M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 107

Positivity: The Family you choose

You can choose your family.

I know that they say you cannot choose your family – but you can.

Yes, there is family that you are born into. Yes, your blood family can be complicated, argumentative and unsupportive as much as they can be loving and magnificent.

Family is not just those you are related to by blood. Family is not simply brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and such – family can be more. Family can be people who are more than friends.

What does that mean? There are people that you choose who become more than friends. These are the people you associate with, take meals with, enjoy laughter and care about nearly as much (and even sometimes more) as those you are related to by blood.

Chosen family can be a far larger, more complicated unit that you enjoy the company of more than any others. These are the people you most want to spend your time with, no matter what you are doing.

The media has spent a lot of time lately talking about non-traditional families. You get family units with two mothers or two fathers and such. More than that, family can be a group of people who share interests and a non-traditional form of community.

Despite the people you are related to by blood, you can in fact choose your family. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it makes no sense to anyone but you – yet you have the choice.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we can choose the people we call family, we can use those choices to build up more and greater Positivity. Selecting for ourselves the people we call family can totally empower ourselves. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the seventy-third entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Pathwalking 181

What do you want to be when you grow up?

We all got asked this question along the way. The answer, unsurprisingly, changed as we got older.

The thing of this is – why did that answer change? Sometimes it was based on who we are and what we learn. We often want to be very different things as children than we want to be as adults, or else I suspect we’d have far more lion tamers, acrobats and bulldozer drivers.

Sometimes our abilities and capabilities change this. A lack of mathematical or scientific aptitude can make becoming a doctor or an astronaut far more difficult. Not impossible, because I believe we can all do nearly anything we put our thought, feelings and actions behind…but while we may be in love with the idea of such a thing, the acts needed to achieve it can lose their allure.

Sometimes this change comes of necessity. In order to have certain things we have a finite number of “realistic” choices. We have to go to school, get an education, get a job, work all day so that we can have homes and cars and computers and so on and so forth. We have to “grow up” and become a contributor to this society in some form or other.

The problem lies in our societal belief that things will make us happy. We need to have more than the basic necessities, we need to have our computers and our smart phones and our e readers. We want more than just a car with four wheels four doors and an engine, we want the moon roof and the leather-trimmed interior and other toys. We associate these things with happiness…and while they can admittedly contribute to happiness, they do not make happiness.

The question of what do you want to be when you grow up is misleading. We frequently identify ourselves by outside influences. We identify ourselves by job – salesman, lawyer, doctor, garbageman, teacher and so on. We identify ourselves by our nationality – American, British, Canadian, Chinese and such. We identify ourselves by our religion – Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindi and the like. We identify ourselves by the color of our skin and by gender. We then put several of these things together to label who we are.

The truth is that we are none of these. They are identifiers, certainly, but they are not who we each individually are. For some reason we are fascinated by labeling things, including people. Because we choose to do this, we often get lost in this outside-influenced identity, and happiness becomes a much greater challenge.

You cannot be happy all the time. That’s as may be, but that does not mean that we should be so frequently un-happy. The jobs we do should not make us miserable, the days should not be slogged through with our spirits tattered and torn and the prospect of sleep and the escape to the next day driving us. While the material things we strive for can make us feel good, they will not guarantee us happiness.

As children we have a narrower perspective of the world. We all get exposed to different things by our parents and their friends, by the rest of our families and then by our own friends. As children we don’t worry about paying the mortgage or insurance or any of those other bills. We are still free to dream, and we can choose a seemingly outrageous answer to the question – what do you want to be when you grow up?

Pathwalking is about choice. In walking our own paths, we are choosing who we are and what we want to do and who we want to be. Pathwalking is about awareness. Instead of letting outside influences label who we are, we want to choose for ourselves. We want to be in control.

When I was nine years old I wanted to be a writer. I wrote a fifty page, illustrated sci-fi novel. When I was in my early teens I typed out a thirty-page sci-fi adventure. In my late teens I won an award in school for a technothriller story. But out of a combination of fears of success and failure and getting pigeon-holed into something I might not be happy with I never truly answered the question – what do you want to be when you grow up?

I tried theatre. I liked it in high school. I sort-of liked it in college, and majored in it. I wanted to be a director more than an actor or stage manager. The reality of theatre was not for me. The answer to the question of what do I want to be when I grow up evaded me for nearly two decades as I shifted from job to job. I acquired things like you do, and they brought me some happiness, but it was fleeting.

I even tried to not grow up. I immersed myself in the fantasy world of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and gave all of my effort and attention to the weekend escapism rather than the other five days of the week. I found a place for myself, but it was not somewhere I could live. My persona and my time at practices and events make me happy, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I came to realize that the rest of the week deserved the attention I was giving the escape. The upshot of this was that the people I met in this world help me to become a better person in general.

The important thing in all of this is that the ultimate answer I have come up with to what do you want to be when you grow up is something applicable to everyone. What do I want to be when I grow up? True to myself. I want to be genuine, I want to be honest about who I am, I want to love and be loved and to be happy. My job, my nationality, my religion, my gender and the color of my skin are not who I am. I am the person I choose to be. I am a number of self-identifiers that I strive every day to improve upon to make me the best me that I can be.

Do you want to be true to yourself when you grow up?

 

This is the one-hundred eighty first entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.

Positivity: The Challenge

I started the weekly blog about Positivity because Monday in particular seems to bring out an immense amount of negativity.

Perhaps it is the completion of what for most people is the “weekend”, that two days where you are not at work and doing things you want versus things you have to. Perhaps the return to the work week and the pressures of earning a living as opposed to hanging out with friends and family overwhelms our ability to feel good.

Perhaps it is the inundation of negativity from the media and other disappointments. The continued coverage of the awful politics in the USA, people driven from their homes in the middle east by fanatics, or perhaps economic crisis and greed around the globe might have something to do with it. Even petty things like inappropriate comments by scholars, celebrities and scientists or even the always-rising body count from Game of Thrones can drive negativity into our week.

No matter what is making us feel uneasy, unhappy, irksome or otherwise negative, we have the choice about what to do with it. Let it fester, feed the fire and fan the flames of things that make us feel bad…or seek something else, find something that instead makes us feel good and opens us to positivity instead of negativity.

I find maintaining this particular part of my blog to be quite the challenge some weeks. Sure, there are times when it is easy to write about positivity and why it’s a good thing we all need. But I will admit that there are weeks when I am not feeling it. I’m tired, I’m cranky, the various news articles I glance at disappoint and anger me, I step in a pile of cat puke on the way the bathroom. Now my choice is do I let these things override my desire to find and have and share more positivity…or do I push past them and present you with my words here?

Why bother? Why do I make this effort every week? Why do I share it with you? Because I need it. I need to feel positivity more than negativity. I started this process nearly a year and a half ago because I needed to make myself feel more positive, and I thought that sharing this idea contributed to that.

It really does. No one is happy all the time. We all have bad days, we all find things that make us feel negative. However, we also have control over what we do with this. Do I remain negative, or do I seek out attitude shifters and things that make me smile and give thanks for the things I have and seek positivity? Do I let negativity linger and let myself feel bad and let my day be dictated by that, or do I let it go and take control and find positivity?

Negativity destroys. Positivity builds. Negativity begets negativity. Positivity begets positivity. Negativity is contagious. Positivity is contagious. Negativity feels bad. Positivity feels good.  Does it matter? Yes, it does. It is for that reason I share Positivity with you every week, and it is for that reason I will continue to find it in my life and share in the hopes it helps you find it in yours.

Finding positivity is not hard, but that does not mean it is easy…it just requires action. Knowing that seeking out positivity makes us feel better should we choose means to do that or should we choose instead to let negativity stand? I believe we should choose Positivity. By choosing to be more positive we choose to feel better about our lives, and this in turn will empower us. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the seventy-second entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Pathwalking 180

An optimistic outlook is a good thing. Yet nowadays optimism is all-too-often viewed with cynicism and skepticism.

We have come to see optimism as this pie-in-the-sky, rose-colored utopian concept, rather than as a tool of positive energies, positivity and manifestation.

I have become amazed at how readily I will discuss the notion of positive energy and being in a positive rather than a negative vibe, yet never mention the notion of optimism. It’s almost as if I am afraid that if I speak out about being optimistic my already somewhat lofty notions will be even more easily dismissible.

What has happened to our culture that optimism is so readily met with a knee-jerk response and cynics and skeptics? How might this effect Pathwalking and attempts to manifest life and control our own destinies?

I have no doubt that there is more than one answer to this question. I would hazard a guess about a few of the root causes. Most likely when we became better connected, when the twenty-four hour news cycle and the internet gave us instantaneous access to information across the globe, we began to develop this aversion to optimism.

Why? Let’s face it – before we had the ability to know everything happening all over the planet instantly, we all mostly saw a relatively small picture. We saw local news and national news with ease, but “world news” was happening on another continent, and in general we learned about it after it was already a thing. Now we see developing news and information everywhere at any time, day or night.

What does the media choose to show us? War. Famine. Destruction. Totalitarianism and extremists. Pain and suffering and miserable people providing the worst aspects of human nature. We have been inundated with this for more than two decades now…which means there is an entire generation of adults who have never known a world that was not interconnected so intimately yet impersonally.

It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about the world when you are exposed to a constant barrage of ugliness.

When media constantly shows greed, corruption, struggles and the wanton destruction of both history and the planet itself….feeling optimistic somehow seems inappropriate.

Of course the opposite is true. We need to have more optimism for the world. If, as I frequently postulate, consciousness creates reality – which do you think is better, pessimism or optimism?

Pathwalking is ultimately an optimistic endeavor. The notion that I can make my own way, create my own destiny is an optimistic one. Though I have never referred to it as such, it is of vital importance that I acknowledge my optimism on this score. Optimism is a part of positive energy, just as pessimism is a part of negative energy. If we lose our optimism about life’s possibilities, we cannot create new and better lives because our energy is not positive.

Yes, I recognize that energy may not just be positive and negative but also neutral. There is a place between optimism and pessimism just as there is a place between positive and negative energy. If we are unable to look at the world and see good, and feel optimism about prospects and potentials, we lack much of the energy we will need to choose and walk a given path. As such our ability to manifest is impaired and we do not get the forward motion we desire.

I used to call myself a cynical optimist. I was for the most part optimistic about life, the universe and everything…but I still needed proof. To some degree this aligns with the Don Jose Ruiz and Don Miguel Ruiz’s Fifth Agreement – Be skeptical, but learn to listen.

The difference between cynicism and skepticism is believing all human acts are in fact selfish acts versus questioning the validity or authenticity of a thing. I realize now I have always been a skeptic, not a cynic.

It is ok to have some skepticism. We should not just believe whatever we are fed, we should question if it is authentic or just made-up. At the same time, this does not preclude optimism. The world CAN be an amazing, beautiful and hopeful place. The question is will your viewpoint match that of zealots and fanatics or traditionalists or progressives or what have you?

The important thing about optimism is that it allows you to have hope for a better life. A better today, a better tomorrow. Optimism allows us to see the good in the world and believe that the human race is not just full of selfish, greedy, evil jerks….but people like us who want to be happy, whole and healthy.

The next time we want to express optimism – we need to do it. We need to show the world that the terrible things the media presents to us are not the majority of life experience in this world. We need to believe and hope for better health wealth and happiness for everyone. We should not feel ashamed about being optimistic – we should embrace it, and spread it.

Optimist is not a dirty word. It should be a mark of pride. Optimists, like Pathwalkers, are people who believe that the world is full of potential and can be an amazing place. Life is an adventure, which we can choose to live to our best ability.

Are you an optimist?

 

This is the one-hundred eightieth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.

My Writing: Current Projects

I write in multiple genres.

My first love has always been sci-fi and fantasy, but they are not the only genres I work in. I have written several forms of poetry, journalism, and even started a venture around the idea of business writing. I blog at least twice a week, and look for other opportunities to wordsmith whenever I can.

I have on several occasions taken up the challenge of National Novel Writer’s Month. NaNoWriMo occurs every November, and the challenge is to bang out a 50,000 word novella in 30 days. Though I have participated in NaNo about 7 times, I have successfully completed a novella on 4 occasions.

I have chosen with this to write in an unusual genre or form for myself. One year I stuck to my strength and wrote a fantasy, that’s true…but my other three completed stories are not my usual subject matter. One year I wrote a technothriller (which could be sci-fi, arguably…but I do not consider it such). One year I wrote a humorous narrative of the life-changing event when I was struck by a car while crossing a street (wherein I gained the titanium in my body that is part of where the name of this blog comes from).

One year I took my inspiration from Paulo Coelho. If you are unfamiliar with his work, I cannot highly recommend enough The Alchemist (which, as of this writing, has been on the NY Times best seller’s list a record 356 weeks). This is a fable, an inspirational tale of following your dreams and discovering your “personal legend”. It doesn’t hurt that the audiobook recording is narrated by Jeremy Irons.

Beyond The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho has written dozens of novels, often spiritual, inspirational and in some cases semi-autobiographical. None are terribly lengthy, but I have yet to read one that I did not enjoy. I am, in fact, currently reading his most recent novel, Adultery.

Inspired by Paulo Coelho’s work, I crafted my own story in a similar vein. I wrote in first person (which is unusual in-and-of-itself, as most of my fiction is in third person), and I took my own need for some spiritual journeying and embellished reality.

I have visited Sedona, Arizona several times. I have hiked all over the city, and through the incredible red-rock structures and trails therein. Sedona is known in the new-age and hooky-spooky community as a hub of Energy Vortexes. What’s an energy vortex? It is a place where people can deeply feel spiritual and psychic energies. If you are into that sort of thing, it’s extremely cool and a pretty intense sensation and a deep feeling of peace and love and spirit (and if you are not into that sort of thing, it sounds pretty crunchy-granola-hippy).

If my blog does not hint at this enough, I am a relatively spiritual person. I consider myself energy sensitive, and I practice Reiki (an energy healing modality). I am still, I think, a fairly grounded person, but I believe in the ability to commune with nature and to create reality through consciousness to build the life we most desire.

My own experience on a couple of these hikes to Sedona, coupled with inspiration from Paulo Coelho’s works led me to write Vortex Pilgrimage. I gave my own spiritual journey a fantastical reality, and wrote what I hope might be an entertaining and maybe inspirational story.

I am taking the necessary steps to prepare Vortex Pilgrimage for publication. To wit, the in-process back-cover text:

What lengths will we go to in order to find ourselves?

There comes a point in everyone’s life where they want to really get to know their heart, mind and soul. Some of us take journeys of discovery – some literal, some metaphorical. All have the same goal – to better understand who we are and what we are meant to do with our lives.

Sedona, Arizona is known for its unique energy vortexes.   People have had some amazing experiences in these sacred places, and have sought them out to further their own self-understanding and connections to the world around them.

On a pilgrimage to Sedona, a man crosses the gateway at the vortex, entering an alternate reality where he is his idealized self. There he meets masters who take him on a journey of self-discovery through trials and lessons as he works to become a stronger, wiser and better person.

A fictional adventure of the spirit relatable to everyone in the here-and-now, Vortex Pilgrimage is a fable for the modern age.

I have considered if I should publish this under a nom de plume, but I have already previously published magazine and online news-site articles clearly not sci-fi or fantasy as MJ Blehart.

I enjoy this story, and I hope that you might as well. It is my intent to release Vortex Pilgrimage sometime in July.

Watch this space for more updates.

 

PS – Finder (The Source Chronicles Book 2) is still targeted to come out in November.

PPS – Have you acquired your copy of Seeker (The Source Chronicles Book 1)? If you enjoyed it, have you told your friends to get a copy?

 

Positivity: Forward Motion

Life is always in motion.

You will find that even when you are idle, things progress. The world is never perfectly still, life never actually comes to a stop. We are always moving along.

Humans have an astounding number of choices for how our lives can be lived. The rest of the animal kingdom of this world pretty much lives for survival, but we do so very much more than merely survive. We are builders and destroyers, creators and evaluators always taking steps along the way.

We often try to go back, we become nostalgic for a time and a place and a thing that was. We frequently look ahead to the destinations, the goals, the end results. Not often enough we just live in the now, savoring all of our opportunities and choices and other great possibilities.

Life is always in motion. Whether we wish it or no, that motion is forward motion. Time may be relative, but because change is inevitable and we will grow and age and learn new things – willingly or kicking and screaming we inexorably move forward.

This is a very positive matter. Change happens, it is a part of nature, a part of every living thing. You cannot deny it, you cannot avoid it no matter how many roadblocks you place in its way. As we move forward we change, and more good than ill comes of this state of being.

We have seen in history how the intolerant and hateful inevitably become outnumbered and tumble from power. As we change and grow and learn better we develop tolerance and love and more understanding. People may resist, they may strive to go back or strive to delay change, but we can only truly move forward, and in that forward motion we can build tremendous positivity.

We can change inequality to equality. We move forward from shunning to acceptance. Life’s forward motion may bring fear to some because change can be scary, but forward motion is a positive thing, and we can build on it as we grow and develop a better world.

We can choose, no matter the curvature of any given path, to embrace the forward motion. We can strive to discover all that it can present, and we can work with it to better our world. We cannot undo what is done, but we can always make changes as we move forward for our best interests.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that life is always in motion, and that motion is forward not backwards, we can choose whether we are carried along by the stream or if we’d rather swim with the current. By choosing to move forward and not trying to go backwards we ultimately manage to empower ourselves. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the seventy-first entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Things we should care about – versus – things we should not

I am going to overly-simplify this, because I think we have lost sight of the things we should care about, versus the things that are really not all that important in the grand scheme of life, the universe and everything.

Here is a list, in no particular order, of things we should care about:

Our health
The health of our friends and family
Our welfare
The welfare of our friends and family.
Our happiness.
The happiness of our friends and family.
Being treated fairly and treating others in the same manner that we want to be treated.

These are pretty much the main things that I can think of that we should give our energy and attention to.

Here are the things we should not ignore, but that we should not really care quite so much about, in no particular order:

Politics
Political corruption.
Corporate greed and corruption.
Religious fundamentalists and intolerance.
Nationalisms.
Differences in gender, differences in sexual proclivities, differences in spiritual matters.

Last but not least, this is the list of things we really should not care about at all, and we need to stop giving so much attention to:

Celebrities.
Gossip.
Professional athletes.
Politicians and religious leaders.
Hate mongers.
War mongers.

I believe that it is time to focus more on the things we have the ability to put our intent on, rather than the distractions and circuses we see in the modern mediascape. We need to be less concerned with who is gay or straight, conservative or liberal, black or white, male or female, religious or atheist and all other polar oppositions. We need to focus on ourselves and the people we care about and give more of our time and energy to that.

Opening more channels for more people to be free in no way lessens the freedom for the rest of us. The universe is abundant, and as such there is more than enough freedom and peace and happiness for everyone.

Give that some though before you post that next critical meme, that next negative political cartoon, that next news article about a given politician, celebrity or athlete and their doings. It is true that the less attention they get the louder they will become…until, ignored, they fade back into the background noise.

When we take our focus away from these largely unimportant things and place it on ourselves and the people around us, I believe we can all be stronger, better balanced and happier.

Just an idea I wanted to share.

Pathwalking 179

What happens when you find yourself in transition?

What is a transition? In the idea of Pathwalking that would be the space between paths. It is the place where you are moving from one path to another, but it feels as if no movement is happening.

We all find ourselves in moments of transition. We are stuck between notions, trapped between ideas, and we find we are plagued by uncertainty. We find ourselves unsure of how to proceed, but we know that we are switching to a different path.

Sometimes this transition occurs because we have reached the end of a given path. Sometimes, though, this transition is because we have learned the path we have been on no longer works for us, so it is time to place ourselves upon a wholly new path.

There may also be times when we are on more than one path, and we are jumping from one to another, and lost between them.

I am stepping into a major transition in my life. I have seen this transition coming on for a while now, and even though I’ve been preparing for it and expecting it, it has still left me feeling as if I am nowhere, and lacking in clarity and feeling directionless.

Part of this feeling is because I am moving out of certain comfort zones. I am taking new actions and positioning myself in ways that I am not normally doing. This is not just a new path I am stepping into, it is in many respects a new me.

We often experience this even when we are not making the conscious choice of Pathwalking. We have this happen when we enter into a new relationship, a new job, a new partnership, a new friendship. When we are making a significant change we experience transition, and while it can be exciting and full of promise and hope and new horizons, it can also be scary and uncertain and full of doubts and fear and reanalysis of past mistakes.

Transition is unavoidable. Plain and simple, you are going to find times between points ‘a’ and ‘b’, and a transitional experience. The space between the paths that feels lost, that feels confused, that raises questions and concerns and is the unknown.

The transition is nearly a form of limbo. It is somewhere and nowhere at the same time. But it does not need to be a negative, it is not something to be feared. It can serve to be an opportunity.

You are choosing a new path, you are starting a new idea, you are still choosing your destiny, you just happen to be in an unavoidable space and time while the shift is occurring. This can be a chance to rest. This can be a place to breathe, to take a break, to allow the universe to flow around you and to mentally, physically and emotionally make preparations for the next path.

Doesn’t this run contrary to Pathwalking? You have made a choice or choices, you are just experiencing a brief transitional period between them. You are not avoiding choices, you are not letting life live you or waiting curled up in a ball to die…you are simply in a moment where movement is stalled.

All kinds of things can cause this space to be reached. You have left one job and have a week or two until the next begins. You have chosen an educational program but you are waiting for the semester to start. You’re getting married but the wedding is weeks away. All of these periods of transition occur and cannot be avoided, but you are still upon your path and you are still making necessary choices for your destiny.

Transition often presents itself as a negative, or as a downer of some sort. But really, it is merely an unavoidable situation which can be made into a useful and positive experience. It means you are taking the journey, and making choices for your life.

The important thing to remember is that the state of transition should be relatively brief. It you allow inaction and a lack of movement to dominate your life you risk losing sight of your paths. It can be tempting to fall into old habits and not choosing, but if that is where you find yourself you are not simply in a transition, you are likely not upon any paths at all.

How do you handle being between your paths?

 

This is the one-hundred seventy-ninth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.

Positivity: Letting Go

Letting go of things that do not serve you is immensely positive.

I try very hard to let go of things that make me angry, or upset, or just generally unhappy. I find that if I dwell on things, if I hold onto negativity it becomes unbelievably hard to let go of.

We all have situations that make us unhappy. We all have bad days, we all deal with people we would rather not deal with. It is completely unavoidable. What is NOT unavoidable, though, is how long we hold onto those bad feelings.

There are certain situations we come across daily. Can you read nearly any form of news media and not find something that will upset you in some way? The important matter is that, ok, this thing will upset you, but how long will you hold onto the negativity? What will you do with that feeling?

Letting go of this can be really hard. It is worse when you are putting subconscious energy into it. I don’t like this situation, it is really upsetting me and the more I think about it the more it upsets me but there is nothing I can do about so I should let it go but I can’t let it go and it’s just getting to me and the more I think about it the more it embitters me and on and on and on. A familiar situation?

When I find this dialogue running through my head I need to take a moment, I need to take a deep breath and I need to consciously change my focus. I know positivity is preferable to negativity, so I need to find something that will make me feel more positive. I need an attitude shifter, I need to refocus, I need to find something to make me smile, I need to choose something which makes me feel grateful to pull me out of the negative spiral and to alter my mood.

Letting go gets talked about often. Psychology is huge on the idea of releasing things that do not serve us and moving on. It is true. Letting go of negative energies and bad feelings goes an immensely long ways to being more creative, more productive and most importantly more happy.

Acknowledge the negativity, accept the bad feelings. But don’t hold onto it, don’t give it energy and time and power, move past it. Find whatever means you can to put your attention on something that makes you feel good, makes you feel positive, makes you feel happy. Let go.

I don’t always know what will work for me in a given situation, so as such I cannot tell you what might do this for you. Just take the time to be conscious of how you are feeling, and whether you are holding onto negativity or positivity. Don’t avoid it, be aware of it and manage it.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that holding onto negativity does not serve you and the things you want to do, you can focus on letting go.   By letting go of negativity rather than letting it manifest more negativity and grow and disempower us, we can take control to empower ourselves. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

This is the seventieth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

Pathwalking 178

We are perfect.

We are often told that perfection is the pinnacle of all struggle, that we need to give everything we’ve got to achieve it, and that it is frequently out of our reach.

Pathwalking has opened my eyes to a lot of truths about humanity. One is that no matter how much we succeed or fail, we are already perfect.

I am learning that perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Like beauty, perfection exists more than I acknowledge. I am me. I am learning to be more aware of what that means and who I am and who I want to be…and as such I am learning that I am perfect in my own way.

This is not a statement of arrogance. As I learn the benefits of living a life I choose for myself, I am seeing that there is more perfection in each and every one of us than we give voice to. It’s surprisingly unhealthy to constantly give power to the imperfections we see, whether they are physical or mental or emotional.

All too often we look for the flaws, the faults, the problems in a given situation. We keep a wary eye open to see what is not working, where the problems lie, and what things need to be fixed. Rather than focus on the good and trying to gain more of it, we focus on the bad and try to fix it.

We are constantly working to undo what has already come to pass. We fail to realize that this is not going to work. Seldom can you undo what is. Rather than take it back and take it apart, it is better to make a new focus, and work to do and build anew.

Where does perfection come into all of this? We believe that “nobody’s perfect”, we are told that perfect will never be, and that it is pretty close to impossible. Perfection is the ultimate achievement, the goal to strive for, the thing nobody is or has but that we should all reach to achieve.

What if we are already perfect? What if the beings that we are are already perfect? What if this is a concept we already have but we mask to avoid more tangible things?

Our souls are all unique, but all come from the same point of origin. We are all connected to that origin, no matter what deity you may or may not believe in. Every human is interconnected across all of time and space. Because that single point of origin is perfect it only follows that each of us are, at our very core, perfect.

There is no one else like me. I am one of a kind. Certainly I share traits with others, but no one else can think the thoughts I think, feel the feelings I have, or take the actions I choose. I can choose for no one else just as no other can choose for me.

Along the way I will take false steps, choose bad paths, make mistakes and start again. I will cause and be hurt emotionally. I might break a bone or two, do poorly with a job, give out incorrect information. I will fail and succeed. Through it all I will make and not make choices, and I will create my own existence along the way. My soul, my central being and all its mysteries remains perfect.

We do things that we consider imperfect. We think imperfect thoughts and feel imperfect feelings. But the truth is that at our core, the root of our being, we are all perfect.

This comes across as one really big lie. Because we are so constantly shown our imperfections and we are told that perfection will almost always be out of our reach, the idea that we ARE perfect is alien. It is opposite what we are shown and told all of our lives, so the idea does not appear to be possibly true.

But we are perfect. We are the culmination of a perfect storm of elements both physical and metaphysical that create these utterly unique, singular beings. No other creature on this world communicates in the many ways that we do, questions their existence like we do, lives light years beyond simple survival as we do. The perfection of the human beings is an amazing truth we are programmed not to believe.

When we are children we know what we know and what we are told. We begin more in tune with nature versus nurture. As we age and begin to develop a certain level of self awareness, nurture dominates. We stop living off of the very basic and perfect simple knowledge of ourselves and begin to live off of who we create based on learning and influences and other factors. It should come as no surprise that we all reach a certain point where we begin to explore our inner nature once again, and many of us seek to reclaim inner knowledge.

In that quest for perfection it is imperative to recognize that we are already perfect. The core nature of our beings are perfect. Think back on when you began to ask more questions and think more deep thoughts and you began to rely less on your simple nature, and you will be able to see that not only were we once simply perfect…we still are.

It is not arrogant to state that we are perfect. Rather, it is a statement of empowerment.

Do you see your own perfection?

 

This is the one-hundred seventy-eighth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my personal desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Feel free to re-blog and share.  Thank you for joining me.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available in print and for your Kindle.