, who was running low on funds and asking to borrow money, or who was having legal issues. And those things certainly wouldn’t have been repeated to the person who was the topic of discussion. But if someone took things too far or spoke out of turn, someone else would say, “Okay now, mind yo’ business,” and everyone knew to change the subject.
Culture and social history have given what some people see as unspoken permission to pry, poke, impose, and project onto other people’s lives. But I find that involving yourself in what others have going on is also the reason many families and friends experience unhealthy discourse and broken relationships. When we get involved in other people’s business, we cross their boundaries and invite them to cross ours.
Staying in Your Power
One of the most common ways people relinquish their power is by focusing their energy on things they can’t change. When you are in your power, you are focused on things that matter to you, you are fully present to the moment you are in, you are living true to yourself, and you are honoring your own purpose, values, and personal abilities. Anything you can’t control is outside of your power.
I think you know this. Your experience proves it. But think back on the times you tried to change someone. How did that work out for you? Consider the times you gave unsolicited advice to a friend or family member. How did those conversations end? Remember when you wanted something for someone more than they wanted it for themselves? Who ended up being disappointed and dismayed?
Minding your business is not a practice of abandoning the ones you love. It’s a habit of not abandoning your own peace by trying to control people or even things you don’t have the ability to control.
Things You Can’t Control
•What someone thinks about you. That is none of your business.
•If someone values you. That is none of your business.
•Someone else’s lifestyle. That is none of your business.
•Someone else’s preferences. That is none of your business.
•When/if someone changes. That is none of your business.
•Someone else’s mindset or beliefs. That is none of your business.
•Whom someone chooses to love. That is none of your business.
Focusing on things you can control is how you stay in your power. Minding your own business is how you protect your peace and secure your healing.
Why Minding Your Own Business Matters
My friend Heather had been in an abusive marriage for twenty years when we met. It got physical—often—and now she felt like her husband was turning her children against her. He was starting to question her parenting in front of them and shower them with gifts instead of holding them accountable for poor grades or evading chores. In a matter of weeks, she went from bubbly, driven, and inspired, to appearing unmotivated and distant.
It was difficult to see someone I cared about show up with bruises on her neck and arms. (She tried covering it up, but it was apparent.) We connected as friends, so I tried hard to honor a boundary I set to keep my professional opinions to myself, and just be the friend. As her friend, I would listen and cry with her, and give advice only when she asked. I encouraged her to pursue her goal of completing her doctorate degree and to accept requests for speaking engagements, and I reminded her of how valuable she was as a friend, mother, and professional.
There was an interesting pattern in Heather’s and my friendship. After reaching a breaking point, she would ask me for help with resources, and I would connect her with advocates, housing options, and legal assistance. She would seem hopeful and take the help, only to get right back with her husband days later. I remember feeling frustrated and emotionally drained. But as Heather’s friend, I thought my duty was to be there for her, no matter what.
I had come to define being there for her as
•Getting her access to the help she needed (even if she didn’t take it)
•Nursing her back to health when she was bruised and battered
•Listening to her vent or unload her emotions about her relationship
•Treating her like a friend and not a client
Ultimately, my friendship with Heather became emotionally exhausting and triggered thoughts of traumatic experiences from my own life. I wanted to save her, just as I had tried (and failed) to save some of my closest family members. But, having worked as a program director of a domestic violence advocacy center and shelter, I knew that it could take up to seven attempts for a survivor to finally release/escape an abusive relationship. This cycle Heather was stuck in was not uncommon. I was doing everything I could, but at some point I had to acknowledge my limits.
This situation helped me realize that I had developed a pattern of consuming myself with the business of those I loved. As a family member or friend, I felt obligated to facilitate their healing, to help reprogram their patterns, and to push, pull, or drag them into what I thought was best for them. This level of codependency took a toll on my own well-being. I started to lose hair, lose energy, and lose myself in their lives.
There are times when being in someone else’s business soothes our own trauma. We see someone else feeling the same pain, and it gives us a sense of “me too.” Or we show up for others, and perhaps it makes us feel valued and needed after years of feeling unworthy and of no use. If we aren’t careful, we can become enmeshed with the people we are trying to support, to the point where we no longer see the distinction between their lives and our own.
I knew I needed to take a step back and save myself. So I gave Heather one last pep talk and a folder full of all the resources I had. Then I released her to herself. I didn’t cut our friendship off completely, but I did set a boundary for myself not to engage her in conversations about her marriage or the abuse. I think Heather realized how her issues were impacting me emotionally, and in response, she chose to distance herself. When she was ready, more than two years later, she left her husband for good. She now works as an advocate for other survivors. That experience led me to these lessons in minding your own business:
•You cannot determine what’s best for someone else. Everyone has their own perspective, values, beliefs, and preferences.
•You can’t expect someone to do for you what they are unwilling to do for themselves. Change requires the agreement and participation of the person who needs it.
•When you interfere with someone living their own life, you interfere with their ability to learn their own lessons.
•There is freedom in allowing people to be who they are, live how they want, and change when or if they are ready. They are free to live their lives and you are free to live yours.
The Difference Between Empowering and Enabling
While you can’t heal, change, or grow other people, you can support their own efforts to do so. Part of the work of minding your own business is knowing the difference between empowering your loved ones and enabling them.
So far, we’ve talked about how we tend to cross the line into other people’s business. But even when people extend invitations to involve us in their lives, there are times when it’s in our best interest to decline.
Sometimes, people expect others to do what they don’t want to do themselves. They want you to confront the bully in their life, they want you to help pay their bills, they want you to give them permission to leave the toxic relationship, and they need you to bear the responsibility of keeping them from harmful behaviors like addiction. They often pull on the heartstrings of a helper to intervene, and the intervention prevents them from building up their own agency.
This dynamic can be found in relationships between a parent and an adult child, a loved one and a person with an addiction, a victim and an abuser, a codependent partner and a narcissistic one, or a friend in a one-sided relationship with another person.
You will know you’ve crossed the line between empowering and enabling when
•You start covering or downplaying a person’s negative actions
•You try loving someone out of their problems
•You make excuses for unchanged behavior
•You take responsibility for someone else’s actions
•You break promises to yourself not to intervene
•You tolerate toxic, abusive, or destructive behavior
•You deny the severity of someone’s circumstance to prevent them from feeling bad
You may not mean to contribute to your loved ones’ poor decisions, lack of accountability, or negative habits. But when you engage in their lives by doing things on their behalf or making excuses for the things that don’t get done at all, you are aiding and abetting their self-sabotage. You don’t have to mind someone’s business to show you love and care for them. You can love them by setting them up with enough words of encouragement, and sometimes even resources, that lead to their handling their own business.
The person you are enabling might be known among your family or friend group as the one who is always messing up, falling off, and needing to be bailed out. That’s because no one has given them the freedom they need to finally get things right. If you stop giving your cousin help with his rent money, he may be forced to take extra hours at work to come up with the money himself. If you stop positioning yourself in the middle of a disagreement between your other siblings, they may learn to talk to each other directly and come to a peaceful resolution. You will be surprised by what people can do when they have no other choice. You will be surprised how consistent, intentional, and strategic someone can be when no one else is around to be those things for them.
What Minding Our Own Business Heals in Us
As with most of the habits in this book, I have to be intentional about minding my own business. I am a helper by nature. I care deeply about the success, growth, and healing of everyone in my life. My chosen roles—consultant, educator, mentor, facilitator of healing—all require me to ask personal questions and discern insights into the lives of others. In my professional and personal lives, I’ve had to learn when to lean in and be supportive, and when to fall back.
Before getting into someone else’s business, I’ve learned to ask
•Did they ask for my help, advice, or support?
•What are my intentions for getting involved?
•How will getting involved impact me personally?
•Is this person/situation my personal responsibility?
•Do I have the mental, physical, or financial capacity to help?
•Am I willing to bear the consequences of the outcome of this situation?
•Will getting involved make things better or make me bitter?
•Will getting involved empower the other person or enable them?
Consider how being a helper makes you feel. Does watching someone take your advice validate your need to be heard? Does coming to someone else’s rescue actually rescue a prior version of yourself who needed the same intervention? Does judging, gossiping, or projecting help you hide the ways you do the things you are so quick to point out in someone else’s life?
Minding your own business heals your relationship with your energy. It helps you see that your wisdom to solve problems and talent for making things happen for others can be used to do the same things in your own life. We spend a lot of our energy trying to heal ourselves by helping other people. Instead, we should go straight to the source—focusing that attention, care, and encouragement and applying it to our own lives. Reserve those powerful things for yourself until you are invited to share them with others. Allow others the freedom to transform their own futures by tapping into their own gifts, talents, skills, and experiences to increase their own agency and build meaningful lives.
Minding Your Own Business and Reclaiming Your Power
Your energy is your power to sustain mental and physical effort. Scientists define energy as the ability to do work. So minding your own business does more than just call your focus back to yourself; it helps you reclaim your power by ensuring that you have enough of the mental and physical stamina needed to do powerful work in your own life.
I said earlier that you will be amazed by what other people can do when you aren’t doing everything for them. And that’s true. You will also be amazed by what you can do for yourself when all your energy isn’t spent doing things for others.
Reclaiming your power looks like strengthening your gifts, talents, and skills and leveraging them in a new business venture. It looks like cultivating relationship wisdom and using it to create a new legacy of healing in your own family. It looks like better managing your time during the day so you can fit in your daily self-care habits. The habit of minding your business guarantees that you have the power to meet your own needs and heal your own life.
Seven Steps to Begin Minding Your Own Business
Accept people as they are and choose wisely who you want to keep in your circle. A part of minding your business is not trying to change someone, not trying to act on someone’s behalf, and being certain that the people in your life are aligned with your values and standards for connection.
Avoid gossip and harsh judgments. Remember that not everyone shares the same worldview. Gossiping and judging are projections. Minding your own business protects your view and the views of others.
Be responsible for your own thoughts and feelings. Other people’s thoughts and feelings are not your responsibility to manage or uphold. And even when what someone else says or thinks about you is hurtful to you, you are empowered to work through the hurt and respond in ways that protect your heart and your peace.
Keep your unsolicited opinions to yourself. Just because you think something doesn’t mean you have to say it. This is true unless someone asks you—but I would qualify that by adding that if what you have to say in response isn’t meaningful, mind your own business.
Regulate your emotions. Often, we are moved to pry, gossip, or enable because of our own unresolved emotions. Pause and examine the root of what you’re feeling before you decide to respond with your emotions and get in someone else’s business. This pause will help you determine if you genuinely want to be invested for the sake of others, or to soothe your unhealed feelings.
