There are three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God’s.

Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business.
When I think, “You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself”, I am in your business.

When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business.

When I am mentally in your business or God’s business, the effect is separation.

For example when I mentally go into my mother’s business, with a thought like “My mother should understand me,” I immediately experience a feeling of loneliness. And I realise that every time in my life that I have felt hurt or lonely, I have been in someone else’s business.

If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there!

Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.

And to think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be arrogant and out of my business. Even in the name of love…and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear.

Do I know what’s right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that first and foremost.

To understand the three kinds of business enough to stay present could free you in a way that you can’t even imagine.

The next time you are feeling stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you’re in mentally, and you may burst out laughing!

The question can bring you back to yourself. And if you practice it for a while, you may come to see that you don’t have any business either and that your life runs perfectly well on its own.

From The Works of Byron Katie 2012

Katie Byron