95: What others do, and our reaction to “it” another way around: 3 kinds of business

What others do, and our reaction to “it” another way around: 3 kinds of business

What brains do best is learn. They learn by making distinctions, noticing differences, being aware of ways that reality is not the same, ways that this apple tastes different than that pear, or this book makes us feel different than that movie, or this person enriches our life and that person not so much.

The Byron Katie work takes advantage of this, this using of the mind to heal our lives by inquiring into our own thinking, and to undermine the mind’s tendency to drive us into bad and unhappy and often even miserable feelings.

We’ve seen how the four questions is using the mind to ask and search instead of just being a victim to the average and often very unsatisfactory ways of thinking about and reacting to things.

Byron Katie helps get question three clear by sometimes making these distinctions: my business, your business, God’s business.

Earthquakes and big storms: God’s business.

Other people do what they do. Say what they say. Feel how they feel. Their business.

We react to this. Our business, our reaction,

We have ideas and thoughts and rules and opinions about what they do or say. These ideas and thoughts and rules and opinions and the consequent unpleasant feelings: this is our business.

What they do or say is What Is. It’s what they do or say.

But, when we really, really think they “shouldn’t” then we go inside ourselves and have the kind of reactions that question three helps us get clear.

Think about this.

A lot.


Someone does something.

That’s just What Is. It’s their business. Their path. Their life.



And when we make it our business to think it should be different, we have the list of consequences we get when we write our list for question three.

They act.

We react as a victim or a counter-attacker. We suffer.

And is that to say, we SHOULDN’T feel bad?

Nah, we can feel all we want, but once we stop believing our reactions, we can start to see the pain and confusion that the other person is almost surely suffering. Then we can feel for them, instead of just getting defensive.

By staying in our own business, we might actually be able to be of use to the formerly aggravation / infuriating “other.”

So enjoy your day and see when any and all unhappiness derives from being in someone else’s business and discover if coming back to your own business brings relief and happiness.