How to Mind Your Business

For many its human nature to always be consumed with the need to be in others folks business. The internet and social media have made it a lot harder to be less concerned about what others are doing at all times of the day. If you really want to live your life to the fullest you need to learn how to mind your business.

Mind your business by:

• Paying attention to boundaries
• Avoiding gossip
• Limiting the media you consume
• Accepting people don’t have to tell you their business
• Focusing on yourself
• Identifying the risk involved in getting in business that is not yours

The quality of your life can be vastly improved when you learn how to mind your business. Use these tools to resist the urge to get up in business for which you have no ownership.

Paying attention to boundaries

When you’re interacting with someone asking questions about their personal life, you need to pay attention to signs that may indicate they don’t want to share information with you. Just because you desire to listen and help doesn’t mean people are obligated or want to share.

Indicators such as stepping away from you during a conversation, no eye contact, or avoiding answering questions are some signs you need to mind your business. Someone who wants to share information with you will do so.

If someone tells you to mind your business, listen to them! Give them the personal space to figure things out.

Avoid gossip

Don’t get involved in conversations about others and their lives especially when they’re not around. It’s not for you to give extra commentary on how someone else chooses to live and the decisions that they make, especially when they made a choice not to include you in those decisions.

If they will gossip with you, they will also gossip about you. Gossip to some is fun as long as they aren’t the subject of the conversation. But understand anybody that is willing to gossip about someone else will also be willing to gossip about you. If you don’t want to be the topic of future conversations lead by example.

Tell people you don’t want to participate in gossip before they even start to have the conversation around you. if they don’t stop the gossip, it is your responsibility to get up and remove yourself from the conversation. We are what we consume. Don’t be party to gossip so that you don’t have to be the subject of gossip.

Limit the media you consume

The things we expose ourselves to consistently have an impact on how we live our lives even when we don’t realize it. If you are gravitating to media, especially social media, that is heavily focused on discussing the lives of others or judging the decisions of others, then that type of information and mindset will gravitate to you. And it will happen without you even realizing it.

Social media is a great place to hang out if you’re in the right location among the right people. Surround yourself with people who are doing positive things and working to lift up themselves and others. If you spend your time consumed with social media that is only focused on talking negatively about individuals or breaking people down, you will do that in your own life. Make the decision to be better than what you see.

Accept people don’t have to tell you their business

People have choices. They have a choice to deal with the decisions in their life in private or they can choose to also engage people around them that they trust, to help them make decisions and navigate the choices in life. But it is an individual choice.

Knowing how to mind your business is understanding that people don’t have to tell you anything.

People have a choice regarding what information they want to share with people, when they want to share it, and how they want to share it. That is an individual decision that doesn’t require your consideration or approval. Respect that fact.

You don’t have control over other people and their feelings. If you really want to be helpful to someone, give them the space to decide when and if they are ready to share information about themselves. If they choose not to share, you need to respect their right to privacy.

Focus on yourself

If you are investing the time that you should be on self-improvement and living the best life that you can, you won’t have time to be consumed in other people’s lives or always in someone else’s business. When you focus on you, you become the priority.

Focus on yourself by doing things that allow you to become more disciplined and gain more control over your emotions and your life. You can focus on yourself by spoiling yourself, working on some self-care, and even meditation.

Take the time to focus on you so that you can get the most out of everything there is that your life has to offer. The time that you take focusing on the life of someone else, for which you have no control, it’s time that you will never get back to be able to focus on you.

Identify the risk involved in getting your business that’s not yours

Just because you think that you have better information or be a better choice than the decisions they are already making, doesn’t mean that you get to be involved in someone else’s business. You need to identify the risk involved inserting yourself in someone else’s business.

When you decide to provide information or advice that someone did not ask for or even if they did ask for it, you also inherit some level of responsibility for the outcome. This is why it is important to really understand when you should and should not insert yourself in someone else’s business.

In situations involving life-or-death, is when not minding your own business is crucial to saving a life. However if you think someone may be wearing clothes they shouldn’t or dating someone that you don’t like, well that just isn’t your business. Respect the boundaries and give people the space to make mistakes and grow from their mistakes.

How to mind your business is an art and a science. It requires you to make choices and practice restraint even when you might be tempted to insert yourself into someone else’s business. When those around you understand that you know how to respect boundaries, they may be more likely to share information with you.

Now go and enjoy your life…while minding YOUR business.