LIFE IS LIKE DRIVING A BUS.
By Paul Scanlon
People are frightened of losing people because they see the people in their lives as a reflection of who they are. If you're good, kind, loving, inspiring, motivating, and fun, people should want to stick around you. If they leave or move on, it's easy to believe that that's a reflection on you.
When a friend stops contacting you, your partner breaks up with you or a team member quits and moves elsewhere, you start questioning what you did wrong.
Did you say something offensive, or are you just not good enough? Were you not meeting their needs, or did you lack an essential quality that would make you truly like-able?
Sometimes we'll know why people leave us, but most of the time, we'll never know.
You can beat yourself up and allow the questions and anxiety to keep you awake at night, but you'll never fully know the answer, and even if you did, it wouldn't matter.
Life's a journey, and everyone is traveling along their own path.
Your life is like a bus in many ways: people will hop on and off your bus as you travel through life.
Some people will travel on your bus for many years until they see a bus traveling in a direction they need to go in, so they'll hop onto that one instead.
Others will only ride your bus for a short distance. Some will travel with you through emotional drives or frightening ones, and others may convince you to change direction before leaving you stranded and alone.
Then there will be times when you get passengers you wish you could throw off!
It's easy to feel hurt, angry, frustrated or devastated when people leave your bus, but it's egocentric and unloving to personalise your passenger's decisions.
Why people get on or off your bus and come with you on your journey is not personal. While they may join you on your bus because of personal reasons, they won't always get off for the same reason.
You can only drive your bus the way you know in the direction that feels right for you, but you can't predict where other people need or want to go.
Very few people in life will stay with you to where the bus terminates its journey; the majority will get off somewhere en-route. As a bus driver, your job is to take your vehicle to its final destination; you're not supposed to cry or break down whenever someone gets off because you didn't want them to.
You can't plead with passengers to stay with you until the end or for a few more stops: people need to get off when they need to get off.
Your role in life is to help the ones you love to get to where they need to be in life, and there's no need to feel offended or hurt if they change buses earlier than you expected them to.
That's why you have to make stops, take breaks and build relationships with people so they know it's ok if they can't stay on our bus anymore.
We've done our duty to bring them here, and if they want to leave now, that's fine; it doesn't mean they never join us again for another ride should they want or need to.
Even when times are difficult, continue driving your bus.
Don't stop just because people you don't want to hop off or hop on.
You are your most loyal and longest traveling passenger, and you have so much further to go.
Share your thoughts with me @PaulScanlonUK
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