I wanted to share a lesson I learned about myself yesterday, that I think and hope will be beneficial to all who read this.

Yesterday, I was updating the LifePlan page on Facebook. I’m one for checking the metrics on the page, and I happened to notice that the number of fans had changed. Now, the change in fans has been on an upward trend as of late, but that was not the case yesterday. I noticed that I lost a fan.

I wanted to know who left, who decided to “unlike” the page. I then went through the list of fans to see if a name would become noticeably absent, missing from the roster.

Once I realized the name that was missing, I went to the person’s page and started scanning the likes on the page. The nice things about the “likes” on a Facebook page is that they’re listed in order from the most recent to the least recent.

I did see that my page was not among the liked pages. I noticed that the person liked several Starbucks pages, and I had the thought, “This person likes all these Starbucks pages, but can’t like mine?!?”

Then I wanted to know why. Why would this person unlike my page? Was the content boring? Uninteresting? Too much? Too little? What?

And then I realized that I was playing an old tape. The tape is that I want everyone to like me (and not just in the Facebook sense), and that I want to please everyone. It’s amazing how an experience can bring up an issue you thought you’ve worked through.

And then the coach in me stepped in.

I asked myself what I was doing, what “result” was I hoping to gain from this course of action. I did want to know why the person “unliked” the page.

My inner coach then said, “What steps could you take to find that out?”

Well, I thought, I could message the person and simply ask. As it stood, I was in the land of “I don’t know.” Being in the land of “I don’t know” then allows us to create a story, which is filled with assumptions. Like thinking the content on my page was not inspiring, not uplifting, not thought provoking. Like thinking if this person left, others will leave too.

Then I would be violating one of the Four Agreements Don Miguel Ruiz talks about in his book of the same name (“Don’t Make Assumptions”).

I was making the situation about me (the inner dialogue would then become, “Well, my content isn’t interesting, therefore I’m not interesting.”), rather than just simply thinking that the content of my page was just not for the person, and leaving it at that.

Then my inner coach asked a great question: “Where’s your focus?”

I stopped to ponder this, and I realized that I was putting all my focus on the person who left, rather than on the people who are still fans, still part of the LifePlan community.

Then I asked myself: Did the person ever like or respond to posts? No. Did the person ever engage in conversation with you and others on the page? No. Did the person refer clients to you, or express an interest in becoming a client? No.

The truth is, in business, your products and services will not be for everybody, and that’s okay. People come and go in life, and that’s okay, too.

So, what I did instead was to bless the person as they move on, and thank them for the time they were a member of the LifePlan community.

I then also thought that the person leaving creates a space for someone else to fill, a person who wants to be there, who wants the content, and finds it valuable. And you know what happened? That new person came and liked the page today!

So, I leave you with the same question: Where’s your focus? Are you placing your focus (and attention) on the things you can’t change? Are you being reactive, rather than proactive, as a result? What can you do differently to get the result you want? What “old tape” is being played that you thought you worked through?

There’s a saying in metaphysical circles that goes like this: “What you place your focus (attention) on only grows.” So be mindful about where you place your focus!

Your partner in shifting the focus,