Recently I went to my favorite restaurant for lunch. The owner complained nonstop to me about how bad the economy is.  He typically does that and we’ve had “the talk” (about how we attract what we focus on) but often he’s busy so he doesn’t have time to talk to me.  He asked why he hadn’t seen me in a more than a month.  I told him the truth, I’ve been busy and I’ve been cooking.  The only reason I was taking a break from going there in the first place is that I don’t eat where people are complaining.  So yesterday, when he began to settle in for a long talk, I asked for my order to go.  I knew that I was going to discard it once I got home.  He prepared it in his unconnected mindset, so I wasn’t going to ingest it.  I tipped him $7 on a $13 check and politely split. 

It’s not my place to correct him or teach him.  He knows what I believe, we’ve had that conversation before.  I don’t get mad at him.  I say a joking reminder each time as soon as he does it.  And although he hears what I am saying, he does not hear what I am saying.  He does not get it, that there is truly a link between what you say and what you attract.  Between what you talk about and what you go on to experience.  I am not going to make an issue of it with him if he does not understand, nor am I going to try to pound it into him.  I just eat elsewhere.

It’s a shame when it affects being with people I enjoy being with.  But on that issue I just won’t compromise.  For long anyway.  If it’s my neighbor who just has my ear for a few minutes and it’s our only contact, that’s fine, I can sit through it.  I don’t need to educate them on what I believe and what they need to do to meet my expectations.  I can just listen.  I don’t even need to tell them I agree or disagree.  I say things like, “I hear you.  I understand what you’re saying.  I can see how you feel that way.”  I do not say things like, “Well, if you don’t like that, why do you keep attracting it to yourself?”

My life got easier when I realized it is not my place to preach to or try to convert anyone to my way of thinking.  I used to think well, if they are in front of me, then it must be for me to teach them something.  LOL Are you laughing, too?  I realized years later that I was in front of these people to learn from them, not to teach them.  Typical novice.  I realized later that no matter who was in front of me, my “multitude” were those few who were asking for what I had to offer.  Not everyone that I may have wanted to be interested in it or me.  Just those who were asking for it.

If they weren’t asking for it, it didn’t matter how much I shouted it. They weren’t my audience.  No matter how much I thought they’d be happier if they “woke up”, they weren’t asking to be woken up.  I let them have their dream.  There are plenty of people who want what I do, who want what you do, that we don’t need to worry about losing business.  The business we lose is not our target market any longer.  I’ve been blessed with good business,  I’ve learned to surf with the changes and dance through the upgrades.  It took a lot of years of a lot of discipline but, as spiritual brother Bo Lozoff says, “It’s a meaningful life, it just takes practice.”