Stop Chat Yuh Business:
Brotha, Not Every Move Needs An Audience
There is an old Jamaican wisdom that could save some of us several meetings, a few unnecessary arguments and possibly an entire WhatsApp group:
“Nuff time a yuh own mouth cause yuh fi lose yuh blessings, then yuh turn round and blame everybody else. Sometimes yuh just need fi learn fi keep yuh business to yuhself.”
Jamaican proverbial tradition has long carried this idea of discretion. The National Library of Jamaica records “Cack mowt kill cack.” Essentially, the rooster gives himself away through his own mouth, as a warning about boasting and speaking out of turn. Funny? Absolutely. Outdated? Not even slightly.
For men, though, there is another side to walking in silence that deserves a proper conversation.
A man can be building a business, pursuing a promotion, managing money, supporting children, helping ageing parents, navigating a relationship and wondering whether he is actually happy with the life he has built. Yet ask him how things are going and there is a reasonable chance you will receive the internationally recognised male status report “Yeah, man. All good.”
Meanwhile, absolutely nothing is all good.
That contradiction matters because there is a difference between privacy and isolation. Privacy says everybody does not need access to your business. Isolation says nobody can know when you are struggling. One is discernment, the other can quietly become a prison.
Walking in silence can be one of a man’s greatest strategic tools when it means protecting an idea before it is ready, resisting the need to announce every career move, allowing a new relationship to develop without commentary from the entire group chat or quietly building financial security instead of performing wealth for an audience. The Jamaican tradition even gives us “Nuh mek yuh lef han know weh yuh right han a do.” Keep your own counsel, everything does not need to be told.
The workplace makes that judgement even more important.
A colleague can genuinely respect you while competing for the same opportunity. Your manager can value your contribution while having priorities that do not perfectly align with your ambitions. Someone can be friendly without necessarily being the right person to know your next move. None of this requires paranoia because most people are too busy dealing with their own problems to run a conspiracy around yours. It requires discernment.
Relationships bring another version of the same lesson. Your partner annoys you on Saturday, the boys receive the full match commentary on Sunday and by Monday four men who heard one side of a forty-minute disagreement have completed a strategic review of your relationship. You reconcile on Tuesday. Unfortunately, nobody remembers to circulate the revised report.
Money, masculinity, mental health and fatherhood complicate the picture further. The man who appears successful at work may be worried about debt at home. An entrepreneur speaking confidently about growth may privately be wondering how long the cash will last. A father focused on providing financially may discover that his children also need access to his fears, mistakes, affection and wisdom.
That is why BrothaTalk is interested in the question behind the proverb rather than simply repeating it.
When does walking in silence become strategic discipline and when does it become carrying too much alone?
BrothaTalk creates room to explore the man who exists across all those different spaces. Leadership, business, career, money, relationships, fatherhood, wellbeing and legacy. There is no requirement to perform masculinity, pretend failure never happens or arrive armed with seventeen rules for becoming an “alpha male”. The internet has enough of those already.
Everybody does not need to know your business. Somebody trustworthy, however, should know the man behind it. That is where the real conversation begins.
Read the full post and join discussion at https://www.nbwn.net/post/stop-chat-yuh-business
If this made you think of another brotha who is building, leading, providing, questioning, starting again or quietly carrying more than people realise, share this with him and bring him into BrothaTalk.
Sometimes brotherhood starts with something as simple as saying “Brotha, you need to be part of this conversation.”
Just do not tell him all your business on the way in.
