Mind Your Business.

Our main business is to find our purpose here, serve the world and stay true to ourselves. Our inability to mind our business is at the root of our unhappiness and anxiety. We doom scroll on social media, watch and listen to negative news all day, set unattainable expectations for others, and try to shield others from taking responsibility for their actions. When you mind your business, you put your priorities right, guard your time like it is your life, and focus on what matters. As Chinese inventor and author Lin Yutang wrote in The Importance Of Living,  “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

Our time here on earth is finite; we sleep one-third of our lifetime, work and commute take another one-third, and the last one-third is where we handle our business. Our primary business in life is to take care of ourselves, take responsibility for our life, make the world a better place than we met it, be the change we want, match deliberately in achieving our life goals and have fun. In our bid to make other people happy, i.e. our children, spouse, boss, siblings. We interfere in their task, we shield them from taking responsibility for their actions, and we do not let them bear the consequences of their activity. Hence, they repeat the same mistake continuously and do not learn from their situation. In his book, The Courage to Be Happy, Japanese author Ichiro Kishimi writes about the Adlerian psychology concept of “Separation of tasks”.

Separation of Task ¹

“In Adlerian psychology, there is a way of thinking called ‘separation of tasks’, right? All sorts of things and events in life are regarded from the viewpoint of ‘Whose task is this?’ and divided into ‘one’s own tasks’ and ‘other people’s tasks’. Say, for example, that my boss doesn’t like me. Naturally, it doesn’t feel good. It would be normal to make some effort to be liked and approved of by him somehow. But Adler judges that to be wrong. What kind of judgement do other people (in this case, my boss) pass on my speech and conduct, and on me as a person? That is the boss’s task (other people’s tasks) and is not something I can control. No matter how much I try to be liked by him, my boss might just continue to dislike me.

On this point, Adler says, ‘You are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations.’ And further, ‘Other people are not living to satisfy your expectations.’ Don’t be afraid of other people looking at you, don’t pay attention to other people’s judgement and don’t seek recognition from other people. Just choose the path that is best for you and that you believe in. Furthermore, you must not intervene in other people’s tasks, and you must not allow others to intervene in your tasks, either.”

When children make mistakes, your responsibility is called into question. But that is not the kind of responsibility that one would stake one’s life on. Responsibility, in the true sense of the word, is something that only that person can make themselves take. This is what has led to the idea of separation of tasks. The idea, in other words, that says, ‘Who ultimately is going to receive the end result brought about by the choice that is made?’ You, who are not in the position of receiving the final responsibility, must not intervene in others’ tasks.

As Kishimi observed, we should separate tasks by not interfering in other people’s lives and minding our business. When we mind our business, we reduce our expectations of others and try to understand that most of us are doing the best that we can based on our present understanding of the situation. Your job is to be the light; people change when they are ready and have had enough pain to change; interfering in their lives would only lead to more reactance and resistance. In his book, The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness ², author Ichiro Kishimi expands further on the Alderian theory of Separation of tasks and non-interference.

Interpersonal troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s task or having one’s own tasks intruded on. Carrying out the separation of tasks is enough to change one’s interpersonal relationships dramatically.

How to tell whose task it is ?

Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that is made?

When the child has made the choice of not studying, ultimately, the result of that decision—not being able to keep up in class or to get into the preferred school, for instance—does not have to be received by the parents. Clearly, it is the child who has to receive it. In other words, studying is the child’s task.

Non-Interference

Adlerian psychology does not recommend the noninterference approach. Noninterference is the attitude of not knowing, and not even being interested in knowing what the child is doing. Instead, it is by knowing what the child is doing that one protects him. If it’s studying that is the issue, one tells the child that is his task, and one lets him know that one is ready to assist him whenever he has the urge to study. But one must not intrude on the child’s task. When no requests are being made, it does not do to meddle in things.

Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intentions will only lead to an intense reaction.

We stay in toxic and abusive relationships as a result of our inability to set clear and healthy boundaries. We tolerate bad behaviour and enable unacceptable behaviour because we interfere in our people’s tasks, and we fail to separate emotions from the facts. Your job is not to nag whenever your boundaries get crossed, your duty is to enforce the consequences of violating those boundaries; do not interfere in people’s tasks but do not fail to enforce consequences for action and inaction.

Meditations

• Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Surrender
• Acceptance doesn’t mean refraining from having preferences. Being mindful doesn’t mean accepting everything, it means coming to terms with the circumstances and events over which we have zero control. It means accepting that we truly can change like a painful loss, hurtful parting or a grim prognosis.
• When faced with something unchangeable, a wall we cannot get past; resistance simply doesn’t work. Resisting the unchangeable only creates more suffering. When we can’t change our reality, difficult as it may be, we must strive to accept it. Wisdom is knowing when to fight and when to surrender.

Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Log Off

• Our society has a problem: Screen addiction. We all know we should spend less time on our phones and devote fewer minutes to social media platforms. So much of our modern lives is built around apps and websites although a lot of them a useful there is a dark side to it also.
• Excessive negative phone usage can affect our mental health and according to Statista, over half of Americans are on their phone over 5 hours a day. Do you use your phone, or does your phone use you? These apps and products were created to suck us in, and we owe ourselves the responsibility of not getting addicted to them.
• You can go to a park and hang outside or hop on your bike and go for a ride. The Library is full of books of all kind plus movies and mags to awaken our mind. Visit a farm, head to a zoo, museum exhibits are wonderful too. Go bird watching, hike even climb up a tree. Steer up at the clouds and name what you see.

Podcast

• A biometric smart gun with Kai Kloepfer of Biofire | How I Built This with Guy Raz

All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.