This week I’ve witnessed an interesting constellation of events.  I recently reposted a page and linked to pages from the Tarts and Travels blog as examples of managing the biz of you.  My wife and I are working with her twin sister and husband on retirement plans and the possible purchase of property.  I had a discussion with a friend at work about giving all of his time to work, home, and a death of a close relative.  We even related that he had been focused externally for the last two years and hadn’t done the “internal work” necessary to keep him relaxed and happy.  He’s a fellow martial artist and understands the differences between external and internal forms.  Additionally, I found out a young martial artist at my children’s school took his life.  My wife and I talked to my daughter about it.  With other suicides of friends I’ve worked through in my life, there were more unknowns than knowns, more questions than answers.

These things may seem entirely unrelated and in reality they are.  However, they may be used as illustrations of managing the business of  you.  When we fail to balance the forces in our lives, we allow our energy and resources to seep away.   In the extreme, we may become isolated for various reasons and in our depression start taking our own lives in unnoticeable ways.  I found myself near the decision point of taking my own life many years ago.  Luckily, I had a close friend who helped me work through it although he was mostly unaware of the depth of my pain at the time.  More often than not, we allow parts of ourselves to die off in our quest to be liked, serve other’s purposes or simply deal with the onslaught of problems that arise seemingly from nowhere.  We have kids, create careers, age and our focus on everyone else creates images of “time is the fire in which we burn.”

The thing is, we are that fire.  Our choices lead us down the paths we are on and it’s our decisions now that allow us to refocus our energies in a way allowing us to create the life we truly want instead of the life others want for us.  Herein lies the key to managing the business of you.  If we don’t manage our own lives, our environment or others manage it for us.  The gap between what they want us to be and what we think we are takes our lives a bit here and a bit there.  At the end what will we have?

To be clear, I’m not saying we have to be selfish and not be compassionate to others.  Rather, we have to include ourselves in our compassion and ensure we manage our own business.  Managing the biz of you is about creating the life you truly want while simultaneously allowing others to do the same. When we manage our biz and allow others to manager their own biz we enable those we interact with and our ourselves to create more than if we were isolated an alone.  The creative process is amazing especially when we are aware of what it takes to manage ourselves in the face of adversity and help others doe the same.

Life is a choice.