I was having a conversation with myself the other day and realized something amazing— if I take away my lectures to myself about what I’m doing wrong, my judgments on what people should be doing differently (I can’t believe she wore that to the meeting), and my comparisons of how I’m doing something better/worse than someone else, there’s not a lot of dialogue left. And that’s frightening. Seems my very busy ego has an opinion on almost everything except my own business and what I need to be doing right now in order to do my job.
Sadly, I don’t think I’m alone here. I’d like to say I’m the only one who has these ongoing conversations, much like a commentator at a Super Bowl who is always talking, but I think it’s most of us most of the time, and it’s incredibly detrimental to our success and peace of mind.
What I am learning to do is monitor my inner dialogue and gently direct it back to where it needs to be, focusing on priorities and tasks and values. And since the mind will always fill a vacuum, I continually remind myself to appreciate—every one of us has, even when things aren’t going well, so incredibly much to be thankful for.
Of course, there are times we have to intervene and speak up, but for the majority of us what others say and do really isn’t any of our business. And when we can live this paradigm and focus on how we can grow instead of fixing others, it opens up limitless opportunities. We are what we think about, and we can use this precious resource to learn, grow, lead and draw to us all that we want, we just need to let other people alone to live life the way they choose; it really isn’t any of our business.
