M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 11

If You Fall Today Get Back Up Again Tomorrow

You’ve done it before and will do it again.Photo by Edu Lauton on Unsplash

Nobody lives an absolutely, 100% perfect life. Nobody. Every person on the face of the Earth has crappy days, experiences stress, contends with shit on various levels, and feels bad.  Everybody who lives, has lived, or will ever live, will experience this truth.

Sometimes this is not due to anything you did or didn’t do. Shit happens. You have zero control over anyone or anything else in the Universe. So that means things you don’t want will come your way.

Many times, this is due to your choices, actions, decisions, or lack thereof. You did something wrong, incorrect, foolish, silly, or undefinable that produced a negative result. Even when you do it all right, properly, and correctly, it can and will come apart at the seams or go off the rails.

In truth, everyone experiences both. You fall because someone else pulled the rug out from under you or you tripped yourself up. Sometimes both.

Whether this happens due to something“ you can or can’t control, what you do next is your choice. You decide if you will fall today and get up again tomorrow. Or not.

Tomorrow is a metaphor

If you’re walking along a path in the woods and trip over a branch, unless you do yourself grievous harm you get up again immediately. When the shit hits the fan in other ways that make you fall, getting up again immediately might need to be delayed for any number of reasons.

The point is that tomorrow isn’t literal. It’s specific to being the next step you take. Even when a fall is metaphoric, you choose to stay down or get back up again.

Literal or figurative, getting back up again when you fall is a choice. Do you try again or not?

When life goes wrong, things go bad, and you “fall”, there’s a choice once you land. Stay down or get back up again?

Many people wind up staying down. This usually takes the form of complaint, inaction, and dissatisfaction. They see no point in getting back up again, so they might as well stay down and stop trying.

This is, however, unrealistic. That’s because so long as you are here, there is always a tomorrow.

Many see this not as the potential and possibility it represents. Instead, they see it as a trial, a difficulty, and something not worth the time or effort. Great, today is shit, so odds are tomorrow will be, too. If that’s your approach, you are choosing to stay down when you fall today and not get back up again tomorrow.

If you fall today get back up again tomorrow

This idea is often mistaken for grandiose goals and the like. It is, however, utterly applicable to the mundane, the rote, and the routine.

For example, I have a goal of writing 1500 words of fiction a day. While I would love to say I meet and exceed that daily, I don’t. For reasons and excuses, there are days I fail at this. Ergo, I fall.

When that happens, I have a choice. Get back up again tomorrow and strive to make my goal or stay down? Maybe today I failed – but tomorrow is a whole other day. I get back up again tomorrow as if today never happened if I choose that.

This is why choices and decisions are so imperative. When you take the time and energy to actively choose and decide things for your life and the paths you take, you are directing it. This is, in fact, the majority of the control you can take of your life experience.

This is where active conscious awareness comes into play.

Photo by Harsh Gupta on UnsplashOngoing mindfulness

Nobody is capable of constant, total, and all-the-time mindfulness. Everyone does things habitually because if you didn’t, you’d overtax your mind. Some choices and decisions are better left to automation, rote, and routine.

This includes super simple things like making your bed, brushing your teeth, getting dressed, and similar acts that you do every single day.

Until you seek to make a change to something of the above nature, non-automated mindfulness of it is unnecessary. However, if you feel in any way dissatisfied, distressed, uncomfortable, or uncertain, mindfulness serves two purposes.

The first is identifying your why. By practicing active conscious awareness and being mindful, you can learn what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity to how you approach things, and what actions you do and don’t take. Just note that this only works here and now, in the present.

The second purpose is you can change what isn’t working. Don’t like that you fell today? Get back up tomorrow. Choose, mindfully, to take actions, align your thoughts-feelings-intent-approach, and learn from today’s fall.

Fall today and get back up again tomorrow again

You have done this before. I guarantee that you’ve had this experience. Maybe it was an outside force or something that you did, but you had a day where you fell and fell hard. But, after that, you got back up again.

Maybe, relatively speaking, it was small. For example, you failed to get to the gym on that especially freezing cold Monday morning. That was the fall. But then, on Tuesday, even though it was still freezing, you went to the gym. That’s what I mean by fall today and get back up again tomorrow.

This is part of life. It happens to everyone, everywhere. From the highest to the lowest, the wisest to the most foolish, this is something nobody escapes experiencing. But most important of all, you have done this before and will do it again.

Knowing this, you have the power to choose and decide the next step when you fall today to get back up again tomorrow. It might not be easy, but you have done it before and can do it again.

What choices and decisions will you make the next time you fall?

This is the six-hundred-seventy-seventh (677) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post If You Fall Today Get Back Up Again Tomorrow appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Judgment Does Nobody Any Good

Being judgy is easy but, like blame, fixes nothing.Photo by Anna Keibalo on Unsplash

Spend any time whatsoever reading or watching the news or browsing social media, and you will see example after example after example of judgment.

Some of it is meant to point out problems and place the blame where, admittedly, it belongs. Other elements of judgment come from seeing some less-than-ideal people receive their comeuppance. Sometimes it’s a matter of seeing what someone else is going through and either judging yourself better off, worse off, or riding the waters in a similar boat.

I do this too. It’s part of human nature. We compare ourselves to people both inside and outside of our lives because that’s what we’re taught to do. Judgment comes shockingly naturally.

The problem is that judgment does nobody any good. It’s not any different from blame in that it determines who is doing wrong from a sense of moral, ethical, or experiential position.

While blame tends to shunt responsibility and accountability, judgment flat-out gives it to the judged. Even when that is you.

While there might be a hit of satisfaction that comes immediately after judgment, it’s only fleeting. That’s because it is superficial.

It takes mindfulness to recognize and acknowledge this

One of the ugliest parts of elections is that they’re all about blame and judgment. Often, you judge someone based on all sorts of good and bad information for their moral, ethical, spiritual, and overall being. Some, admittedly, make it very easy to see where they lack. Frequently this wholly plays on your fears, concerns, and beliefs in lack, scarcity, and insufficiency.

Many, many forces in this society want you and I to be disempowered. They prefer that we don’t recognize the subtle and blatant manipulation, corruption, and steady stream of bullshit. Distraction, manipulation, and all sorts of mechanisms are in place to keep you judging, blaming, and unaware.

There are so, so many examples I could give you. However, that way lies blame and judgment. Instead, I’d rather focus on mindfulness to be more self-aware.

Isn’t that selfish? No, that’s just a false judgment that many of the aforementioned forces want you to make. It is not selfish to be self-aware. That’s because you are the only one who can be.

Consider this – if only half the people in the world have an inner monologue, chances are most people are not self-aware. I don’t know about you, but my inner monologue is usually all about analysis of myself and how I fit into the world around me.

If you’re not self-aware, how do you know what you desire? How do you know who, what, where, how, and why you want to be anything at all?

Mindfulness is the key to changing this. But it can only be used by you when you choose to do so.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on UnsplashJudgment does nobody any good

I can’t change what’s going on in the world at large. There’s nothing I can do to make people give a shit about other people, to be kind, compassionate, and empathetic, or to do anything they don’t choose for themselves to do.

I can judge them for that left, right, and sideways – but to what end? Does it do anybody any good for me to pass judgment? Nope.

All I can control is in myself. Overall, this comes down to what I’m thinking, what and how I’m feeling, my intentions, whether my approach is positive or negative, and my actions. Apart from that, I control little to nothing else.

Accepting this, however, opens the way to doing more. More good for yourself leads to more good for the world at large. You can be there for others when you care to be more present with and for yourself. This is done by being mindful and self-aware.

Judgment of yourself is another matter that does you no good. Great, maybe you’ve judged yourself to be unkind, unworthy, a bad person, or some other negative. Does that do you any good? No. It just freezes you in a time, place, and situation that prevents you from taking control or changing anything.

How do you change anything? Active choices and decisions. This requires you to be in the only time that’s real – now. The present.

When you make choices and decisions, here and now, you are empowered. That’s useful and positive because it means you can change what doesn’t serve you. When you change yourself, you open yourself to helping others choose change. Unlike blame and judgment, this can do good for you and the world, too.

Recognizing how judgment does nobody any good isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that judgment doesn’t make anything better, you can see how it does nobody any good. Knowing that judgment, like blame, fixes nothing, you can instead work with self-awareness and mindfulness to make choices and decisions to create change and live a full life that lights you up and does you (and through you, those around you) good.

This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.

Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred-and-sixty-fifth (565) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.

Please visit here to explore all my published works – both fiction and non-fiction.

The post Judgment Does Nobody Any Good         appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

There’s More You Can’t Plan For Than You Can Plan For

No plan survives contact with the enemy.Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

My wife and I recently bought a house. There are a whole lot of different reasons why we chose this path after years of explaining why we were against it.

We managed to find a house that was almost everything we wanted. We have a wrap-around porch, it’s a Colonial/Victorian house that’s had the bathrooms and kitchen updated, and a lot of other work done, too.

It passed inspection, we closed, and then we had a month (before our rent in our prior place ended) to paint, acquire and build some new furniture, and other touches to make it ours. After 2 weeks we were 95% unpacked and settling in.

Then we hit our first obstacle. We were not surprised, as we expected we’d need to address it. Just not so soon. As in, it’s an important system we need functioning that we can’t live without, so repairs cannot be put off and must occur ASAP.

As I have joked with my wife and some friends now – I don’t regret buying a house, but I kind of rue and lament it (not my line, that’s a quote from Futurama).

Sometimes, the Universe reminds me that there’s more you can’t plan for than you can plan for.

Shit happens all the time

Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. It can, will, and does occur all the time. Often, change is utterly, totally, and completely out of your control. It just happens.

Along that line, shit happens. Traffic makes you late for the interview for your dream job, the person you thought was your perfect match unexpectedly dumps you, someone you love dies, a storm cancels your plans, and so on and so forth.

Ergo, there is far more that you can’t plan for than you can plan for. No matter how much you prep, plan, plot, and prepare, shit happens. Before you know it, rather than being proactive in a situation you’re being reactive.

This can be hugely, frustratingly disconcerting. It’s especially annoying if you’re the kind of person who makes plans and sets contingencies for this, that, or the other thing.

Recognizing and acknowledging this truth isn’t easy. It can feel like you have zero control over anything. This is the truth, however. Apart from your inner being, your mindset/headspace/psyche self, and all that relates to that, you can control nothing.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on UnsplashThere’s more you can’t plan for than you can plan for

When it comes to you and your life, what do you control? It’s your head, heart, and soul for the most part. That’s because only you exist within your conscious self.

Even your subconscious can contain elements that are not you or wholly in your control. If, for example, your parents lamented being broke your entire childhood, your adult beliefs in how money and worth work have been influenced by that idea rooted in your subconscious. It only gets removed and changed if and when you actively seek it to change it.

Your conscious awareness is in your control, but only when you practice actively via mindfulness. In that way, you can work out what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, if you are approaching life from positivity or negativity, and any actions you do or don’t take.

There’s a catch, of course. When shit happens, when what you can’t plan for occurs, you’ll have an automated reaction. This is something situational and will just occur, and you can’t control it. However, after that initial reaction, you get to choose to take control of your thoughts, feelings, intent, approach, actions, and the like.

The limitations of control

All that you control, even a little bit, is yourself. You have no control over other people, the environment, traffic, elections, and the like. This can be frustrating, infuriating, and even terrifying.

It can also be enlightening and empowering. As little as it seems to be, when you choose to take control of your life experience – via your inner being, with mindfulness – you decide how you act and react to things. For example, my wife and I could have become hugely angry, distraught, and depressed over the unexpected, necessary system in our new home failing and the cost to replace it. We could have blamed the previous owner, the fates, the Universe, and all sorts of external factors we have no control over.

Instead, we accepted that there’s more you can’t plan for than you can plan for, and made the necessary arrangements to get the money and do the work. Yes, I recognize that we have a level of privilege that allowed us to deal with this crisis. Even if we didn’t, choosing not to place blame and find outside forces responsible for shit happening is a big deal.

Blame does no good for anyone. It’s a wasted effort that disempowers you. Why? Because you cede control when you blame. You give up your own sovereignty in blaming other people, outside forces, or anyone and anything else.

No plan survives contact with the enemy. There’s more you can’t plan for than you can plan for. Recognizing and acknowledging this is frustrating but empowering. That’s because recognition and acknowledgment of this truth opens you to make use of mindfulness and take what control you can.

Empowerment from recognizing and acknowledging that there’s more you can’t plan for than you can plan for

Easy? No. Worth it? Yes. If not for your peace of mind alone, it’s worth it because feeling empowered opens you to potential, possibility, and more. Rather than roll over, place blame, and lament that shit happens to you in particular, recognizing that there’s more you can’t plan for than you can plan for gives you control.

Control of active conscious awareness via mindfulness is more or less all the control you have in this life. The more you use this, the more you’re empowered. The more you’re empowered, the more you can do to be a beacon for others and show them that they are only victims of life if they choose to be.

What will you do with this knowledge and understanding?

This is the six-hundred-seventy-sixth (676) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post There’s More You Can’t Plan For Than You Can Plan For appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Positivity and Positive Thinking Are Not the Same

This is massively important to understanding empowerment.Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

It is very easy to confuse positivity with positive thinking. They are not, however, at all the same.

Positive thinking is, frankly, one-dimensional. It is thought and thought alone, and lacking all other elements of conscious awareness.

Why does that matter? Because to practice mindfulness, and make any real use of positivity, you need to include more than just thought. You need feeling, intent, approach, and action, too.

What’s more, a great deal of toxic positivity comes from the idea of positive thinking being the end all be all. Since it’s only a single element of positivity, it can’t be.

Why does more go into positivity than just thought? Because thought alone cannot empower you.

Positivity vs toxic positivity

One of the key elements of positivity is that it can be an incredible tool for empowerment.

Empowerment comes from within. No matter what anyone else offers or sells you, they cannot empower you. You, and only you, can empower you.

How you empower yourself begins with active conscious awareness. Mindfulness. To be mindful, you need to know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intent, if your approach is positive or negative, and ultimately your actions from there.

A positive approach involves the angles you employ in your daily life. If you are using positivity, you’re open to potential and possibility. Negativity means you’re closed off and probably seeing lack, limitation, and the like. A negative approach is not empowering.

The only positivity you can use in mindfulness is genuine positivity. Toxic positivity is disempowering because it’s utterly unrealistic. That’s how positive thinking often gets mistaken for true positivity.

What is toxic positivity? It’s the idea of holding only positive thoughts and a positive attitude by ignoring all negativity. It’s the equivalent of walking around in life wearing rose-colored glasses and utterly ignoring all else happening in the world.

The truth is, however, that shit happens. Negative things can, will, and do happen to everyone. They can’t be ignored, avoided, or disregarded because they are part of the life experience. Additionally, new ventures, fresh ideas, and choices and decisions for change often are born via negative happenings.

Thus, genuine positivity recognizes and acknowledges negativity. It also opens the way for you to make new choices and decisions to empower and better your life.

Photo by its outsider on UnsplashPositive thinking can’t stand alone

Thought in and of itself has no power. How many ideas have come into being but gained no traction because they never advanced past just being an idea?

Thought must be given feeling. Without feeling, thought is fleeting. Feeling is like putting the battery into the device so that it works.

Then you need intent. Intent is all about what the thought, coupled with feeling, is meant to do. This is the equivalent of turning the key or pushing the button to get it started.

Approach matters because the outcome will often be impacted if you see what you’re doing as impossible or from a place of lack and scarcity – rather than possible and from a place of abundance. Have you ever had to do something you expected to suck, to be not at all fun, and it wasn’t? Conversely, have you ever had to do something you expected to rock, to be amazing, and it was? That’s what approach is and the impact it can have.

Last but not least, it all comes down to action. You had the idea, gave it power, had a reason for it, and chose an approach – now you do it. Start typing, put ink on the canvas, ask that person out, drive the car – just act.

Positive thinking by itself is nothing. What it can lead to, however, can’t stand alone nor disregard negativity. However, it can utterly empower you.

You can’t ignore the bad stuff

Positive thinking is frequently the root of toxic positivity. That’s because it’s often associated with the idea that positive thinking, all by itself, removes negativity from the world.

The truth is that it can’t. The bad stuff is going to happen. Relationships end, jobs are lost, fascists con people into electing them, people die, and so on and so forth. Bad stuff can, will, and does happen, no matter what you do.

Why? Because change is the one and only constant in the Universe, and you have nearly ZERO control over any of it. Positive thinking doesn’t alter that.

However, positive thinking does open you to potential, possibility, and abundance. This, in turn, empowers you, and you can make choices and decisions for you and your life to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.

Positivity and positive thinking are tools that can help you live your life every day. What you do with them, or not, is up to you. It is wholly your choices and decisions to use positivity for empowerment and experience what that can do for you.

Recognizing the difference between positivity and positive thinking isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that positive thinking in and of itself can do very little, you can add feeling, intent, approach, and action to choose positivity in what you do. Knowing that this is a key element of mindfulness and choosing who, what, where, how, and why to be, you can use this to continually better your life experience.

This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.

Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred-and-sixty-fourth (564) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.

Please visit here to explore all my published works – both fiction and non-fiction.

The post Positivity and Positive Thinking Are Not the Same appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

New Space, Same Shit

A change of scenery is not a magic bullet.Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

My wife and I have just moved into a new home. Despite incredibly uncertain times, political insanity across the country, an insane economy, and all else, we bought a house.

For the first time in more than a decade, my office space is wholly my own (as in not limited by being a rented apartment space or a shared space in the home). As part of that, before moving in, I painted it my favorite shade of blue.

I have read that blue is one of the best colors for productivity. So, bonus! In the space where I do nearly all my work, being enfolded in my favorite color with the extra value of increased productivity is a huge win.

So, why is nothing coming to me for this weekly post?

I’ve spent almost two hours in front of my keyboard pondering a topic. That was getting me nowhere. So, I read some other blogs to see if they inspired me. Nope. I took a shower. That made me feel a bit better, but still nothing.

New space, same shit.

Ah, but there is a lesson here. The lesson is this – It all comes from within.

No matter what “it” is, the origin is inside me. New space, same shit, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s still an opportunity.

The minimal impact of environment

I have read countless stories from other writers and creatives along this line. They spent a lot of time and energy creating the perfect space, the best environment they could to spark their creativity. To do this, they got the right desk, the best chair, the most thoughtful lighting, and the like. They arranged, rearranged, and adjusted. Then, they got to work.

Or, rather, they made another adjustment. No, that’s not in quite the right spot, so it needs to move before I can get started. Oh, yeah, I gotta check my email. Hey, was that my phone? Let me check. Did I play my game today? I should do that for a few minutes. Then the work will get started.

No matter the environment you find or create for yourself, its impact on you and your creative work is utterly minimal. That’s because all of it, every element of your creative self, begins within you.

My new office space is great, and the new chair I got is both comfy and supportive. Hell, this new mechanical keyboard I acquired makes the most satisfying clacking sounds as I type. Yet I still spent all that time this morning staring at a blank screen and coming up with nothing.

Hence, environment has almost no impact.

It all comes from within.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on UnsplashNew space, same shit

Have you ever gone somewhere to do your work remotely? Have you worked or tried to work from a park, a coffee shop, or a different room in your home? Has it helped increase your productivity and/or desire to do your work, or just been more of the same shit? I’ll bet it’s mostly been the same shit.

New space, same shit. So what? Well, this is a learning opportunity. And the more I learn the more I gain in my life and the more I experience.

One of the biggest problems in society today is resistance to change. Specifically, progress. So many people are utterly convinced that they are being left behind by this, that, or the other thing, that they act against their own best interests. How the hell else do you explain Trump getting the majority of the Latinx vote despite his threats to deport so many of them? Because the idea of the “other” and similar external factors destroying what you already have is so prevalent.

New space, same shit, is not just applicable to the literal, but the metaphorical. That’s because the outside world has far less impact on us than we believe. Yet over and over again, you and I are shown all these examples of how people, places, and things outside of us impact us.

Do they? The truth is that they do, but not how you think. They make an impression, they inspire or discourage, but they only impact you if you take them in and allow them to. Specifically, if you let these outside influences dictate who, what, how, where, and why you are.

To and from without and within

That’s not to say that there isn’t some validity in this. Unless you’re a hermit or live alone in a cave, you interact with the world around you. There are people you might share your space with, coworkers you see and interact with daily, children you are responsible for, and so on. You might not, as such, be totally free to do precisely what you desire to do.

Yet the truth remains that it all comes from within. Your beliefs, values, and habits begin in your subconscious mind, which is about as far within you as anything in the Universe can be. What’s more, there is nobody else at all who is inside of your head, heart, or soul. You, and only you, know yourself.

Some find this daunting. I find it empowering. I can use this to make new choices and decisions to be who, what, where, how, and why I desire to be. This is a regular, daily, even hourly occurrence – if I choose it.

There are times when rote, routine, and autopilot are good and helpful. Yet they are always subject to change, and via active, conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness – they can be changed. This just requires me to recognize and acknowledge my thoughts, feelings, approach, intentions, and actions therein.

New space, same shit is determined by you

This might be a new space, same shit, but that’s wholly on me. Recognizing and acknowledging that it all comes from within, I can work with me new space to create new shit and do things to move my life forward as I desire to.

I am thusly empowered, and so are you. And just like that, the screen is no longer blank, and I feel renewed, and restored.

It all comes from within. New space, same shit is just a starting point to find and/or create new shit. I’m excited to see what I will make from this new space.

What will you do with the knowledge that your environment is minimally impactful, as it all comes from within?

This is the six-hundred-seventy-fifth (675) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post New Space, Same Shit appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

The Power Of Not Worrying About What They Think

You can’t control what they think, can you?Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

When I was a child, my parents got divorced. Because I was an especially sensitive child, this made me question my fault in my parent’s separation. Despite therapy, I managed to cut myself off from a large number of emotions until many, many years later.

I was a ginormous geek as a child. FYI – this has not changed at all, I’m still a ginormous geek. This, coupled with my Jewish heritage and growing up in the Scandawhovian Midwest, meant I was a head shorter than most of my classmates. I also had little to no athleticism, which meant my outlets were nerdy – choir, theatre, writing, reading, and other like pursuits.

My mom, in an effort to lessen my geek-cred, persuaded (coerced?) me to pierce my ear when I was 16. Most boys at that time did this as an act of rebellion and my mom knew this. Yet along the way, even as a huge nerd, I developed friendships and found my tribe.

This was great, as I struggled with friendships in my adolescent years. This did, however, come with a side-effect that still impacts me today. Despite comfort in my friendships, I still worry about what they think.

This moved beyond friendships to coworkers, associates, people who are in the same hobby I’m in but only have a peripheral relationship with, and more. Thus, to be someone that people would think well of, I spent a lot of my life striving to be a people pleaser. This can be good, except when it causes you to crave the goodwill of others and their thoughts like a drug.

Fears and their impact

Going back to my childhood, my parents’ divorce created in my psyche a deep fear of abandonment. For the record, I don’t “blame” them because blame is useless, and any residual issues now are utterly mine to deal with. However, for context, this is important.

When I managed to develop friend circles, they often dominated my life. A lot of other decisions I made along the way were due to maintaining and holding onto other people. What they think about me preoccupied my mindset in a lot of ways.

For example, I was a DJ at the radio station in college. I loved this. Because of the nature of the college town and our station running 24/7, I spent a summer and winter break as a paid station employee. This was cool on a lot of levels. Back then, to get anywhere in the business you had to start out in a Podunk market. I aimed for Ithaca, NY, and the surrounding area because of the friendships I was unwilling to let go of.

This was why I didn’t pursue radio elsewhere across the country in smaller markets and limited myself and my ability to work in the business. That also got applied to theatre, which is what I got my degree in.

Despite relocating many times in my life, I never went far from the familiar. What they think of me was too important to my sense of wellbeing to take chances that might have built better career options.

I’m not writing this because of regrets. This is about lessons learned. Fear that what they think of me might wind up in my being abandoned and alone – abandonment being the root fear – added layers of complexity to my life that weren’t necessary.

What they think of you is out of your control

Over the past couple of decades, with the help of some excellent therapists, active mindfulness practice, meditation, and psychopharmacology, I’ve reached a better place of understanding. What they think of me is utterly, totally, and completely outside of my control.

This has led to an affirmation I repeat daily.

I give my best. I do my best. The thoughts and feelings of others are outside of my control.

Because of this truth, I’ve been working on exactly this. Give my best. Do my best. Stop worrying about what they think of you.

This will probably come as no surprise, but this is way easier said than done.

This society is all about image. Consumerism dictates that you drive a nice car, wear designer clothes, partake in various amenities and rituals, and other things that are all about making impressions of what they think about you.

There are two truths most people lose sight of. I know that I do.

First truth – you have absolutely ZERO control over what they think about you. None whatsoever.

Second truth – usually, when you are not in the same space, they don’t about you at all. Not in the least.

Pause and reflect for a moment on the people you know. Unless you are with that person, right now, you’re probably not giving them much thought. I’m not talking about Trump or the various celebrities, demagogues, or the like who are almost subliminally beamed into your brain. I’m talking about the average person you know, whether friend, family, coworker, or the like.

Just like you don’t think about them unless you’re in the same space, they don’t think about you. For some, this is deeply disconcerting. However, this is actually very freeing.

Photo by Thought Catalog on UnsplashControl what you can control

The only things you can control in this life are within you. They begin with your thoughts, feelings, actions, approach, and intentions. This impacts your attitude, your routines, your habits, and everything else that makes you, you.

When you work with this rather than what they think about you, you’re empowered to make choices and decisions to live your life the best that you can.  

When you worry about what they think about you, you disempower yourself. You place yourself in the quagmire or trying to know what’s in the head, heart, or soul of those people. In the end, you will never know – because you’re not them.

Taking the control you have over your life experience makes your life a lot less complicated. How? By taking control over what you can control and working from your head, heart, and soul rather than perception and expectation you don’t and can’t know.

The power of not worrying about what they think about you allows you to take control of your life and let yourself do what you need to do to be the best you can be.

One important caveat. This is not a license to be an asshole. Not worrying about what they think about you doesn’t mean you act unkindly, uncompassionately, or unethically towards others. What you give to the universe is still what you get back, whether you worry about what they think or not. It is still important to be a good person.

Recognizing the power of not worrying about what they think isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that you have ZERO control over what they think, or if they are thinking about you at all, you free yourself from being someone for anyone other than yourself. Knowing that you can only control your head, heart, and soul, you can be more cognizant of who you are and what you are doing without unnecessary worry and concern.

This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.

Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred-and-sixty-third (563) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.

Please visit here to explore all my published works – both fiction and non-fiction.

The post The Power Of Not Worrying About What They Think appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Working With Your Limited Control

What you control in life might be limited but it’s still a lot.Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but it looks to me like the world has gone completely nuts. How else can you explain the results of the US election and the majority voting for the guy who plans to make their lives unnecessarily miserable?

While this is difficult to not pay attention to, it does put a spotlight on a harsh truth. You have little to no control over the world around you. You can vote, protest, act to persuade others to your way of thinking, and that’s about it. Beyond that, you have no control.

The thing is, overall, you have no control of anything outside yourself. This includes the weather, traffic, the overall environment, what your friends/family/coworkers are going to do or not do, how you will feel when you wake up, and pretty much everything else in the external world.

What do you control? Yourself. Specifically, your inner world. This presents some interesting challenges because most of what you do and can control is utterly immaterial and intangible.

Limitations, the material and immaterial

This is, for many, a bitter pill to swallow. Even the most passive people I know want to exert control over their own lives. This is possible but limited. The limitations, however, are largely wholly material.

One of the scariest elements of the election result is how much it’s all about exerting external, material control. The flow of immigration, deportation, body autonomy, the right to love freely and express yourself as you see fit, the ability to live, work, love how/where/when/why you want, and other material matters are the core of the control they’re seeking to exert.

You and I are material, tangible beings. You have a body, exist in a space, move through linear time in minutes, hours, days, months, and so on. Much of how you perceive the world is via recognition of these tangibles.

It is often hard to accept that there are real limitations to the tangible, material world. This has nothing to do with the artificial lack, scarcity, and insufficiency you’re regularly bombarded with. This is about what you can control within the material world and your interactions with it.

The biggest limitation you probably recognize is the inability to control anyone, anything, any place outside yourself. You can’t make anyone do anything, can’t bend the weather or traffic to your will, and have no power over much beyond aesthetics outside of you and your life.

The tangible, material world is fraught with limitations. Because you live in that body in this world, that’s distressing and upsetting. Especially with all the messages of limitlessness and the like.

However, limitations in the intangible and immaterial are very different and not limiting in the same way.

Recognizing your limited control

What do you control? This is not the complete list, but it’s the primary list. You control:

What you’re thinking (thoughts)What and how you’re feeling (feelings)Your positive or negative approach to things (approach)Your intentions in combining thought with feeling and approach to do something (intent)Anything you choose and/or decide to do (actions)

In summary, you control your thoughts, feelings, approach, intent, and actions. All matters that are immaterial and intangible.

You can’t see, taste, touch, smell, or feel thoughts, feelings, approach, intent, or actions (although actions often apply the senses in one way or another). Yet you, and you alone, can control all of these.

Nobody but you is in your head, heart, or soul. Nobody else thinks, feels, intends, or acts for you. Just like you cannot control them they cannot control you. All of this is within your control.

To many people, this feels horridly limiting. All you control is you? That seems unfair, unkind, and incredibly limited. Is it? I’d argue that it’s not.

How infuriating do you find it when someone attempts to exert control over someone else? Or, let’s make it more personal – How much do you like it when someone tries to control you? I’ve yet to meet anyone who actively is okay with another person controlling them.

What, if anything, can you do?

Photo by Oliver Schwendener on UnsplashWorking with your limited control

Many of my friends are fretting over the results of the election. That’s valid. A lot of what is being planned is distressing, disturbing, and utterly horrifying. This is amplified exponentially if you’re not a white, cis-gendered male.

You shouldn’t ignore the outside world because when you do you cede what little control you have. Vote, attend the protests, stand up for the marginalized, and do what you can outside yourself with what you know.

Unfortunately, that’s all that you can do. Apart from that, and to avoid being overwhelmed by it, work with your limited control.

How? Practice active conscious awareness. Mindfulness is how you gain awareness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. If they are not serving you, you have full and total control to change them.

If your thoughts, feelings, approach, and intentions are making you miserable, causing you to feel closed off and disconnected, you can change them. That is wholly, totally, and completely within your control. It’s limited but not limited because it belongs to you and only you.

Your immaterial, intangible self is like the TARDIS from Doctor Who, way bigger on the inside. That’s because it’s made of infinite, interconnected energy with no true limits.

When you work with this you empower yourself. When you’re empowered your limitations become fewer and further between.

What does empowerment mean?

One of the core tools used by the scary people who are assembling the next administration is disempowerment. From lessening rights, removing body autonomy for women, deporting millions, dehumanizing non-binary and trans people, and every other act of disenfranchisement, disempowerment is the core. Take away empowerment and control how people live.

Since you can’t control anyone else the reverse is true. Nobody else can control you, either. Empowerment isn’t given by anyone outside of you. It is from within that you are empowered to be, do, and have all the who, what, why, where, and how of your life experience.

Empowerment means recognizing that power as presented by so-called leaders, demagogues, gurus, bosses, and the like is wholly, totally, and utterly artificial. Why? Because all external immaterial power is artificial.

However, because you and I live in this world, interaction comes with stratifications involving intangibles. Exploiting fear of the “other” and the like recognizes and sets up the abuse of this.

You have the power, via empowerment, to work with your limited control to make the most of your life that you can. How? By doing what makes you feel most alive. If that’s helping to place obstacles and roadblocks in the way the haters, do that. If it’s gathering family and making the most of the time you can with them, do that. Do things now, in the only time that’s truly real, to have life experiences via working with your limited control.

This is not selfish

A well-meaning friend recently posted to Facebook something where they explored what they were doing in light of the struggles many others are facing. Like going grocery shopping while person “X” is being repressed or walking the dog while person “Y” is fighting to be free of a tyrant, and the like. This, to me, reflects a viewpoint that living your life, here and now, in the every day, is selfish.

Maybe it is, to a lesser degree. It is not, however, genuinely, truly selfish. Why? Because you have limited control outside of yourself. Your control is mostly internal, immaterial, and intangible. Since you can’t live for anyone else you can only live for yourself.

Technically this can be viewed as selfish. But it’s not. Why? Because you’re not living with malice of forethought to take away rights, material or immaterial matters from anyone else. (At least, I hope not). True selfishness is knowingly denying someone something by taking more than your fair share and intentionally inflicting pain, suffering, hurt, and harm. That’s why active disenfranchisement is selfish.

You have limited control of the world around you, save all within you. When you work with that, you’re empowered. When you’re empowered you become a lightning rod to help others find their empowerment. The more people become empowered the less the forces of chaos can control the masses.

That is what working with your limited control is all about. What you control in life might be limited but it’s still a lot. Working with it is for you and not selfish or harmful to anyone else.

What can you do to empower your life today?

This is the six-hundred-seventy-fourth (674) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post Working With Your Limited Control appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How Not To Let The Haters Win

Kindness, Compassion, Empathy, Hope, Positivity, and other tools.Photo by Ditto Bowo on Unsplash

Many people are feeling uncertain, concerned, and afraid right now. After the US election, a party that has shown very little morality, ethics, or basic human decency is poised to control all three branches of the government. They have laid out an ugly, hateful, disturbing set of plans and roadmaps that will potentially marginalize, disempower, and take away fundamental rights in the guise of false morality and other bullshit.

Many people are feeling lost, scared, and hopeless because of this. The suffering they fear is truly distressing, so their feelings are utterly valid.

The haters appear to have won. That, however, is not true.

The haters did not win. No, what happened is that people fell for the con -or- still believe the utterly disproven notion that women can’t run a government -or- that their vote doesn’t count so they didn’t bother -or- that both sides are equally awful – or some combination therein. The real winner was a combination of apathy, complicity, misinformation, and the like.

The haters are loud, well-funded, and believe in a false moral superiority. They might think they’ve won, but the truth is that they have not. Why? Because we are still here, and we’re not going anywhere.

We have an arsenal of tools they cannot resist. These include kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, and positivity. They have successfully stopped the haters in the past and they will do so now.

This is how not to let the haters win.

Stand up for what is right

For the record, I identify as a white, cis-gendered, middle-aged, Jewish heritage, mostly straight male.

Allow me to present the following statements that the haters tend to take issue with. Each of these is true.

Love is love.Black Lives Matter.No human is illegal.Women’s rights are human rights.Human-accelerated climate change is real.Everybody wants to receive kindness, compassion, and empathy.

All of these matter because the haters will marginalize, disempower, gaslight, and resist these notions and call them names – because that’s all they’ve got. Because they cannot truly object to any of these notions, save from a place of fear based in false beliefs of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. Fear that there is not enough of this, that, or the other thing to go around.

This is an abundant universe. Pretty much all lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are based on artifice. So there’s that.

You cannot fight hate with hate. You fight it with kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, and positivity. Don’t forget, ignore, or blindly forgive the haters. Fight them with these weapons by being an ally and employing everyday kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, and positivity in your life.

How does that work?

[image error]Photo by Jason Leung on UnsplashHow not to let the haters win

I care about people who are not at all like me. Skin color, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and the like have zero impact on how I feel about anyone. We are all one, in that human beings all seek to live the best lives we can. We are not here merely to survive and thrive like the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans have a unique and incredible capacity to create and influence this reality.

Some, however, don’t like that. Too unpredictable. Too many variables. What’s more, due to false ideas of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency, they believe there’s not enough to go around. So, they accept roadblocks, obstacles, and the ideas of “it was greater before now” and the like to deal with their fear.

The haters win when they get control and meet no resistance. When they can force people to live as they see fit and they think they can control, they win.

But the truth is that they never win. Ever.

Hate is always a losing proposition. That’s why it’s easy to overcome with reason, logic, kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, and positivity. Overcoming hate, however, does not involve changing the haters and their way.

What does it take? Being kind, having compassion for the struggles people endure, feeling empathy for challenges, maintaining hope just by breathing and living, taking a positive approach to your choices and decisions, finding and/or creating positivity, and the like.

So long as you and I keep giving a shit, stand up for what’s right, and resist the sense of hopelessness and despair, the haters don’t win. Yes, they will probably fuck up our lives for a while, but they only win if you and I give up.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t give up so easily.

The power of kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, and positivity

Haters’ gonna hate is a fact. You can’t change them. They, however, seek to change you and me. While some genuinely and maliciously hate, most are unable and/or unwilling to see beyond what’s right before them from a backward-facing lens.

Hell, the whole notion of Make America Great Again implies that it has ceased to be great somehow. Has it? Only under the people purporting to improve it. Yet, fear of the unknown, progress, and technology shifting the world nearly at the speed of light leaves many feeling disoriented, abandoned, and lost – perfect fodder for control by demagogues and haters.

I am not suggesting excusing ignorance, bias, prejudice, and the like. What I am suggesting is that among those in your life’s circles, practice kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, and positivity. In your daily life be kind, express compassion, feel empathy, approach things with positivity, and never lose hope. Keep going, keep living, and the haters will lose. Lead by example and show those influenced by the haters that what they most desire and need isn’t lacking, scarce, or insufficient. That’s how not to let the haters win.

The truth is that this is going to be a long fight. But ultimately, historically, the haters never win in the long run because they can’t. Rather than fight fear with fear, fight fear with kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, positivity, logic, and reason. You have the power to make choices and decisions to do this. Use mindfulness. That’s how not to let the haters win.

Recognizing how not to let the haters win isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that the actual haters are few and far between, you can employ practices of kindness, compassion, empathy, hope, and positivity to resist them. Knowing that you can use these tools in your daily life, for yourself and everyone you encounter, you can be a force for good, reason, and logic that ultimately does not let the haters win.

This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.

Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred-and-sixty-second (562) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.

Please visit here to explore all my published works – both fiction and non-fiction.

The post How Not To Let The Haters Win appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Choices, Decisions, and Your Life Today

The present is where you have any and all control.Photo by Kristaps Grundsteins on Unsplash

The world has gone from a place of some uncertainty to an extreme amount of uncertainty. Even if you don’t live in the United States, the election of Trump to the Presidency is disquieting at best, and horrifying at worst.

Trump and his enablers are a force of reactionaryism, chaos, and uncertainty. Many threats to the long-established government and social structure are cause for a lot of speculation. What will happen? Who will have their lives impacted? What kind of world is this going to forge for future generations?

All valid and necessary questions. So, here’s the single biggest problem they present. What can you and I do about this? For the most part, the answer is that you and I can do jack and shit.

Did you vote? That was the main thing you could do. Now what? You can find and/or organize protests, hunker down, prepare for the worst, and generally fear what might happen next. This is all utterly valid and nothing to be ashamed of. However, it doesn’t address your life here and now.

Today, as you read these words, all you can do is make choices and decisions for you and your life. Who are you? What are you doing? Where are you going? Why are you doing what you are or aren’t doing? All these lead to choices and decisions which you alone can control.

But what about the big picture and the world and its problems and issues? The truth is that you can do very little for this. What’s more, everything that you can do will potentially feel selfish.

What can you do about it?

Whether or not the awful things the incoming administration has in mind will impact you remains to be seen. You can only prepare so much for that much uncertainty. That might seem horrid – and it probably is – but it’s the truth. What can you do about it? Nothing.

What can you do about it? Vote in every election. Run for office. Support a candidate for office. Organize and/or attend protests, rallies, and the like. Donate money to organizations that can and will fight injustice. Call/email/mail congresspeople and demand accountability and justice. Be an ally for everyone marginalized and most likely to suffer at the hands of Trump and his enablers.

That is more or less the complete list of what you can do about this situation. A large part of the limitations here are based on you being unable to predict the future; think, feel, act, intend for others; control anyone other than yourself; and know all the many uncertain unknowns.

What can you do about it? Only the above. When it comes to the outside world, you are limited because you are not them and they are not you. All the elements of change that come of this are uncertain and unknown. Focusing on that will drive you mad because until shit happens, speculation and the fear of suffering are all any of us have.

Hence, the main thing you can do about this is to live your life by making choices and decisions here and now. Today. Be in the moment, work with what you have, and choose and decide where, how, what, who, and why you are.

Photo by NEOM on UnsplashIt’s all about choices, decisions, and your life today

Two important facts for your consideration:

The past has come and gone. It cannot be changed, altered, redone, or undone. For example, we can’t go back and change the results of the election.The future is unwritten. Possibilities are endless but there is no telling how it will go down. None at all. All there is regarding the future is potential and possibility.

That written, the fact of the matter is that only the present, today, here and now, can you do jack or shit about your life. How? By making choices and decisions.

You make choices and decisions all the time. They are constant, frequent, and regular. The vast majority are automated and relatively small. When you get out of bed, how you brush your teeth, what hand you use to zip up your pants, and the like are choices and decisions that are mostly done on autopilot.

This is a good thing, because can you imagine how inundated you’d feel if you had to make those types of choices and decisions fully consciously? On top of larger ones? It’s a lot.

All your automated actions can be altered via active, conscious choices and decisions made at this moment. Right here and now you can choose and decide to reprogram any and all of your automated choices and decisions.

However, you can only work with this today, here and now, in the present. While the choices and decisions made now might be influenced by the past or with a future goal attached, they are still of this moment. Via this active conscious awareness – yes, mindfulness – you can exert more or less all the control you have in and for your life.

This tends to raise a question.

Choices, decisions, and selfishness

Making choices and decisions for your life IS NOT SELFISH.

Genuine selfishness is an action taken with full malice of forethought regarding all hurt and harm that will come of said action. In other words, you don’t give a shit about who might be hurt or harmed by what you choose and decide to do.

Implied selfishness that comes from mental and emotional hurt from your actions is not selfish. Cutting off a toxic person, ending an unhealthy relationship, or quitting a stressful job might be considered selfish by those peripherally impacted by your action. But it’s not. Hurt and harm resulting from these actions are not malicious so not genuinely selfish.

This is important to consider because, despite the insanity of the world around you and me, all you and I can do is live our lives as best possible. The present is where you have any and all control.

All you can do is make choices and decisions, here and now, for who, what, where, how, and why you are. Today. In the present moment. When you do this, and practice active conscious awareness – i.e. mindfulness – you not only can impact your life by assuming what control you can of it; but also the world at large. This is done by being the best you that you can be, a beacon and example of kindness, compassion, empathy, and the like.

It is not selfish to live your life as best you can in uncertain times. Frankly, it’s the best course of action and most full of potential and possibilities for not just you, but anyone at all that you care about, be it friends, relatives, or strangers in need.

What choices and decisions are you going to make for your life today?

This is the six-hundred-seventy-third (673) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.

The post Choices, Decisions, and Your Life Today appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Is Positivity Possible in The Face of This?

Non-toxic positivity is always possible, but…Photo by Abigail on Unsplash

I’m not going to lie. Writing about positivity, in the face of the US election results, feels disingenuous. How this is where we’re at is surreal, scary, and thoroughly disheartening.

The degree of uncertainty resulting from this is staggering. Trump made a lot of threats and promises of retribution, dismantling necessary agencies, and further disempowering women, the LGBTQA+ community, POC, immigrants, and pretty much everyone who is not white, cis-male, and wealthy. Worse, the uncertainty is coupled with fear, terror, distress, and tons of other negative emotions and ideas.

Positivity in the face of this feels impossible. Yet, the truth is, without positivity – genuine, non-toxic positivity – they win. These terrible people and their horrid plans win if we allow the negativity of this to overwhelm us.

I am not telling you not to feel scared, bad, uncertain, or otherwise negative. I feel it. Your feelings are utterly valid in the face of this clusterfuck. Yet if all you and I do is let the utter horror and negativity of this situation be the end, the final answer and result, then they win.

Because as much as this sucks, so long as you and I are still here, still striving to live life as best we can, find and/or create moments of small bits of positivity in our lives, you and I still have the power to change this again.

Reality sucks

I don’t get it. How on Earth Trump even managed to run again, after being twice impeached and attempting to change the outcome of the last election, is beyond me. Why the party still backed him despite his utter lack of morality, ethics, or basic civility stuns me. Hence, I feel angry, disillusioned, and deeply concerned about where the nation and the world will go.

I did my part by voting in the election. Of course, when the time comes, I’ll join protests and give time and whatever else I can to worthy causes intent on maintaining and expanding the body autonomy and rights of women, the rights of the LGBTQA+ community, people of color, and the like. Unfortunately, that’s all that I can do.

Sure, I could run away. I have no doubt many will. For some, that might be the answer. For me, and most of the people I know and care about, it’s not. So, we can either just give in, lament what’s coming, and live in fear of what happens next. Or we do what we can to be strong, to prepare to stand up for what’s right, decent, and good for the masses, and to stand up to the bullies when they make their moves.

I can’t deny this feels hard, it sucks, and it’s scary. Reality sucks. But since we can’t undo this or make people be more decent, kind, compassionate, and capable of giving a shit about others, we can fight, flee, or give up.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t give up in the face of bullies.

Genuine positivity always exists

In the midst of this scary insanity, my wife and I are moving. We’re moving into a new house that we get to make our home. That’s still happening even though we’re here, in this fucked up reality. And seeing the positivity in that empowers us.

I won’t deny that, to some degree, this feels selfish. In the middle of this scary bullshit, I have a good thing happening. Maybe there is a selfish element to it, but the truth is that it’s still a good thing. And I am not a bad person for taking the positivity of this and using it to empower myself. Especially when I will use the power of that empowerment to stand up for the people I care about and stand up against the bullies.

The ultimate truth about these people and what they seek to do is that they’re bullies. They seek to dominate by belittling those they believe they’re more powerful than. Maybe they’ve gained a modicum of “power” by their dominance of the election. However, since their only vision is one of dismantling and disempowering, they bully because they know they can only succeed via micro-aggressions.

A bully is a loud, obnoxious, fearful individual lashing out to generate a sense of self-sovereignty. What do these people fear? Change. A world they won’t dominate. Loss of the fake control they think they have.

When you recognize this, one thing you can do to disempower the bullies is to find and/or create genuine positivity in your life. Watch something that makes you laugh. Do something small but helpful to someone else. Call or text a friend in need. Tell someone you love them.

These truths of reality don’t go away, even in the face of this insanity.

Photo by Abenezer Shewaga on UnsplashYou empower you

I know that one of the most disheartening, disappointing, and scary aspects of the result of this election is a clear vision of how seemingly gullible, unkind, and apparently clueless so many people are. As much as I would like to find answers, that won’t change things. You and I cannot think, feel, intend, or act for anyone else. All you can do is be the best you that you can be. Ultimately, you empower you.

A key to empowerment is to find and/or create genuine positivity to spark forward movement. With limited options for anything you can to change the world at large, you can work on and with your life. You empower yourself via choices and decisions that you make. Maybe the world has gotten scarier and darker on many levels, but you still get to choose and decide who, what, where, how, and why you ultimately are.

That’s why positivity is not only possible in the face of this – but necessary. Otherwise, you might as well roll over and accept the idea that you’re powerless because you’ll make yourself powerless. You are still here, living, breathing, existing. Actively choosing and deciding empowers you, and positivity in choices and decisions builds you and your life. Even in the middle of all this awfulness that remains true.

It won’t be easy, but none of us are alone. That is a strength we can use together to get through this.

Positivity in the face of this might be hard

But it still exists. It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that reality sucks, and you have limited options for what you can do, you can work with that and employ small bits of positivity to build better for your life. Knowing that you can use this to build better, first for yourself and then for others, you can practice making more choices and decisions to use positivity to take a stand against the bullies, for yourself, and beyond.

This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.

Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you for their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred-and-sixty-first (561) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.

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