How to Mind Your Own Business

It’s easier to help other people than yourself.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Dealing with someone else’s problems is the most heroic form of procrastination. You feel like you’re saving the world, but you’re really just avoiding your own.

I’m not talking about volunteering or advocating or protesting. Those are things we should all be doing.

What I am talking about is exerting oodles of your time and energy into problems where the following apply:

• You’re dealing with a lost cause.
• Your help isn’t requested or desired.
• Your opinion isn’t taken seriously.
• You have fires burning at home.

This list could keep growing, but you get the idea. The average person won’t give five dollars to a stranger on the street, but we’ll spend hours coming up with plans to save our companies that nobody wants to hear. We’ll give unsolicited advice to that friend on Facebook.

Why is that?

Doing favors makes us feel important

You might wonder why we keep diving into everyone’s chaos if it doesn’t do us any good. It’s all about the dopamine, baby.

Helping someone gives you a short high.