Remember what you are here for. You are not here for gossip. You are not here to inflate your ego. You are not here for others, and you are not here for yourself. You are here on Earth for Me. Consider Me the North Star over your shoulder. Look up at Me, and you will not dispense your life in pettiness.
Often you think pettiness is important. Sometimes you like to swim in it. Sometimes you call pettiness problems. You know you make much of them. That is the pettiness.
Life really is not about problems. You certainly think so, or have thought so. You have thought the sum of your life is your problems and your solving them. There is no them.
Problems are in your thinking. When you think something is big, it's big. That's the long and the short of it.
You think life is a series of problems for you to solve. Or you think of it as lessons. You even call it the school of hard knocks.
All appears as you think it does.
I do not tell you to bury your nose in the sand. But I tell you that you can have your attention on greater than problems.
Problems — that which you see as problems — fascinate you. You even like to watch other people's problems on TV.
What is gossip but attention on someone else's problem that you somehow relish?
Hands off other people's problems! You are not the solver of them. You are not the savior of other people. You can help other people, but you are not to delude yourself that you are a savior of them.
Everyone's life is his own. It belongs to the person who lives it.
You could solve someone else's problem, and they would still have it. They have to do a double take on their life. Their problem exists within them. It is not on the outside. It is not the situation, though you certainly convince yourselves that it is.
When a friend comes to you with a problem, don't take it on as yours. Be professional. Be like a lawyer who listens. Then he says a few words. He does not let the purveyor of the problem attach to him, nor does he attach himself to the perceived problem. And it is the person he talks to, not the problem. He doesn't tell the problem to go away. He does not shake his finger at it. But in his presence, some of the person's sense of problem disappears.
So do not you attach to your friends' problems. Don't make them yours. You have enough that you call your own.
You can waste your life swept up in problems.
Notice some of the things you talk about. Notice where your attention goes.
Consider your real purpose, and get on with it.
There are subdivisions of purpose. Take care of them, but keep coming back to your main purpose.
You are here in life for something greater than solving problems.
In fact, eliminate the word "problem" from your vocabulary. Don't even call what you see as your problems as opportunities or challenges because you kid no one, least of all yourself.
When a rock blocks your way, you climb over it or go around it, or perhaps you go a different way. It is only a rock. It happens to be there where it is. It didn't set a trap for you. It is an innocent rock that happens to be in your way.
Keep your eye on where you are going, and keep climbing. The thing is to get past it.
There is One for you to ask for help, and there is One Who gives the help.
Listen to the words you commonly use, and take note of them. Throw some out. Never use them again.
Problems are problems so long as you think they are. You do not need help. You have help. You are not powerless. You are powerful. The King's child has great power, but he has to know it, and he has to use it.
Do not enjoy your problems so much, and do not enjoy talking about them so much. Hand them over, and go about your business for Me.