M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 109

Positivity: The Wisdom of Crazy Purple Knock-Out Gas

Pure, unadulterated joy.

Don’t you love that feeling? The freedom, the release, the positivity? That feeling of comfort and warmth and bliss that makes you smile and remember what it is to be alive?

We are so inundated with dread, with fear, with anger and hatred and division and harsh reality. We are constantly being subjected to grim news and intolerance and denial of joy. We are slaves to community, to jobs and finances and responsibilities that rob us of pure joy.

I believe that we all seek joy. We want to feel that sensation, and we want to experience the freedom and positive energy that comes with it. Almost every act we commit is in search of happiness and joy.

Because we are so surrounded by negativity we do not give enough credit to the little things that make us joyful. For example – I have now rewatched the second trailer for Star Wars – The Force Awakens more than a half dozen times. For two minutes the swell of music, the images of a long time ago in a galaxy far far away stirs that feeling of joy, of bliss within me. It is like a drug, coursing through my veins…and that is not a bad thing. Star Wars inspired five-year-old me and opened my imagination, which I do not give nearly enough credit to.

Imagination. Imagination is joy. But the real joy is sharing my imagination. Whether I am creating a work of fantasy, Steampunk or sci-fi…or an inventive conversation with an eight-year-old child.

My fiancé and I often eat at a local Chinese buffet. The family that runs it are familiar and friendly, and they have two sons, ten and eight. The younger loves to chat, and recently has become a ninja or spy or some such, and somehow we got into a conversation about knock-out gas. I informed him that the good knock-out gas is always purple.

“But what about green knock-out gas?” he asked. “Turns you inside out.” Oooooooh. “Red knock-out gas? “ “Causes farting.” He laughed. “What about yellow?” “Uncontrollable urge to pee.” “How about blue?” “Freezes you solid, but your eyes still work.” And so on and so forth through a rainbow of colors and ten minutes of joyful, unrestrained laughter.

The takeaway from this, as I analyze it a couple weeks later, is that joy is something we spend too little time on and with. We need to feel joyful because it is a freedom that is in many respects the ultimate happiness. Joy is the goal of positivity, and we need to seek out the things that make us feel joyful, big and small, for both our mental and physical health.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we crave the freedom of joy, we should do more things to let ourselves experience it. With joy we get an enormous sense of freedom, which in turn allows us 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 sixty fourth 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 172

I have an urgent need to make something in my life manifest.

I need to drastically change one of the paths I am on, and in order to make that happen I need to give it the same focus I have previously used when I have succeeded with manifestation before.

This is of course easier said than done. This always seems to be the case, frankly.

How have I manifested the things I have manifested before?

There are two specific examples when I have made things manifest for my life. In these two particular instances I have absolutely NO doubt whatsoever that I succeeded at manifesting what I wanted. One of these was big, and one comparatively small.

It is important to interject here that size does not matter to the universe. Consciousness creates reality, and the universe does not care if you are creating great or small, it is all the same as far as the Powers-That-Be are concerned. Manifesting a dollar is no more complicated to the universe than manifesting a million dollars, the difference is only in the mind of the person attempting to make their consciousness into reality.

How did I do this before? When I was severely injured my whole focus was on my complete and total recovery. I accepted no possible lack or limitation after my injuries. No matter what the doctors thought, I would heal thoroughly and completely, and recover to the state I was in before. One to three years before I might walk again, possibly never recovering full use of my arm? No way, not happening. Shattered leg, shattered clavicle, nerve damage…it would not matter, I would be whole. And I was, and I am. Within less than a year I was almost fully healed, and unless I show you the scars now, you would never know how broken I was or that I am held together with a fused tibia/fibula and titanium collarbone.

I never once thought anything but utter and complete recovery. No doubt, no second-guesses. I would be whole. Sure there were great medical practitioners who put me back together…but even they could not fully account for the speed nor totality of my healing.

This was the first and greater example.   The second may not have been as grandiose, but is still the same universal force in action.

A year ago I needed to replace my dying car. I had run out of options, I was not putting any more money into repairing what I had. It needed to happen, and I determined that I would end that particular week with a new car. I had no idea how I could possibly make it happen, I had no money to buy a new car; in fact I still owed more on the car I was driving than it was worth. I had no one to turn to for financial assistance, no idea how I could possibly acquire the new car I needed.

So I let go of the how, and only looked at the outcome. I knew I would have a new car by the end of the week. I knew that I would be able to get a car that would be far more reliable and economical than the one I was driving. I knew undoubtedly that I would be called by the dealership I’d been working with online, and that they would take care of me.

And they did. The finance guy put together a deal that was not too dissimilar to the one I had for the car I was already driving, but actually better for me and my credit. I was not paying too much more, and now had a far more reliable and economical vehicle at my disposal.

So despite the dissimilarity between these two manifestations, the universe does not know a difference. In both cases I put all my focus on the outcome, and before I knew it I had it.

And that right there is the key. It is all about focus on the outcome. When you want to make something manifest, but cannot see the way, you have to focus on the outcome. Let the universe line up the who and what and how, I must put my focus entirely on the outcome.

This cannot just be a thought, it has to be a thought, a feeling, and intentional action. This is part of the difficulty in making my desires manifest: combining all three of these aspects and really putting all of my focus and attention and intention in the single place without knowing the process. If, like me, you are a fan of knowing the process, this is a hard pill to swallow. How do you let go of the knowledge of how you get from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’, and simply work towards arriving at point ‘b’?

I have often said that the journey is of equal and greater importance than the goal. For the most part this is true. But when you don’t worry about the journey, when you are not analyzing every element of it and simply embarking upon it you can make wondrous discoveries.

I know what it is I wish to manifest. I can see it, now I just need to let put my full attention and intention upon it. I need to see it as being the only possible outcome, see it as done, and not worry about how it will happen, just know that it will. I need to put it in the now, not the then. I need to not concern myself with the how, just the outcome. I need to see it as done.

I have the thought in the idea. I need to feel it, act upon and intend it. I have done this before, and I can do it now.

What do you want to manifest for your life?

 

This is the one-hundred seventy-second 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: Understanding

I understand you.

We all want to be understood. We all want people to “get” us. That is how we find our friends and lovers and other companions in this world. They simply understand.

Maybe not the whole picture, of course. Very few people ever get the total and complete knowledge of a person. We are all complicated, multi-faceted, diverse beings, but for all that we still all want to find people who understand us.

I understand you. Even though I may not know you, I understand your desire to learn more, I understand your desire to find positivity in this world. I understand that you want to find inner peace, because the turmoil we face day to day can be often times be frustrating, infuriating, and unnecessary proof of just how few people DO understand you.

It is more important, really, that I understand myself. I find that I don’t always know or understand my own motivations, sometimes my own feelings lack in certainty and as such are not understood. But I can always find understanding, it is never lost and gone with a trace, it can be rediscovered.

Understanding leads to positivity because with understanding comes satisfaction, peace, ultimately happiness. Understanding allows us to have clarity, it allows us to release tension and misgivings and all other forms of negativity. Understanding opens pathways to other knowledge that can bring in positive feelings.

Being understood is always a positive. We all need those familiars, those people who simply “get” us whom we can turn to. Being understood means that we are not, ultimately, alone. We have somewhere to turn where we will be known, and our need to feel a part of something instead of apart from something will be sated.

I understand you. I understand that you want to be happy, that you want to know you are not alone – and I am here to tell you that you are not. You have understanding, and that is an incredibly positive thing.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing you are understood, you can feel secure in the knowledge that someone out there has got your back. With understanding comes contentment, peace, satisfaction, and more ways to further 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 sixty 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 171

Bring your goal at the end of the path you walk into focus, and the path itself will gain clarity.

I have begun to explore redirecting my paths and creating better focus upon them. I concluded by stating I need to work on three steps: 1) Focus on only the things inside of my control. 2) Acknowledge my strengths. Recognize my achievements. 3) Mindfulness. Keep mindful of who I want to be. Be mindful of my focus for the goals I set at the end of the paths before me.

An unbelievably important aspect of this process is language. The first time I stated three steps to eradicate negativity much of the language I used still involved negativity. The Law of Attraction, the idea I am always sharing in the notion that Consciousness Creates Reality, in simplest terms means that what you think about and focus upon will be made manifest.

To intentionally manifest anything at all, big or small, it is important to have thought, feeling and action combined. One of the primary reasons for the creation of Pathwalking was to take control over my life and my destiny, and as such to really be in control of my own thoughts and feelings and actions.

Yet I still find I am often at the mercy of my subconscious. I let my subconscious thoughts wander, I let them take their own meandering trails, and then I wonder why I cannot create what I want to except when I am wholly and totally focused on that.

What does the subconscious have to do with Pathwalking? Everything. Taking control of my own thoughts and feelings and actions is not simply about what I do consciously, it also requires work on my subconscious. This introduces a layer of complexity that can seem rather daunting, except that the outcome is the entirety of what I created Pathwalking to do.

I’m going to get specific here, because this is really important. It is critical that I take control over what I am thinking, what I am feeling and how I am acting to walk the Path I most desire. As I examined last week, without focus it is difficult if not impossible to make things manifest. But the focus I am writing about is not simply that of the path I am choosing, but where I let my mind rest.

Let me illustrate what I mean. One of the paths I am on is to get into better health. I need to lose weight, I need to lose several inches from my waist, I need to eat smarter and to get my cholesterol dropped.

Right here I have shown several flaws in my focus. If consciousness creates reality, then if I am focused on losing weight and losing inches and dropping my cholesterol, don’t I create a vicious cycle? Simply put, yes I do. If my focus is on undoing something, my attention is on the problem, and as such I am exponentially creating more work and more complex matters along the path I want to take.

How do I change this? I need to alter my focus. Rather than focus on losing weight, I need to focus instead on achieving my goal body size. I need to focus on how I will look, how I will feel when I am at the ideal body I want for myself. I need to focus on being slim, being healthy, and maintaining my health.

Even deeper than this, though, I need to not be so critical of myself. This is a really subconscious aspect of focus that is easy to overlook. How do I think of myself? Do I think of myself as fat, slow, weak, overweight, old, broken and decaying? Or do I instead think of myself as healthy, dexterous, strong, buff, young, solid and building better? Where is my ultimate, subconscious focus?

How do I think of myself? Do I consider myself a success or a failure? Do I think of myself as capable or incapable? Do I tell myself I can do it, or I cannot do it? This is where I most need to adjust my focus, adjust my self-talk, so that I might be able to better achieve the manifestations I desire.

This right here is the crux of my difficulty in really, truly walking the paths I desire. For years I called myself a cynical or skeptical optimist. I believed in the positive outcome, but I was uncertain how it could be done or I needed to have it proven to me along the way that I was right all along. But now I recognize that my problem is not cynicism or skepticism…it is improper focus.

I need to stop and take stock of how I think of myself. Handsome or ugly? Thin or fat? Weak or strong? Foolish or wise? The focus I have on how I think of myself, positive or negative, will dictate whether I will manifest the end result of the path I desire to be upon, or if I will continue aimlessly upon it, always questioning why I can’t quite seem to complete what I have started.

This is harsh. This is me taking a really hard look at who I am, and how I have gotten here. I am walking my own paths, that I believe. But the reason I cannot manifest what I want all the time is because I have not focused on what I say about myself, and how I think about myself. I need to change the language of my self-talk. Adjusting what I am focused on therein is the key to not just walking the path, but walking the path confidently and with complete certainty.

I am writing out the subconscious thought process before me. I am asking myself what I think of myself, and giving the honest answers, so that I may adjust my focus. The sharpest image of the path I want to take will only be manifest if I make this adjustment. Thanks for staying with me as I work through this.

What do you think of yourself, and where is your subconscious focus?

 

This is the one-hundred seventy-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: You are worthwhile

You are worthy of praise and love and understanding.

I may not know you, but I can assure you that you do in fact deserve to have good things. You deserve to be happy, you deserve to be at peace, you deserve to be recognized and acknowledged for everything you do.

You are going to have bad days. We all do. But despite that, you are worthwhile, and I am here to validate your extreme awesomeness.

I know that you are capable of anything you set your mind to. I know that you have dreams, that you have hopes and aspirations, and I believe that you can achieve them. I see you for who you are, I see you for who you can be, and I believe in you.

I know there are days where it just seems like no matter how hard you try to think positive, to feel positive, to take positive actions…you still just spin your wheels and get nowhere. I know that you feel as though all your efforts are for naught, and that you are unable to get ahead.

You are not alone. I have been there too. I am here now to tell you that it is all worthwhile, and that you are worthy, deserving, and can get past this moment to a better place full of positivity.

These words are not just platitudes, they are not just broad strokes upon the page to reinforce the power of affirmations in order to build positivity. I want you to know that anything is possible, and that when we all take just a moment of our day to know our own value as a person and to see our own worth, we can all live in better, happier, more positive places.

This is not easy. We all have struggles along the way, some of them physical, some emotional, some financial, some mental, some are combinations of all of these and more. We all go through bouts of rough and depressing times, sadness, loss, and low confidence. You are no different from me in this regard, and no less deserving of the chance to turn it around to positivity.

Thank you for supporting me in my endeavors to bring more positivity to this world. I believe that if we spend more time focusing on good things, more time praising one another, more time validating one another, more effort focusing on peace and love and understanding and joy…we can make this world a better, brighter, more exciting place. Let’s focus on our own self-worth, our own deserving of the things we want, and from there share that with those around us. In this way we can build positivity, and we can build a better world for all of us.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we are each worthy of praise and love and understanding, we can choose how we focus on our day, and we can more easily find ways to further 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 sixty 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 170

Lack of focus makes manifestation difficult, if not impossible.

One of my biggest issues with creating the life I want and really, truly walking my path is a lack of focus. I know what I want to do, I have the idea of how I want my life to be…but I can’t focus enough on the here-and-now to make this happen.

Last week I wrote about removing negativity from my focus. To do this I stated three steps: 1) Don’t focus on the things completely outside of my control. 2) Acknowledge my shortcomings, but don’t stay with them past that acknowledgement. 3) Mindfulness. Keep mindful of who I want to be.

This is what I need to work on the most. Not just in order to keep from focusing on negativity, but to have focus overall. I get so scattered, spread so thin between a variety of things – I manage to not accomplish many of the goals I set out to.

This is not to belittle the things that I DO accomplish. Which is important. I do get things done, I do achieve goals that I set. However it is more haphazard and random than I would wish it to be.

Wishing is another problem. Certainly it is important to have goals and aspirations and desires and to wish for things to be…but things do not simply manifest of thin air. There needs to be intention, there needs to be thought and feeling and action.

The trouble I run into at times is that I find my attention split between multiple things. Some are very much in the here-and-now, like the day-to-day activities of my job. Some are plans for the future, ideas I want to explore or projects I want to work on.

The main issue, I believe, is that I lack focus. I have all these thoughts and ideas and such, but no focus. I know what I want, I know what it is I want to do, I know where I want to be…at least I think I do. But what do I focus on?

There are several outcomes I can envision for the paths I am walking. In several instances they are focused and well-considered, and I have no doubt about where they will land me. But in other aspects of my life I have at least some concept of where I want matters to turn up, but not clarity.

This falls to a lack of focus on my part. I have a vague idea, I have notions and generalizations for what I desire, but my focus is lacking, if it is present at all. This is where I am having trouble with manifesting.

I know without a doubt that this is possible, because I have done it before. Yes, I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Years ago, when severely injured, I knew I would heal completely. No doubt, no other possibility, the whole of my being focused on my complete and total healing. My entire entity was focused on this outcome, and sure enough that is what I got.

Yes, I know I had incredible doctors working on me. Yes, I had great therapists to help me heal. But even they were stunned by the speed and totality of my recovery, and I do not doubt that my intent and focus and drove me to the manifestation of complete and total recovery.

A year ago I needed to replace my dying car. I knew what I had to do, and I put my focus and my energy into manifesting exactly that. I stated the outcome, and I got what I said I would.

Yes I found a dealership willing to take my old car in trade and a finance guy able to cut me an excellent deal. Yes, there were circumstances that all came into alignment here, but I had all the necessary focus and attention to line them up as needed to achieve my desired outcome.

So I have done this before. Yet I keep asking why I cannot do it again and again, and I know that the answer is focus. I have the drive, I have the desire, I have the thoughts and feelings and will to take the actions. But without focus, without truly setting my intention and knowing just what precisely I want, I am simply going through the motions.

I am on a path I have chosen. Despite unexpected twists and turns and all the obstacles a given path might have, focus is the GPS. I may take a wrong turn here and there, I might get distracted, but if I keep focused I will still manage to arrive at my intended destination.

How do I reclaim my focus? This is the challenge I am facing right now. I know at least one of the paths before me I am focused on and certain of the outcome, but the others not-so-much. I need to sit down and write out just what those paths are, and I need to write out not only the thoughts and feelings and actions I need to put in place to walk those paths, but how to set my focus on them. I need to know precisely what I want, not just some non-specific idea of it.

I need to adjust my language, and take last week’s notions of not just removing negative focus, but creating positive focus. I need to take the three things I considered last week in order to walk away from negativity, and alter my language to instead create three steps to build positive focus. As such: 1) Focus on only the things inside of my control. 2) Acknowledge my strengths. Recognize my achievements. 3) Mindfulness. Keep mindful of who I want to be. Be mindful of my focus for the goals I set at the end of the paths before me.

Next week I will take a more in depth look at what I specifically need to focus upon. There is a lot of work ahead of me, in a multitude of ways. Thanks for joining me as I take a new approach to the paths I want to walk.

What do you have your focus on?

 

This is the one-hundred seventieth 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: Positivity Matters

Positivity matters because how you are feeling will make or break your day.

Some days it’s really hard to see how this can be done. When you are working on a problem with few or undesirable solutions or when you give too much focus to the news media and see a dark and dismal world it is difficult at best to find and feel positivity.

Sometimes it just feels like it will take too much work, too much effort, and so it is easier to just sink into depression, give up the effort it takes to find and create positivity. Let all your negativity wash over you, and let that dominate your feelings.

Does anyone want to feel bad? I don’t believe so. As I often say – nothing worth having is ever easy. You are going to have bad feelings, you are going to be blue and you are going to be frustrated and angry and negative. It is part of our nature.

How long do you let the negativity linger? This is the key. I have the power to control how I feel. I can choose to allow my negative feelings to be dominant and to take me off on a dark and unpleasant journey…or I can acknowledge them, address them as necessary, and then let them go.

Because we have nostalgia for the past and an equally powerful affinity for goal setting for the future, the here-and-now is often left to just happen. We go along with the current of the happenings around us, and we allow the positivity or negativity around us infuse us. Why take control when you don’t have to?

Why? Because like attracts like. Because if you are feeling negative you will attract more negativity and negative situations to your day. We’ve all experienced this…you get out of bed feeling disillusioned, you read another news article about government lunacy, you get caught in traffic on the way to work, you get into an argument with a coworker, you spill your coffee on yourself…and so on and so on and down it goes.

Rather than allow these things to build up and generate even more negativity, we need to take stock of them, acknowledge them…and move past them. Easier said than done, but not impossible. When you awake feeling disillusioned, question why and explore that. Don’t focus on the stupidity of the government. Use time in traffic to listen to music or take the time for yourself. Either avoid the argument with the coworker or seek common ground between yourselves and if you do argue don’t leave the matter unresolved. Laugh at the spilt coffee but don’t berate yourself for being a klutz.

There is no perfect solution. Positivity often seems to take a lot more work than negativity…but building is more fulfilling than destroying, and positivity feels better than negativity.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that positivity matters, we can choose how we focus on our day, and to find ways 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 sixty 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.

Pathwalking 169

I am particularly adept at identifying my own faults.

I can see what I am doing wrong, I can see how I am choosing poorly, I am completely aware of my errors and mistakes. I am my own greatest critic.

While there is validity in being able to see and own up to your imperfections, it is of greater importance that you do not let them linger.

It is very easy to berate myself. It takes as little effort to blame myself as it is to blame anyone else for my woes. It is very easy to be angry with myself, to reproach myself, to let myself become depressed over the faults I allow to entrap me.

It is hard enough when outside influences interfere with your Pathwalk. It is even harder when you are in your own way, and continue to be your own greatest obstacle.

This is another aspect of self-sabotage. But more than giving in to my fears, this is about allowing my perceived shortcomings overwhelm my paths.

I have spent a great deal of my life dealing with depression. I have used many methods to cope with this, including medication, meditation, and therapies. By-and-large I have this in check, but once in a while the depression gets the better of me, and I find myself down.

When this happens every single mistake, every flaw, every imperfection in my choices and my paths becomes crystal clear. I become angry, lethargic, and resentful. Negative emotions are quickly magnified, and I become the single largest obstacle along my path.

In addition to seeing my own issues, it becomes very easy to let situations that are outside of my control further distract me, and to drive my anger and other negative emotions to far higher levels. I manage as well to make villains out of people, upon whom I can cast aspersions I might otherwise never so empower.

This happens to pretty much everyone. To a lesser or greater severity, I have never met anyone who did not have moments of this sort of doubt and disappointment in themselves. The hard part is to break free of this negativity, and to shake it off rather than to linger upon it and examine it ad nauseam.

How do you move past this, and not give the negativity all your focus? This is what I am working on now. How do I let go of this feeling, rather than give it my focus and attention? How do I move past and beyond this?

Here are the steps I am going to take in this process. Bear with me if this seems rough, this is an unrefined notion, and this is on-the-spot analysis to find answers.

First – I need to deal with the part I have least control over. I need to take my focus off of the things that are outside of my control. I need to stop giving energy to my perceived villains, and I need to instead take back my power, and disempower them and take back the power I am giving them to distract me from my paths. This part should be easiest to achieve.

Second – I need to acknowledge my faults, but not focus on them. While nobody is perfect, truly that is what makes everybody perfect. We are all perfectly imperfect, and that is what makes us each unique individuals. If we all shared in the same perfection, why would we have any need to interact with any but ourselves? How could we develop and grow not only as individuals, but as a race of intelligent beings?

Imperfections and faults are a part of who I am. I need to do what I can to fix those I can, to embrace and manage those I cannot, and to not let my faults take away my empowerment. I am not my past, I am not my mistakes and imperfections…unless I choose to be.

Third – mindfulness. It is so easy to neglect the things I put upon my own path as I share it to help you as well as myself. I do not meditate daily as I desire to do, I do not always remember to write out and feel gratitude for at least three to five things daily, I do not ask myself the necessary questions that will keep me focused on my path choices.

The important thing about this is not to let this anger and upset me…it is for me to take a deep breath, not regret my choices or poor choices or lack of choices, and move on. If I linger here, if I hold my focus to these errors and mistakes I continue to empower them. I need to not just work on acknowledgment and being less negligent…I need to wholly change my internal dialogue.

So long as I view myself as a failure, overweight, idiotic, negligent buffoon – this is the reality I will perpetuate. I need to change my inner dialogue, and instead talk to myself about the successful, healthy, wise, empowered wit – this will help draw in a new self-image. Because when all is said and done we are all our own greatest critics, and it is the image we hold of the self that we project not only outwards, but inwards.

The ideas are here – so how do I enact them? Every day is a new day…so I need to remember, daily, to empower myself, use the tools I have available to me, and to think more highly of myself and know I am worthy.

New day. Do I face it expecting new problems, or new challenges? What do I see before me? What do you see before you?

 

This is the one-hundred sixty-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: Today

Today is not yesterday.

Today is a new beginning. Today is unique, and there will be no other day like today.

You have an opportunity to do something new, something different. You have a new day with which to explore the world, to make time for yourself, for friends and family, to create something different.

Yesterday is the past. It happened, it is done. It may have been a fantastic day, it may have been an awful day, but it is done. You have reached today, and you can approach this new day with positivity or negativity. Either way, you get to choose.

This is why I started exploring the idea of Positivity one Monday morning. All over social media I was reading the groans and complaints and doubts and other negative thoughts towards the start of the work week. I decided that I wanted to share a different approach, and to see today for all its possibility. Yes, the weekend is over, but why does that necessarily mean we are on a sad and unwanted path today? We have a choice…so I choose to find Positivity.

It is easy to get caught in remembering and even yearning for the past. But the past is passed. It can and likely will hold a place in your memory, good or bad. But yesterday and the day before that and the week before that and the month before that and so on are behind us.

There is so much potential in living for today. I don’t mean doing something wild and out-of-character, I mean seeing the possibility that the new day represents instead of its challenges. I’m writing about looking for good instead of bad, possible instead of impossible, unity instead of division, positivity instead of negativity. Each and every day we get to make choices, and if we focus more on today and less on yesterday or tomorrow we can find more Positivity, and feel better overall.

This is why it is equally important to acknowledge that today is not tomorrow, either. All too often we get caught up on looking ahead and doing things like “working for the weekend” or “slogging through the work week” or similar, and today passes by unmarked. Every single day has potential – not just potential to be “magical” per se, but potential to be good and positive. Today can be more than just a work day, more than just a day in the routine, it has endless possibility.

This needn’t be grand and glorious. This can be a simple matter of approach. Take on today with hope, not disdain. Try to smile instead of frowning. Look for the positive around you instead of the negative. Use attitude shifters or find something to make you smile. Let go of yesterday, leave tomorrow for tomorrow and find the potential in this day, today.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we can leave yesterday behind we can use this new day, today, to find ways 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 sixtieth 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 168

You are not unsupported.

Even when you are walking your own path, you are never completely alone. You have supporters, you have resources available to you.

I have spent a great deal of time with people not understanding my choices. There have been many along the way who did not nor could not understand what I was about. And I will be the first to admit that it may have behooved me in the past to have paid greater heed to some of those inquiries. I may have come to recognize sooner that I was choosing more often than not to not choose at all.

Since I began to formulate and work with the notion of Pathwalking, I have come to understand who I am and better who I want to be. I have learned that when I make choices for myself I get better and more satisfying results. I am learning that my path is for me, but I do not have to take it alone.

I can’t make choices for anyone else, I cannot control anyone else’s life. I don’t want anyone else to make my choices for me, either.

What I do want, however, is support. I want to have resources I can turn to in order to help me better understand, choose, and walk my path.

It is important to distinguish between the need for support, and the need for recognition or even validation. Support is having a sounding board or a confidant or some other resource I can use to help me along my way, whereas recognition and validation are more about end results.

Support can come in a number of forms. I have many options to choose from.

I can find my support amongst the people in my life. My friends, my family, my coworkers, my acquaintances, even from time to time random strangers. There may be someone who will hear me out when I want to bounce ideas off of them, or there may be someone who will brainstorm with me to find solutions to problems.

It is imperative when turning to people for support to be aware of influence. Support is working with others to achieve your goals, and outside influences can sometimes misdirect you. Sometimes your support will actually redirect you when you are on the wrong path. When you turn to someone for support they might show you a need to do things differently than you are currently doing them.

Another form of support might come from more abstract resources. A book you read, an interview you listen to, a podcast, a blog. I may be a source of support on your path as I share mine.

I have often warned about outside influences, and it may seem rather frequently that I am suggesting allowing people outside of yourself to be a part of your path is a bad thing. Yet here I am telling you that you have support and can turn to people for support. Another paradox?

Yes, and no. We are social animals. Human beings need other human beings. We need and want companions, we desire communication. Yes this is a vast generalization, your own experience may be otherwise. But for the most part it is essential we have other people in our lives.

This is where it is good to know you have support. You need support. You need to have resources available to you in order to better find, understand, and walk your given paths in this life. You don’t have to go it alone, but it is important that you be the one making your choices.

This is where the difference between a supporter and an outside influencer come into play. If I am allowing another to make my choices for me, then I need to reconsider where my path might be going. If, however, I am conferring with a resource to make better choices for myself it is much more likely that I will be the maker of my own destiny.

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between a supporter and an outside influencer. The key to knowing what you have, whether a person or an object you have turned to, is asking the right questions. Is this what I want? Is this who I am? Is this where I want to be or go? Is this what I want to do with my life?

There are other questions I can ask, but the point is that I have support I can turn to, and so do you. We are not alone as we walk our paths, and we can and will find our way to taking and having control over our lives, and to discovering and making our own destinies.

I have some amazing people who support my paths. I have found and read and listened to numerous resources that have helped me to learn and grow. I am learning new things every day, and I believe that the path I am walking will let me find and create the person I most wish to be in this world.

Thank you for YOUR support.

Who and/or what supports you along your path?

 

This is the one-hundred sixty-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.