In your travels, it is always your decision as to who you let into your world. As you pass by others, you can ignore them, smile politely and go your way, or you can invite them and their world into yours. The decision to extend the invitation is always in your hands (as is the decision of whether you will enter anyone else’s world). Whether to extend an invitation rests on: your level of confidence in you in your world, your purpose in inviting – what you expect to get as a result of the invitation, and your ability to accept if the other person declines/rejects your invitation.
I should probably give a more extensive definition of ‘your world’. Yes it is where you live your life and who and what populates it. But this is a further refinement – I’m talking about the more private and personal world that surrounds who you are and who you are becoming. It includes those plans, activities, learnings that give you meaning and those people who have earned your trust. And you typically guard this world closely. This world is not necessarily apparent to the naked eye but it typically is suspicioned by others that there is more to you than meets the eye.
Your personal world is always what you allow to populate it but it is also an awareness of what you won’t allow in. And it ‘looks like’ precisely what you want to see. However, it isn’t totally a place in the mind. There is always activity that goes on that is intellectual but there are other actions and expressions. Your personal world is real – it’s not fantasy. It’s where you enjoy spending your ‘personal’ time so this typically defines this world as a time and place away from work.
Your world is where you and those you trust can talk and discuss what’s happening in the other world that also impacts. Sometimes it the place where you can develop new strategies and new ways of thinking and acting to make ‘the other world’ more inviting. The others in this world are those people who trust you and like you though they will also tell you if they think you’re not acting in your own best interest. A refuge? A sanctuary? Possibly. But the more you allow your private world to aid you in the ‘real’ world the more it will be an asset for the times of struggle. It is important to guard your personal world, but not to the point that you squeeze the life out of it.
