M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 110

Positivity: Appreciation

Appreciation is an important aspect of gratitude.

Yes, appreciation can be another word for gratitude, but it can also be a separate aspect of gratitude. While one can be grateful for things, having appreciation for them and being appreciated are amazing builders of positivity.

What’s the difference? Appreciation is more specific than just gratitude. You can give and receive both, but there is a more focused understanding of appreciation. Feeling grateful is about expressing happiness with a person, a thing, an intangible, while feeling appreciation is about expressing a real recognition of a greater depth of happiness and satisfaction for the person, thing or intangible. Appreciation is not just gratitude, it is extra-valued gratitude.

Giving appreciation for something is very powerful for building positivity. When you express your appreciation, you open up greater channels of energy that can really elevate a given situation. The act of appreciating is always a positive act.

Appreciation can be for something small, like that person holding the door for you when your hands are full; it can be for something large, like the sun rising every morning. More than simple gratitude, appreciation is a focused sense of thankfulness, it is powerful positivity.

It is somewhat easier to understand the difference in the receipt of appreciation. Gratitude is the simple thank you received. Appreciation is the comment about how helpful, how useful, how valued what you are being thanked for is. Appreciation is not just thankfulness, it is an expression of worth and value towards whatever is being appreciated.

A very recent accolade in my life has made me feel an intense sense of appreciation. I have been told that my work is valued, and as such appreciated. It goes way beyond a thank you, it has been expressed to me that my worth is grand.

In return, I am feeling an amazing sense of appreciation. I am more than grateful for this, I feel a sense of incredible empowerment, and an outpouring of positive energy. The positivity this has created is almost impossible to express, but it is as though gratitude has been magnified exponentially.

I am more than grateful for you. I thoroughly appreciate each and every one of your who reads these weekly posts, and who strives to find and experience more positivity in this world. I appreciate you and your desire to experience more positivity.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we can use the power appreciation to take gratitude to the next level, we can empower ourselves to express appreciation for more things in our lives. 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 appreciative of. Appreciation leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the fifty-ninth 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 167

Your mileage may vary. The twists and turns and obstacles and successes and failures we endure as we walk our paths may be similar, but will not be the same.

No one but me is inside my own head. I’m all alone in here, and I am in control of this body, I am in control of the choices available to me. When all is said and done I am empowered to do good or bad, be happy or discontent, to discover and walk a given path.

I often write here about issues with outside influences. There are people along the way who more often than not unintentionally provide obstructions along your path. They have their own opinions, they have their own ways and paths different from yours and mine.

The thing about outside influences is that sometimes they are good for you. While the ability to gain knowledge inside my own head is infinite, there is only a limited amount of information I have. There is always room to learn something new, to discover something more. To do so is not necessarily a singular matter, often it requires gleaning information from outside influences.

As with everything Pathwalking, this is about choice. When I encounter an outside influence do I choose to let it effect me, or am I better off ignoring it? Is this influencer for better or worse? Does the outside influence serve my paths?

Let me present you with a very personal example of this. I am getting married in a couple of months. There are certain parties who have rather strong opinions about just how my bride-to-be and I are planning out our ceremony and our many non-traditional elements. Certain outside influences feel that our choices of attendants and even choice of theme are not well thought-out, and could cause hurt in others.

We want a small ceremony, and while we are taking certain elements of our upbringings into this, we are invoking no religion. We are having a family-style dinner following the ceremony, no reception, no dancing, and that’s it. This is what we both want, and this is what we have chosen.

If the outside influences had their way, we’d have at least another twenty-five to thirty people to invite, we’d have probably another couple attendants, and we’d be paying more direct homage to the religious elements that have more dominance in our families. Rather than choosing our desired path, we’d be letting the outside influences choose it for us.

In this instance, there is one other influence that is outside of myself but that has been empowered to effect choices in this particular manner. That of course is my fiancé, since this is about us both as individuals and as a couple. This does, however, provide the perfect segue way into probably the most important element of how this relates to Pathwalking:

You may be alone inside your head, but that is not a bad thing. It is good to have companions, friends, lovers, family, acquaintances, coworkers – but no one but you can choose your own path, and validate your own existence.

I know a lot of people who do not do well ‘alone’. They constantly need to have companionship, they talk about feeling ‘incomplete’ or ‘lacking’ if they are not in a relationship or constantly surrounded by others. I used to feel that way myself, and in fact have recently discovered (as previously discussed the last few weeks) that my fear of loss has massively influenced my ability to succeed or fail.

Let’s face facts – human beings are social animals. We need interactions with others, we need contact, we need validation – specifically validation that we are recognized as existing, such as “Oh look, there you are”. What we need to know, what I need to remember, is that we have to each individually validate ourselves, evaluate ourselves, and make and accept our own choices for the lives we want to live.

I may be alone inside my head, but that means that I can have conversations with myself in order to ask the necessary questions about who I am and who I want to be in order to choose and walk my own path. As I stated last week, I need to ask myself daily – what is it I need to do today so that ultimately I will feel happy? I need to additionally remember that today’s answer may differ from tomorrow’s. Still the question needs to be asked, because the answer will let me change my focus so that any intangible fears can be eliminated and replaced instead by opportunities. I should also add here that I can determine what outside influences, if any, I can and should seek to help me achieve my goals.

Because my mileage varies from yours, even if our ultimate goals are similar, the paths cannot and will not be. But you can take my examples and my ideas for the mechanics of Pathwalking and use them in your own path. Or not. I am an outside influence except within my own head. I am working on my own Path, but I share that work with you because I think the how of my process can be useful to not just me alone. Sharing these notions are part of the path I am walking.

What influences do you take, and which do you ignore?

 

This is the one-hundred sixty-seventh 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: Expectation

Expectation is a powerful means for positivity.

If consciousness creates reality, than it goes to follow that expectation will create positivity or negativity, depending on what outcome you think will occur.

A lot of people find the idea of “the power of positive thinking” to be hokey. Pie-in-the-sky absurdity. And if all you do is think positive, but you don’t feel it or act upon it, you cannot generate positivity.

That being said, what you expect will often determine whether you get a positive or a negative outcome. Expectation is a form of consciousness that can and will create reality.

When you set out expecting bad things, such as a hellish Monday, in general you will find exactly what it is you were expecting. If, on the other hand, you set out expecting things to be good, expecting Monday instead to be full of promise and possibility – there is a far better chance you will find what you are expecting.

You cannot think about this alone, you have to feel it, and you have to act on it. Thought alone lacks the power to manifest. You have to feel it and you have to act as if it is. Certainly this can be complicated and it can be fraught with difficulty – but it can also allow you to find more positivity along the way.

The most important aspect of this is where you place your expectations. If you place your expectations on external forces, you have a greater chance of disappointment. Why? Because you have little to no control over outside influences. You cannot live anyone’s life but your own. You cannot make people do your bidding, you cannot expect anyone else to make your happiness. That simply is the way things are.

If you expect yourself to fail, if you expect problems, if you expect to be putting out fires all the time, in all probability that is exactly what you’ll get. If, instead, you expect yourself to succeed, you expect solutions, and you expect a day of productivity, you are on the right path to get that.

Expectation is a feeling. So if you are expecting good things, you can think good things more easily. Then you have two of the three necessary aspects to build positivity, now you only need to act upon this.

Expectation is a powerful force. We often don’t realize that it can be used by each and every one of us to find more good things in the world, more positivity and thus more happiness. We have to learn to expect more from ourselves instead of less, and to find successes in the smaller steps along the paths of life.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we can use the power of expectation to build positivity and find more happiness, we can empower ourselves to expect more good than bad. 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 fifty-eighth 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 166

What is it I want from my life? Where do I want to take this path to? Who do I really want to be?

Now that I have identified the real fear that causes me to sabotage myself, that being the fear of loss, what chances do I want to take that would lead to succeeding or failing? What is it I want to gain from my success or failure?

This is a very hard question for me to answer. Because I have lived so much of my life making moves on the perceived whims of other influences, and because I have allowed myself for so long to stand at crossroads or take minimal actions so as to avoid loss, the specific what of the path I wish to choose lacks simplicity. I know from my experience that I want to choose my own path, however.

Pathwalking is my philosophy for how I want to live my life. I choose my own path, I choose my own destiny. Pathwalking, as stated time and again, is about choice and control and not letting the outside influences dictate my life for me.

I have not just crafted my philosophy out of thin air. I have personal life experience of course, but I have also listened to and read a number of things that have influenced the formulation of this idea. My source materials include The Secret, Tony Robbins, The Four Agreements, Paulo Coelho, The Dali Lama, Neil deGrasse Tyson and many other philosophers, scientists and great thinkers. I have taken lessons learned from these sources and more, as well as my own experiences with and belief that Consciousness ultimately Creates Reality to create Pathwalking.

This is the abstract concept, the framework in which I want to live my life. The path, the journey itself is of equal or greater importance than the goal, because the majority of life happens in the journey. For that reason, the journey cannot be aimless and meandering, which is why we have goals.

I use a lot of metaphors in explaining the what of Pathwalking, but I seldom get into the specifics of the journey and the goals. What is it that actually makes up the path, and how is choosing to be a Pathwalker different from not making such a choice?

Back to my original questions. What is it I want from my life? Personally, I want to be happy. In order to be happy, I know that I want to feel free, I want to love and be loved, and I want to feel successful. These are the big, overarching intangibles I want to have in my life. While the most abstract concept is happiness, I have also identified that to feel happy I need to also feel free, to feel love and loved, and to feel successful.

Where do I want to take this path to, and in setting a goal who do I really want to be? That is the crux, because this is where there are specific and tangible concepts that will lead to the intangibles. What is it I need to do daily in order to feel free, to feel love and loved and to feel successful so that ultimately I will feel happy? This last question is one I should not just ask today, I should ask it EVERY SINGLE DAY because the answer will change. Despite patterns that are repetitive, no two days are precisely alike. Ever. The pattern feels repetitive and lacking in freshness and choice when I do not ask these questions.

What is it I need to do daily in order to feel free, to feel love and loved and to feel successful so that ultimately I will feel happy? My daily needs are not the same as yours, of course, but I want to still share what I need to do. And I say need to do because I have not been making this a daily practice…and it is time I begin to do so. This practice I believe is a key to unlocking and removing the fear of loss that the fear of failure and success has so long been masking.

To feel free I need to meditate daily, I need to give time to writing or editing one of my works of fiction, and I need to remind myself that I am in control of this path. I need to not focus on money, on issues at work, and on concerns with future plans but instead focus on abundance, the people I work with and today instead of the future. I believe if I pay attention to this rather than just let it be, I can remove the intangible and sometimes paralyzing fear of loss.

To love and feel loved I need to tell the people I love that I love them. I need to pet my cats and listen to them purr and I need to consciously avoid gossip and negativity about people and things. This one is the simplest for me to work with.

To feel successful is frankly tied directly to what I need to do in order to feel free. I need to edit and write, I need to not focus on becoming a bestselling author but instead focus on the fact that I successfully post to this blog twice a week, that I have published my first fantasy novel, that I am completing editing on the second novel, that I have completed the third novel in that series, the first novel in another series and still have novels underway in both. I need to view what I perceive oftentimes as minor success for the more significance they hold. I also need to know that because I love and am loved that this also makes me successful.

What it all boils down to is this – I need to ask myself daily – what is it I need to do today so that ultimately I will feel happy? Today’s answer may differ from tomorrow’s, but the question needs to be asked, because the answer will let me change my focus so that the intangible fears can be eliminated and replaced instead by opportunities.

What questions do you need to ask yourself daily to achieve your goals?

 

This is the one-hundred sixty-sixth 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: Lowering the Bar (Without lessening expectation)

Lower the bar without lowering the bar.

We often read about or hear about how “the bar has been lowered” and “expectations are less” in regards to merit, to achievement and other things. We make jokes about how easy it is to “hurtle the lowered bar” to accomplish goals and receive accolades.

While often times this does in fact mean we get less – just look at the American political landscape – this can be advantageous to our everyday lives. We can lower the bar of our expectations without lessening the quality of those expectations.

What does that mean, I should expect less? No, what it means is that you should be more mindful of what you expect from yourself, and where you set the bar for the truly important things in your life. These are the grand, overarching desires and needs we have in order to feel accomplished in our lives. You have to ask yourself – what is the line where you will be happy, be successful, be loved and loving?

For many, those bars are set so impossibly high that they will never be achieved. More realistically, you have to cross bridges rather than attempt to find means for grandiose leaps across chasms.

Take success for example. What does it take for you to consider yourself to be successful? Is it a simple thing like getting to work on time and doing 100% on the job every day so that you will get noticed and advance? Or is it you need to be made a managing partner of the company you work for and earn six figures and drive a BMW? If the former, this means you will attain success with relative ease, whereas with the latter you might be constantly reaching and as such feeling unsuccessful. The former can take you down the path to the latter with daily successes, and this is what I mean by lowering the bar without lowering the bar.

Don’t expect less of yourself, don’t demand less of yourself, that’s not what I mean by this idea. But praise yourself and congratulate yourself for the steps along the way, rather than waiting out a celebration when you reach the more grand and glorious achievement. Don’t make the end-all-be-all the leap across the chasm, make it the steps along the way.

We deserve to be happy, to be joyful, to be successful. We also want these things instantaneously, and that is where we set the bar too high. If we still have that high bar, but we take our happiness joy and success at lower increments along the way to that bar, we can all find more Positivity in our lives. We don’t need to dumb the world down, we just need to enjoy the journey and not just anticipation of the goal at its end.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we can take pleasure in the journey and not just the goal at its end, we can lower the bars for things like success and happiness to better 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 fifty-seventh 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 165

How do I overcome my fears so that I can stop from sabotaging myself again? This is a question I have never directly asked myself before, and now that I have it is time to explore it, and find some answers.

The first step is to identify my fears. As mentioned previously, I have an equal fear of failure and success. However, even knowing that these are the two greatest fears that cause me to sabotage myself, they are not the root fears. No, the root fears are, I believe, more primal than this.

What do I fear about failing or succeeding? That’s the question I have to ask now. What will happen if I succeed or fail, and why do I fear that?

I lose comfort. I lose the baseline I have established for my life. I lose the things that are familiar, that are safe, that make up my everyday contentment. Despite being dissatisfied with aspects of my life, there is a primal fear that if I pull the thread, the tapestry will entirely unravel. If I go after the dissatisfaction and succeed or fail to change it, what if I destroy in the process something I am comfortable and at least moderately satisfied with?

This may be the crux of my self-sabotage. Failure and success are not the real fear, they are the gateway to the real fear. The real fear, ultimately, is loss. I fear I will lose what I have already fought to create for my life, and I fear that I may lose myself, and as such the people I have drawn to my life whom I care for and who care for me.

Why do I have this fear? Where does it come from? I am not about to go into an in depth analysis of my childhood or my parents or any of that stuff, because while that is where these roots were planted it is myself as an adult who has cultivated them. But in discovering that this is the real fear, that this is the root of my self-sabotage, I can now empower myself to take actions in order to overcome this fear.

The first action is for me to realize that this fear is wholly and completely intangible. No matter the people, places and things I have in my life, at the heart of it all I will always have myself. I know who I am, I know who I have been and whom I wish to be as I move forward in my life, and that is really what matters. There is no tiger preparing to pounce on me, this is a deep fear that is in all reality a mere phantom.

Loss is a powerful fear, and it feels pretty damned tangible. But it’s not. The premise of loss is often larger and more powerful than the actual loss will be. It is so easy to believe that with loss will be pain, hurt and suffering, and we will do nearly anything to avoid this kind of pain.

I believe that emotional, spiritual and even intellectual pain can be far more devastating to us than physical pain. And when you consider that this is an intangible, like many fears the have power over us, it makes perfect sense. It is all a perfect storm of intangibles that can be more paralyzing than any physical damages.

Why do I fear loss so much? There are any number of reasons, but the main one is the pain it will make me feel. I don’t want to feel alone, abandoned, discarded, disregarded, empty, ignored, forgotten or any other related negative emotion. I don’t want to lose the people and things I have in my life because of success or failure, because I fear how that loss will make me feel.

Even choosing to walk my own path, I have established a certain amount of comfort I am unwilling to risk losing. As such, I am not entirely walking a chosen path, and find myself at the point where I have to either truly face the why and how and take it on, or I need to declare defeat and decide that Pathwalking is not for me.

Three years I have discussed, analyzed and explored this idea, this notion. I have worked in a lot of abstract concepts, but when all is said and done I have only scratched the surface of what it will take for me to walk MY path, and make my own way. I am not at a crossroads this time, I am on the verge of either taking the leap that will get me to my goals…or play it safe and be a hypocrite towards my own ideal I have created in this philosophy.

Sabotage myself again, or realize that my fear of any possible loss is far worse than the losses themselves might be? Failure and success may lead to loss…but on the other hand what they might lead to is gain. Isn’t that what I want?

This of course raises the next question before me. What is it I want from my life? Where do I want to take this path to? Who do I really want to be?

I will take the leap and face my fear head on. What would you do faced with the same choices?

 

This is the one-hundred sixty-fifth 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: Every Day is a New Day

Every day is a new day.

No matter what happened yesterday, or last week, or last year…every single day is new. Every day has the potential to be completely different from the last or the next.

Because every day is new, every day has the potential to be a positive day. Every day can be loaded with positivity and good things.

It is very easy to fall into the pattern of every day being the same. Get up, shower, drink coffee, go to work, come home, veg out in front of the TV, read, go to bed. Repeat tomorrow. Slight variations will likely occur, but these do not alter the day to day routine significantly, and so we lose sight of every new day’s potential.

Because no two days are ever exactly alike, every day has potential to be amazing. Every day can be new and different, and every day can bring us to new places and new discoveries and possibilities.

Because we get stuck in the pattern of every day feeling the same, we often foreshadow one day from the next. Positivity was begun because I watched my Facebook and Twitter feeds fill up with aggravation and loathing and negativity about the dreaded Monday. Back to work, back to the grind, back to hassles and frustrations and irritations. The pattern made me rethink MY Monday, and thus Positivity was born, to help us all remember that it does not have to be a bad day.

When we expect bad things, we anticipate and focus on them, often they manifest. When our attentions and energies and thoughts and feelings and actions all come together in that negative expectation it comes as no surprise negative is what we get. If we put that much energy into the positive, we stand a far greater chance of creating positivity.

Every new day has new potential. That’s the key to this. Just because yesterday was bad does not mean today will be. Yesterday is over. Just because we have things to do that we would rather not do, they do not have to be horrid, because we can find means to make them better. The universe may give you slippery ice you could injure yourself upon, but it also gives you intricate and beautiful icicles you can observe.

As always, remember that just approaching the day thinking positive thoughts will be insufficient to create positivity. There has to be thought, yes, but there also has to be feelings and actions. If you attempt to put positive focus on every new day, every new day can be full of abundance.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that every new day comes with new potential for positivity, we have constantly new means by which 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 fifty-sixth 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 164

How do you determine if you are your own saboteur?

This is a topic unfortunately near and not-so-dear to my heart. This concept has reared its ugly head on more than one occasion for me, and represents a major obstacle in my works to manifest the life I truly desire to have.

How do you sabotage yourself? This is something I have been trying to figure out for much of my life now, and I believe that getting at its roots is the only way I can successfully deal with the idea and end its ability to derail me.

The how of this concept varies, but the simple version is that I do one of several things. I second guess myself. I question my actions and thoughts and feelings on a matter to the point where instead of moving forward I either stand still or move backwards. I delay decisions so that my choices fade. I take actions that are counter to what I want, and invariably tear down what I have been building. I allow distractions to overtake what I should be focusing on, and lose sight of my goal. I jump paths.

All of these actions and inactions can sabotage my path. This has been a recurrent issue throughout my life, applied to relationships, to jobs, to opportunities missed. I will be traversing the desired path, and as I begin to succeed…I get in my own way. I don’t need outside influences conspiring to knock me off my path, I do it to myself with an uncanny skill.

The question this raises is – Why? Why do I do this, and keep doing this? Why do I allow myself to leave my path or worse to actively sabotage myself? What’s the issue here?

I am pretty sure that this all comes down to fear. Though there are very few tangible fears I have, the intangibles are often more powerful and destructive, largely because they are hard to see and as such hard to acknowledge and do anything about.

What kinds of fears am I talking about? Probably in large measure fear of success equal to fear of failure.

Fear of failure most people are familiar with. Nobody wants to fail, we as a society in fact have an unhealthy obsession with success. I say unhealthy because we tend to point to failure and decry it, make fun of it, exploit it. We are so obsessed with the notion that we have to succeed at all costs that when we see failure we apply a great deal of shame and loathing towards it.

We forget that many of the inventions that have made our world a better place were actually the result of failures. The vulcanized rubber tires on your car and Post-It notes being prime examples of this.

I fear failure I suspect for the same reasons most other people do. I don’t want to let anyone down, I don’t want to have to start over, I don’t want to be proven wrong. I don’t want to feel shame, I don’t want to alienate my supporters because I have failed. I don’t want to hurt because I have failed, I don’t want to experience the bad feelings I have been told by my society that I should feel for failing.

Equally powerful, and in many respects more treacherous, there is the fear of success. Everybody wants to succeed, we all want to achieve our goals, we want to successfully negotiate our paths and win. Our society in many respects has an equally unhealthy obsession with success, driving ourselves to the point where we lose sight of and sacrifice happiness and joy to succeed. We tell our children success is a must, and we have actually sacrificed meritocracy for mediocrity so that everyone can experience success.

The pressure to succeed can be so great that we can come to fear its results as much as we fear failing. Why? Because we see many of the so-called “successful” people in our world, and we see them as being alone, being tyrants, being egomaniacal, greedy and power-obsessed.

I fear success for nearly the same reasons I fear failure. I don’t want to let anyone down, I don’t want to have to start over, I don’t want to be proven wrong. I don’t want to feel shame, I don’t want to alienate my supporters because I have succeeded. I don’t want to hurt because I have succeeded, I don’t want to experience the bad feelings I have been told by my society that I should feel for being a success.

Yes, these opposite fears are in many respects precisely the same. They both come down to how my friends, family and loved ones will relate to me. I want so much to keep them close and keep them engaged that I am ultimately afraid of driving them off.

Whether that fear is based in reality or unfounded, it is, I suspect, the root of why I sabotage myself. I have written about fear and its power over me and the rest of the world on numerous occasions here, and it is not an easy thing to banish. What’s worse is that even knowing that this is why I am my own saboteur, it does not make repairing the problem any easier. In truth, it raises more questions.

How do I overcome my fears so that I can stop from sabotaging myself again? This is a question I have never directly asked myself before, and now that I have it is time to explore it, and find some answers. Please join me next week as I explore this particular obstacle along my path.

Do you ever sabotage yourself?

 

This is the one-hundred sixty-fourth 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: New Directions

You can always choose a new direction.

Whether metaphorically or literally, you always have options and choices as to the directions you choose to take.

If life is not where you want it to be, if you are unhappy and feeling stuck – you can examine why you are feeling negative, and you can determine new directions to find positivity.

Metaphorically, this might mean a shift in attitude. Are you seeing things in a positive or a negative light? It could mean you need to check your focus, you might need to examine if outside influences are dominating your emotions. You might be in relationships that are proving to be unhealthy.

Metaphoric direction is always going to be internal. No one but you has any control over this, but ultimately you have the ability to make necessary change. The great thing about this is that you can always find a way, always find options to make change and discover positivity.

Literally, this might mean a physical change. This can take all kinds of forms, from something as subtle as your posture to your location. Sitting up straight, changing your stride and carrying yourself in a confident manner will change your direction from negative to positive. Or you might be in a relationship or a job that are causing you more distress than happiness, and like a car on a dead end road, you can change your direction.

Literal direction might be external, but it begins internally. You nearly always only choose a physical direction for your life based on your thoughts and feelings. You may from time to time cede control over this to another, but ultimately you have the ability to make necessary directional changes.

What has this got to do with positivity? When you come to understand that the direction in which you take your life, whether the emotional, intellectual or physical, is wholly yours to control – the possibilities are endless. Life often seems to be this closed loop, finite and sometimes undesirable choices. But it’s not. Life is full of endless possibilities – we’ve simply become easily disempowered, and we have been told by too many outside influences ‘no’ and ‘can’t’ and ‘impossible’ and ‘are you mad?’ too frequently.

Too many people in our society today see failure and inability and limitation as the way life is. This is only the truth if we let it be. We can change the direction of our life, and we can choose to see the world as a place of possibility instead of impossibility, hope instead of fear, love instead of hate. Positivity serves us far better than negativity – positivity builds while negativity destroys. Even when you destroy things, isn’t it usually so that you can rebuild new and better? That is why positivity is such a wondrous concept.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that we can change the direction of our life, both in the metaphorical and the literal, we can strive to find new and unique directions 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 fifty-fifth 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 163

Whose path is it anyway?

It never ceases to amaze me how many people try to tell us what is right for us. How many people will tell you that their way is the way, and yours is not. It can be terribly disconcerting, and disheartening.

Believe me when I tell you that nobody but you can choose the right path for you.

There are numerous forces in the world that would far prefer you disempowered, and taking the path that they make for you.

Some of these forces are abstract, and harder to pin down. This includes society as a whole, the local community you live in, your nation, your religious organization, your employers, so on and so forth. It is better for those who believe they have power to horde it, and deny you anything that they can which might empower you. Or so they believe.

Some of these forces are personal. Friends, family, loved ones. People who “know best” or are “only looking out for your best interests” and so on. Generally, these forces are less about disempowering you to horde their own power, and more about how they relate to you personally, and their understanding of you as such. They believe that they see something that you do not or that they are helping when they take such actions, so it is usually coming from a good place.

However, whether abstract or personal, those who are working to disempower you make things difficult. Well meaning or malicious, when people deny you the empowerment you want from life, it can be very hard to know if you are on a good path or no.

The important thing here is to find and choose your own path. Whether people respect it or not is not important. What is important is that you are doing what you want to be doing, and that what you are doing brings you joy and makes you happy.

Time and again I have reiterated that what we all really want in this life is to find happiness. We want to experience joy, and we want to be happy in what we are doing. However, we get so caught up in expectations and perceived needs that before we know it we are either upon no path at all, or a path that we did not choose for ourselves.

The things we seek upon our path, from relationships to jobs to money to respect are all sought for the same reason. It all boils down to discovering things that make us happy, that make us feel joy. I don’t know anyone who does not want to be happy. Even if it cannot be all the time – and it cannot be – it can still be the dominant and driving desire of our lives.

Disempowering things manifest in a lot of ways. It is the government telling you what you can and cannot do with your body. It is your coworker throwing you under the bus. It is your loved one telling you that the way you are doing a thing is going to cause hurt and unhappiness in others.

That is the greatest disempowering thing you can face. When someone tells you what you are doing will hurt another or cause them displeasure really pulls you up short. Whether it is an abstract like society not seeing validity in your employment or relationship choices, or a loved one disagreeing with your wedding plans…these can equally disempower, and they can make even the most ardent Pathwalker question their actions.

The thing about empowering yourself is that anyone who is feeling hurt by your actions is not being hurt by you. As I am responsible for MY feelings, you are responsible for YOUR feelings, he is responsible for HIS feelings, she is responsible for HER feelings…and so on. Empowerment is not selfishness.

That is a key thing to remember. Empowering yourself is not about becoming selfish…it is about becoming self aware. In fact, when you are feeling empowered, it generally follows that you in turn empower others. It is for this reason that I choose to walk my own path, and I write about the concept every single week.

I want to empower myself, and I hope that in doing so I help to empower you. But your path is not mine, just as your path is not anyone’s but yours. Walk tall, walk proud, and continue to work on learning and evolving and finding the paths that will lead your life to happiness.

Life is meant to be lived passionately, joyfully, and as fully as we can possibly live it. The best path to achieve that kind of life is through your own empowerment, and your own growth and evolution. No one but you can take responsibility for that.

This is something to be celebrated, to be shared, and to be constantly worked on. Whose path is it anyway? It is mine. But my path, while different from yours or anyone else’s, is in part to share the idea of self empowerment and what possibilities it can open.

Do you empower yourself?

This is the one-hundred sixty-third 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.