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July 10, 2013

{Mindset Makeover} How To Get Out Of Your Own Way

At JillFit, we talk a lot about the victim mindset and how to overcome it so that we can ultimately realize our full potential. We want to get lean, be successful professionally, create meaningful personal relationships, all the while feel good in our skin and content within ourselves.

Phew! What a TALL order! No wonder we struggle!

I get it. Of course I do.

It’s not easy, and we are constantly bombarded with inputs from other people, situations and circumstances that challenge us. Like Coach Jillian says, “It’s easy to be ‘all good’ when everything’s all good.” But what about those times when we encounter resistance, hurtful people and those who don’t see the world the way we do? They may criticize what we eat or how “obsessed” we are with exercise, not understanding what it means to make healthy living a priority.

When others act out of their own insecurities, we feel it. It impacts us. It can make us feel defensive or like we are doing something wrong. I get that.

BUT! Is there a way to navigate relationships so that we can optimize OUR OWN happiness and wellbeing while not hurting others? I think there is. And not surprisingly, it has to do with YOU! Taking responsibility for your own attitude and actions. Like Byron Katie says, “It only takes one person to end a war.” And that person is you :)

Below is an excerpt from the JillFit 10 Week Mindset Makeover. In this coaching message, we go through how to navigate resistance from others and how we can maintain within our own power, regardless of what’s going on around us. It isn’t easy! But with a little mindset reframing and practice, it’s possible to maintain our own inner peace, happiness and confidence despite what others think, say or how they act. 

{Excerpt from JillFit 10 Week Mindset Makeover: Email-based Coaching Program}:

I once received an email from a woman who was going through a hard time in her relationship with her husband of 22 years. Without her saying it in so many words, I gleaned the fact that infidelity was somehow involved and she had made the decision to stay with him and they were trying to work it out, despite her understandable trust issues after the fact. She told me that she found jillfit.com after Googling, “Staying in my own business.” She went on to tell me how much my blogs have helped her through that tough time and have given her hope for a better reality for herself.

Well, not only was I touched, but I was shocked that a) someone would Google that phrase :) and b) that she found MY site as a result. My work is done here! *wipes hands clean* :)
BUT, in all seriousness, I have to admit, JillFit did not come up with the idea of staying within our own business. Of course, it is something you hear from parents from a young age, but also Byron Katie restates it in a way that resonates for us adults.
Byron Katie says that there are 3 kinds of “business”:
  1. My Business
  2. Your Business
  3. God’s Business (basically things out of our control, natural disasters, etc)
This framework alone allows for us (if we choose to) to blissfully maintain our inner peace despite what is going on around us. Now, don’t mistake this for being naive, ignorant or a doormat. This is not about that.
This is instead about detaching from other people’s opinions of us. Realizing that we cannot control what other people do or say about us, and to get ourselves worked up over something we cannot control only causes us pain, sadness and frustration. 
(Well, I guess we could control it if we were willing to be someone else. But, when we are pretending to be anything we are not, in those moments, we are not in line with our True Self, and it will never last and we cannot find sustainable happiness in being something we are not).
Here’s how you use this framework. Some questions to ask, for example:
  • Who’s business is it if so-and-so doesn’t like me?
  • Who’s business am I in if I am trying to control how someone else sees the world?
  • Who’s business am I in if I am trying to convince someone else they should be different?
  • Who’s business is it what someone else says or feels? Don’t they have a right to make up their own mind?
  • How can we know what’s best for someone else? If we think we do, who’s business are we in?
  • And so on.
This is a good mental exercise we can use to check ourselves whenever we are feeling stressed or upset by someone else’s actions or words. Who are we to know what’s best for someone else? We absolutely can’t. Even if they are “messing up,” don’t we owe it to them to let them make their own mistakes? 
How can we prevent anyone from doing anything? We could try, but in those moments, we are not in our own business.
And Byron Katie says that when we are actively inserting ourselves into someone else’s business, there’s no one there to look over ours. Our only job is to take care of our own stuff, and offer support if asked, remembering that there’s POWER is allowing people to do what they are going to do. That’s life!
Perhaps we can use this tool to check ourselves when we find ourselves in someone else’s business…this is ultimately about TRUST and relinquishing control over the things we don’t really have control over anyway :)

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