M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 17

How Does “Be Here Now” Connect You to Mindfulness?

The only time that’s real, where you have any control at all, is now.Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Right now, this moment, is the only place in time that’s actually, factually, real. The past has come and gone. The future is yet to unfold. Only the now is real. Only this moment can be lived and experienced consciously.

Lots of people try to go back to the past. They want to return to a time that they remember. Of course, their memory of that time is thoroughly imperfect. Often, how you remember the past being includes your biases and prejudices, and frequently, it’s not at all how you remember it.

More than that, the past cannot be changed. You can’t undo it, redo it, do it over, or in any other way alter it. It’s done, over, and unchangeable.

On the other side there’s the future. You can plan, plot, idealize, strive for, and do all kinds of things to find and/or build a future. However, there are also an almost infinite number of uncertainties that can and will alter the future from your vision of it. Some of these are great, some not at all. You cannot know the future, and while you can (and in many ways should) set goals and do things where the results will occur in the future, you won’t know it until you arrive at it.

Here and now? This moment, as you observe both the world outside of you and your inner being, you can know. It’s right here, right now, ready for you to be within it.

That’s where “be here now” connects you to mindfulness.

To “be here now” connects you to mindfulness and vice versa

The following questions can only be asked and genuinely answered here and now:

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?Is my approach toward the positive or negative?What am I doing or not doing?

Each of these can only be answered right now. They’re questions of and about the now, this moment in time. What’s more, you and you alone can answer them.

While impressions of past events include partial answers to the above questions, they’re not genuine or necessarily true. Memory is a strange thing. Two people can experience an event together and have utterly different recollections of it. One might have nearly no impression, while the other was deeply moved. You can’t know how and where precisely you were then, just impressions of the idea remain.

Similarly, the future can’t be known in much the same way. That’s because there are so many uncertain possibilities, that the outcome is never a foregone conclusion. Things can and will happen between now and then utterly, completely, and totally outside of your control.

Now, right now, is the only time you can do anything with or about. As limiting as that might seem, it’s actually incredibly empowering. That’s because you can make choices and decisions, right now, to act toward your good, and with your good greater good.

This is where mindfulness comes into play. Mindfulness is active conscious awareness, It’s the yin to “be here now’s” yang. They are intertwined, one the idea, the other the action to set the idea in motion.

Neither is static nor still. Both are in constant motion. Motion you can choose and decide to control.

Photo by Denys Argyriou on UnsplashMindfulness in motion

When you choose to be here now, and ask mindful questions to become aware of who, what, where, how, and why you are, you energize the ability to make any changes or alterations desired.

If life isn’t how you desire it to be, mindfulness and the active conscious awareness that generates it informs you. It’s not about who you were or who you could be, but who you are.

When you know who you are, here and now, you can use that awareness to make choices and decisions. That’s the key to changing anything at all about your life.

However, it’s super important to recognize that now, this moment, is not entirely still. Life is in a constant state of motion. The world is turning, the sun rises and sets, winds blow and cease, and so on. Recognizing this opens the way to further alter your choices and decisions regularly.

To some, this idea is exhausting. I have to be here now, constantly? The reality, however, isn’t an endless cycle of constant, ongoing unknown. It’s the power to control your life experience. And as such, rather than I have to be here now, you can choose I get to be here now.

The empowerment of this is so much greater than you realize. You are the only you that is or ever will be. Only you are in your head, heart, and soul. That’s not a lonely or sad thing, it’s a powerful, empowering thing. You know what makes you tick, brings you joy, makes you feel good. Thus, you can choose things both tangible and intangible to work with that.

Choices and decisions when you be here now

Because of this constant motion of mindfulness – hell, of everything, really – no situation is so staid or stuck that it will never, ever change. It can, it will, and it does.

So, too, do you. Change is not the enemy, it’s just the unknown. When you’re mindful, and you be here now to use mindfulness, you can direct, choose, and decide what your life experience will look like.

When you are present, here and now, you are at full power. You’re consciously living, not letting subconscious rote, routine, or habit drive your life. The empowerment of this is beyond measure. I can’t emphasize enough just how much this opens your life to greater potential and possibilities.

No, it’s not an instant switch. It requires constant, ongoing work. If you don’t ask questions in the moment to be mindful, you will lose sight of yourself. However, from time to time, living by rote, routine, and habit is a respite that gets you by just fine. Know, however, it can and very well might lead to some distress and discontent.

When you actively make choices and decisions, here and now, you take charge of your life experience. This is the equivalent of a superpower, and it can make your life experience yours to control. Because the only thing you can control is your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and approaches.

That’s not a limitation, It’s everything. You are so much more amazing and powerful than you realize. When you be here now and practice mindfulness, you will see this for yourself.

Will you be here now, at this moment, and make choices and decisions for your life experience based on that? Can you see how “be here now” connects you to mindfulness for that?

This is the six-hundred and forty-seventh (647) 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 How Does “Be Here Now” Connect You to Mindfulness? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What If Normal is the Illusion?

Maybe normal and normalcy are what’s truly weird in the world.Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

People are always bombarded by the idea of being “normal”. Like this concept is what makes the world go ‘round.

I tried, in my 20s and 30s, to be normal. I took jobs from 9-5 in various industries that were considered normal and necessary. Each of which tended to crush my soul. Corporate America and I did not see eye to eye. My attempts to work a normal job made me shrink from my true self and contributed to my depression.

Likewise, I strove for the perceived normal with relationships. I got in and out of standard monogamous relationships, but they never quite fit me. Worse, I cheated on various lovers along the way and suffered what I called “the grass is always greener” syndrome.

I could give lots of further examples of my failures to be normal. However, instead, I’d like to share what happened when I started embracing not normal choices. When I sought and took jobs that weren’t standard 9-5 gigs, embraced being a creative and writing full-time, and stopped striving for monogamy in relationships and embraced polyamory.

Though this didn’t make me permanently happy or always content, it sure as hell contributed to me having better mental health, living more productively, and becoming truer to myself. When I stopped trying to be, live, and love in normalcy, I found I was better able to be overall.

Everyone has a calling

I recognize that I’m extremely fortunate and that I have a certain degree of privilege not to be taken for granted or disregarded. I’ve not had the struggles others have had, and that’s made it uniquely, relatively “easy” for me to make choices and decisions to not take a normal path.

You might not have the same degree of privilege, but if you’re reading this you have some. Often, privilege is considered bad because of those who abuse it. Like any tool, it’s not the tool but the user that determines if it will be bad or good.

Everyone has a calling. There’s something you have talent and or skill in that you can share with the world in ways that make you content or even happy. Some of these are incredibly mundane, perfectly normal as societally perceived, and that’s awesome if that’s you.

Not fitting into the normal molds of this world doesn’t make you lesser, weaker, or wrong. The drive for normalcy is part of the fear-based society you’re part of. Meet the expectations of normalcy or suffer the consequences including rejection, disenfranchisement, shunning, or worse.

This is simply not true. If it was, then there’d be no music, art, poetry, or tasty food beyond basic nutritional needs. Yet the ideas of normal and the lack, scarcity, and insufficiency tied to not normal are convincing and pervasive.

As always, it’s a matter of choice.

Embrace yourself, normal or otherwise

This essay was inspired by the following quote from Matt Haig and his brilliant work, The Comfort Book.

“Work with what you have. Exist in this world. Be the asymmetric square. Be the wonky tree. Be the real you.”

It’s so easy to not be your real, true, genuine self. Especially if it’s not normal. When you look at the many ideas of what normal is too closely, the truth becomes clear. It’s massively contradictory.

In the United States, you’re told from a young age this is the land of plenty and you can have, be, or do whatever you desire. Then you get a whole swath of people in positions of authority actively working to put limits on that. You’re told you can pull yourself up by your non-existent bootstraps by people who inherited much of what they have or the means to make it. Very few people meet the ideal of “normal”, and what defines normal is incredibly variable. The expectation of normal in New England is very different from the expectation of normal in the Midwest, which are both different from that of the Deep South. I’m fairly certain that all of these are vastly different from normal in other parts of the world, too.

Ergo, the truth is clear. Normal is the illusion.

Photo by Kashawn Hernandez on UnsplashEmbrace your oddities

You are one of 8 billion human beings on this planet. All 8 billion humans perceive reality individually. Though elements of reality are defined and shared in a collective consciousness, perception is utterly individual.

This further drives home the idea of the illusion of normal. Like the idea of one size fits all, normal is similarly presented to you. However, the truth is that one size fits all never fits all, and normal is the same.

You are unique. What you do with that knowledge is entirely up to you. Maybe you are perfectly happy and content to follow, make choices to lead a normal life, and take a path of normalcy. If that works for you, you go with your bad self.

Maybe, like me, you can’t do normal without creating massive discomfort. It’s possible that striving to fit into this mold either breaks the mold or breaks you. How many times will you take this route when all it does is cause you pain and real suffering (over the perceived suffering of not taking the normal path)?

You have the power to make the choices to embrace your oddities. One of the key elements of this, however, is recognizing and accepting that doing so will cause others to perceive you as different. Odd. Weird. Or, in the words of Matt Haig, as a “wonky tree.”

Nobody but you is in your head, heart, or soul. Hence, you alone know what makes you your most true, genuine, and authentic self. The real you. Being the real you might not be in line with normal. There is nothing wrong with that.

Being yourself, no matter how odd or abnormal you might be, empowers you. Empowerment ultimately leads to greater control of your life experience, and that’s good and positive.

Recognizing that normal is the illusion 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 normal, and all its variations and inconsistencies, is the greater illusion than not normal, you open yourself more to finding and being your truest, most genuine self. Knowing that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, and that you alone can make choices and decisions to feed that and strive to thrive, you can embrace the not normal and use it to create the life you desire to have and all the good that can come of it.

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 more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can 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 in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred and thirty-sixth (536) 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 What If Normal is the Illusion? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You Choose to Buy Into the Fear or Not

When you recognize this, you gain more control and empower yourself.Photo by rupixen on Unsplash

Fear is the ultimate drug. It’s more pervasive than anything illicit or prescription you can acquire. It’s everywhere you turn, and often so innocuous that it’s right in front of you but hidden in plain sight.

Sometimes it’s made cutesy with phraseology like FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). It’s often used to sell you anything and everything from beer to cars to services. Buy this, that, or the other thing, or your worst fears of suffering, being left out, and looking bad will come to pass. Most of the politics in the world play off fear to get so-called leaders elected.

Unchecked, you will live your life in fear because this is a fear-based society. Social media, billboards, TV, radio, everywhere you turn your fears are being played.

Unchecked, fear will direct you subconsciously to do things that might be utterly against your best interests. Going back to politics, look how certain people convince you they will save you from the artificial fear (usually of “the other”) that’s ruining your life, while in truth they’re robbing you blind and taking away your freedoms.

This is how it will continue to be, and there’s little you or I can do to change the big picture, and the pervasiveness of this fear-based society. However, when you accept this for what it is, you can individually reject it. You choose to buy into the fear or not.

It starts with recognition and acknowledgment of fear

Because fear is a frequent, ongoing undercurrent, it’s disguised and hidden in many ways. Convincing you to buy that thing you don’t genuinely need is done by playing off your fears. Buy this or you will be considered lesser, worthless, and/or undesirable. If you buy this, you’ll not be alone and will get laid much more frequently. Don’t buy this and suffer.

It’s highly insidious. It’s also quite clever. That’s why it goes on and on unrecognized for what it is.

You can’t change the fear-base of this society from the big picture. It’s far too big. You can, however, change if you buy into it or not.

The first step in that process is to recognize this fear-based society. Recognize all the ways that fear is fed to you, virtually intravenously. You start by recognizing that fear is everywhere, and almost entirely based in intangibles (and seldom a true danger to your life or at all).

Then you need to acknowledge this. Why? Because you could recognize and ignore it. However, ignoring it doesn’t do jack shit about it. Fear won’t stop being there, ever-present, just because you ignore it. That’s not how it works. You must acknowledge it.

Recognize the fear. Acknowledge it. Now you have the power to do something about it. What can you do? Counter it.

Photo by Zan Lazarevic on UnsplashYou choose to buy into the fear or not

Allowing the pervasive fear in society on its many, many levels to dominate you is a choice. Because it’s so vast, it overwhelms with little to no effort. That is until you recognize and acknowledge it.

After recognition and acknowledgment, you’re empowered to choose to resist the fear. You can’t ignore it, you can’t pretend it’s not there. What you can do is look at how it’s being employed and counter it.

When fear is selling you something, look at what it is. Do you need it? Will it have any genuine impact on your thoughts and feelings? Will missing out on that thing truly lessen you?

In this way, you become a mindful consumer. What’s the difference? You are choosing what you buy or not.

For example, let’s say you desire a new car. Based on advertising alone, you need to buy a luxury car like an Audi or Lexus to achieve ultimate status and satisfaction. However, do you? A car is often a status symbol, but it’s nothing more than (falsely) symbolic.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t buy what you desire if and when you can. I’ve driven plenty of cars that were unexciting, not fun in any way to drive, and that were massively uncomfortable in one way or another. I recognize my privilege here, FYI. Not everyone can or even should buy new. Yet that’s part of the point. Fear of judgment leads people into deep debt and to make choices counter to their health, wellness, and wellbeing. Ergo, don’t buy it without giving it thought first. Think it through before you spend $60k on that car rather than $30k on that other car.

Applied mindfulness is the key to buying into the fear or not.

Applied mindfulness

In short, applied mindfulness is active conscious awareness. By being consciously aware, at this moment, of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, and your approach, you consciously choose your actions.

Life’s always in motion, save when resting (and even then the brain tends to be highly active). Consciously or subconsciously, you’re thinking, feeling, and acting. When you do this subconsciously, rote, routine, and habit drive your life. Fear often drives you when you live subconsciously rather than consciously.

Mindfulness is active control of this. That empowers you. Empowerment puts you in the driver’s seat (sorry for the ongoing car analogies today). This is all about control.

The fear-base of society is intent on cowing you. It’s meant to keep you and me tightly controlled. Buying, spending, and giving your heart, mind, and soul as mindlessly into the machine as possible. It works because it’s such an invasive, constant undercurrent.

It stops working via mindfulness. When you’re empowered you’re actively, consciously choosing. In that way, you can choose not to buy into the fear.

Your example can help others to do the same. Those around you that you care about, seeing you less stressed, complaining less, and less afraid of the world around you inspires the same. In that way, you contribute to changing this fear-based society into one more reason-based.

You are more powerful than you recognize, and that’s by design. When you recognize and acknowledge the fear you’re being sold, you can actively choose to stop buying it. In that way, you use your superpowers to live less fearfully, more contentedly, and maybe even more joyfully.

Do you recognize how much fear is sold to you at every turn?

This is the six-hundred and forty-sixth (646) 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 You Choose to Buy Into the Fear or Not appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You’re Only Competing With Yourself

You can always win this competition.Photo by Boris Stefanik on Unsplash

Everywhere you look, there’s competition. Every election, sport, game, and contest focuses on competing. Win the election, finish first, make the most impressive meal, and outperform the others so you can be the best, most recognized, ultimate winner.

There are plenty of contests out there where it’s all about competing. Yet, aside from such intentional competitions, you’re not in competition with anyone else for anything.

Let me repeat that for those in the cheap seats. YOU ARE NOT IN COMPETITION WITH ANYONE ELSE FOR ANYTHING. Unless you participate in a contest – a race, a fencing bout, any professional sport, a spelling bee, and the like – you’re not competing.

Even in academia, where you have a top of the class, it’s not truly competing with others to have the highest scores and best grades. Some people are better test takers than others. However, elements of academic pursuits do reveal where you can find one true competition. Really, the only true competition that’s not part of a contest, sport, and so on.

Competing with yourself.

You’re no better or worse than anyone else

The next time you’re not alone, like in a store, on a bus, walking down a street, in an office or classroom, or anywhere similar and mostly public, look around you. Notice the other people. Note how they’re the same as you. Observe how they’re different from you. Most importantly, become aware of these people.

That done, ask yourself these three questions.

Am I better than them? (Spoiler alert – no)Are they better than me? (Answer – no)Am I competing with any of these people? (Again, no)

When you’re out and about in the world, and you encounter other people, randomly or otherwise, guess what? You’re not competing with them. What’s more, you’re not better than they are nor are they better than you are.

Sure, you might be in better physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual health, wellness, and/or wellbeing. You might have a better-paying job, more fulfilling relationships, a stronger sense of morality, and all sorts of other tangible and intangible differences. So do they. Nobody is better than anyone else, despite claims otherwise.

You’re no better or worse than anyone else out there. Despite claims to the contrary, any perception of being better is based in artifices. Wealth, appearance, haves versus have-nots, any and all other ways of comparison between you, me, him, her, them, and everyone are made-up bullshit. They’re false ideas intent on causing division, false competition, and to keep the world unbalanced.

Along this line, you’re not competing with anyone else.

You’re only competing with yourself

Let’s go back to academia. The truth of placement in any given class has nothing to do with competing for grades between people (not in general). The only person you’re competing with when it comes to grades is yourself.

To be fair, there are plenty of examples between students of different backgrounds, better and worse schools and education systems, environments, and so on. Realistically, however, the difference between an ‘A’ student and a ‘B’ student is not in how they’re competing with one another, but with themselves.

When I was a student in high school and college, effort determined my grades. Minimal effort for me was regular attendance, enough study to pass tests, and unless the topic was of immense interest to me, giving enough effort to be well above ‘C’ level work.

I passed high school with a solid, mid-range ‘B’. However, I could have been an ‘A’ student. However, the drive to compete with myself and score higher was not sufficiently present. Had I applied myself more, given more time and effort to my studies, and cut back on having a social life and other extracurricular activities like choir and theatre, I could have had an ‘A’ average.

This had nothing to do with anyone else. It wasn’t a result of competition between me and other students. I was only competing with myself. For most people in school, that’s the reality you face.

The funny thing is, once you leave academia and move into jobs and “real life” situations, lots of forces tell you both blatantly and subtly about all the competition you’re in now. Except, the truth is, you’re still only competing with yourself.

Photo by Rafay Ansari on UnsplashThe lies of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency

Did you have a parent or other relative who told you that “money doesn’t grow on trees?” Have you seen various messages about how there are not enough jobs, workers, homes, resources, and so and so forth in this place or that? Have you been told that “they” are going to take your money, your job, your way of life, and worse?

All of these messages are tied to lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. Here’s the most shocking truth of this. All of these messages are bullshit.

The vast majority of what you’re told is in limited supply, is lacking, insufficient, or is otherwise scarce, isn’t. That’s because most of these notions are completely artificial and made to empower some while disempowering others, provide a false sense of power and security to a select few, and sell you and me shit we might or might not need.

Often, these lacking, scarce, and insufficient things get tied to competition. Worse, competition between abstract ideas of people that are just as much bullshit as the lack and such.

Black people aren’t out to wipe out white people and their way of life. There’s no “gay agenda” to end heterosexuality, marriage, or anything else. Having a penis doesn’t make you better, stronger, wiser, or more worthy than someone who has a vagina. All of us – I repeat, ALL OF US simply desire to live lives in peace, with respect, love, empathy, kindness, and compassion.

Maybe some tangible things are in shorter supply. But they can all be replaced by something else with no true detriment to anyone. The intangibles – including peace, respect, love, empathy, kindness, and compassion – are in more abundance than you can imagine.

The only person to be better than is yourself

Human beings grow, evolve, and change throughout their lifetime. Who I was at age 20 isn’t who I was at age 40. Neither of them is who I am now in my early 50s.

In many ways, over time, I’ve taken steps and done things to be better than I used to be. For example, I’ve been working with mindfulness, positivity, and conscious reality creation to be more whole, complete, content, and to be in control of my life experience. This has included nothing to get better than anyone around me. I have, however, needed to be better than myself.

It’s not really competing to improve who you are, how you treat others, and what you do or don’t do. Maybe for some people, they want to compete with their prior self to make themselves even better. That’s not competing with anyone else but yourself.

What that looks like for you isn’t what it might look like for me. You and I come from different families, backgrounds, environments, experiences, and on and on. Similarities may exist, but you and I aren’t the same. That’s another reason why you’re not competing with me nor I with you.

When all is said and done, this is an amazing, positive thing. Why? Because it means you’re not competing for resources, tangibles, intangibles, or any of the things you truly need to live. You’re only competing with yourself, to be more genuine as you and whatever that looks like for you. You are worthy and deserving of this. That’s part of life, and what it means to live it.

You can always win this competition, often just by showing up.

Recognizing that you’re only competing with yourself 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 – unless it’s a contest, playing a sport, or the like – you’re not competing with anyone but yourself, you can focus on the intangibles that truly matter. Knowing that you’re not competing with others, you can put the effort towards yourself and your life, and apply more kindness, compassion, empathy, and the like – within and without – to better most anything, without competing against anyone else.

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 more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can 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 in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred and thirty-fifth (535) 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 You’re Only Competing With Yourself appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Am I In An Open Cell But Unable to Leave It?

This is all about trauma, change, and the reality of what comfort zones are.Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash

Life is crazy. So much is happening out there, is it any wonder we’re all losing our minds?

Here’s my personal dilemma. My therapist and I have seen numerous ways that I’ve improved my life. Overall, I’m in a really good place. Yet, for some reason, I feel stuck.

The reason? Because somewhere in the back of my brain, I feel like I’m missing something. What is it? I’m missing the troubles. The problems. Issues with this, that, or the other thing that have always seemed to be ongoing in my life.

In other words, my life is stable, and I haven’t the foggiest idea what to do with that. It’s like I subconsciously need the challenges, the drama, the issues, and the troubles. Because without them I’m feeling oddly stuck.

What’s that all about?

Trauma is a thing

The truth is that I’ve spent most of my adult life in combat mode. I’ve fought depression. There have been many struggles finding and keeping jobs (and getting paid anywhere near what I’m worth). During most of my 20s and 30s, I moved through a lot of relationships and attempted to put my polyamorous, square-peg self into a monogamous round-hole box. Then, if that’s not nearly enough entertainment, I’ve struggled with my weight, self-worth, and working on balancing my emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical health, wellness, and wellbeing.

In the past 15 years or so, things have shifted. A lot. A great deal of the instability has been stabilized. I’ve made a ton of progress in understanding the raw elements of my emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical health. By embracing being wired for polyamory rather than monogamy, I’ve established far more balanced and substantial relationships, including an incredible marriage. I stopped trying to work inside the corporate America model and found jobs more in line with my skillsets and temperament while pursuing my art as a sci-fi and fantasy author.

This has had its ups and downs. There have still been struggles along the way. Yet overall, here I am, balanced and largely perfectly okay and in a good place mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. Room for improvement remains, but that’s life, really.

However, despite more than a decade of greater stability, the three prior decades of my adult life in struggle have created trauma. While I’m in a good place overall, the trauma of the past struggles is still manifesting itself. This is what’s caused me to feel like I’m in an open cell that I can’t leave.

Why? The cell is a comfort zone.

The open cell is a comfort zone

Comfort zone is an inaccurate term. That’s because, though it implies comfort, mostly the zone is one of familiarity. You know it, what’s within it, how it works, and all that you can expect from this zone.

It’s comfortable only because it’s familiar. When faced with the uncertain and the unfamiliar, having a comfort zone can and will make you feel stabler and better overall.

The problem is that from within your comfort zone, your growth is massively limited. That’s because to grow, evolve, and command change, you must be willing to move into the uncomfortable.

This is the ultimate open cell you can’t leave. Or more realistically, are afraid to leave because outside of it is the unknown.

As I’ve come to this place where my life is largely stable and untroubled overall, fully partaking of it requires me to step out of my comfort zone.

Look at that, it’s an open cell. I’m only unable to leave it so long as I believe that to be how it is.

Guess what the key to leaving the open cell is?

Photo by Katie Wallace on UnsplashApplied mindfulness

The powers that be, on many levels of society, prefer that you and I live as subconsciously as possible. Get into habit, rote, and routine, follow the masses, and be a cog in the machine.

The expectations of society overall are like a warm blanket on a chilly night. The comfort they represent is desirable and appealing. That is until you realize you’re allergic to the material of the blanket.

It’s not a bad allergy, you think. My nose always ran a little, now it’s running a lot. That’s fine. This is one of many lies “they” would like you to accept and embrace. It’s familiar, it seems comforting, but it’s not.

What can you do? Practice active conscious awareness. Mindfulness is being actively aware, here and now, of your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and choice of a positive or negative approach. That present awareness opens the way for you to see not how it should be, or how “they” desire it to be, but how it is.

This, however, can be really disconcerting. Particularly if you have been practicing mindfulness with a modicum of success. For example, via that practice, you’ve also made active choices and decisions for how to live your life, your way.

This is why I write fiction full-time, hold two part-time jobs as a jack-of-many-trades for a pair of entrepreneurs, fight with swords as a hobby, and have an incredible polyamorous relationship with my wife. Many of the steps to go to these places disregarded the norm or expectations almost completely.

Even with these choices, I still find myself in an open cell representing a comfort zone that’s holding me back.

How do I leave the open cell?

One foot in front of the other. To quote Lao Tzu,

“The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.”

The first step is to recognize that I’m in a cell. The second step is to recognize that it is, in fact, open. Then, the third step is to acknowledge this. Skipping acknowledgment is the equivalent of recognizing that the first step out the door is a 2-foot drop, but not taking that into account when you take the step.

After recognition and acknowledgment, the fourth step is to leave the open cell. There is, however, an important bit to keep in mind here. Why?

What is my why behind leaving the open cell? To leave a familiar but not comfortable place is a good answer, but still doesn’t explore the next part. Where am I leaving the open cell to get to?

That’s the tough part. It requires that I strike a balance between where I am, here and now, and where I desire to be. To get from here to there, steps must be taken. You can rarely go from place to place with a single step.

Ergo, leaving the open cell with a direction in mind is all you need.

I know that this open cell I’ve been unable to leave is the remnants of old trauma. It’s comfortable only because it’s familiar. Hence, I recognize it, acknowledge it, and am lifting a foot to step out of it. That’s what this essay has been all about.

Thanks for reading. Have you ever found yourself in an open cell you had a difficult time leaving?

This is the six-hundred and forty-fifth (645) 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 Am I In An Open Cell But Unable to Leave It? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

It’s Bad, But How Bad Is It?

It certainly feels bad, but all is not as it seems.Photo by MJ Blehart

It’s impossible not to recognize that things are bad in many ways for many people. On a big-picture level, there’s the awfulness of the current state of the Israel/Palestine dispute, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, a United States Supreme Court that cares more about the religious beliefs of a few over science, not to mention a candidate for President who should be in prison for a lot of super blatant crimes. It’s depressing, frankly.

Then, when you start to dial it in from the big picture to the next level down, it gets no better. While taking a walk today I saw where a neighbor couldn’t be bothered to pick up their dog’s poop, garbage clearly just dropped along the path, and numerous other signs of the growing lack of kindness, compassion, empathy, and (apparently) acceptable rudeness.

It’s easy to let these overwhelm you. Look at the news, social media, and numerous other sources. You and I are utterly bombarded with this idea that it’s all going to shit, the bad is overwhelming everything, and the bad is getting larger and larger.

Greed, control, waste. Abuses of systems, tools, resources, and people. A mental health crisis that’s being ignored because it’s taboo and/or not profitable. It’s all really, really bad. Right?

But then, truly, how bad is it?

Take stock of your life

When you stop looking at the big picture items, the ongoing news of this and that bad thing, how bad is your life? I don’t know you, so I can’t guess or judge how good (or not good) your life is. However, I can presume that if you have a device that you’re reading these words on, as bad as it might be, it could be worse.

Maybe you don’t currently have a job. Perhaps your home isn’t ideal. You might be in some less-than-optimal relationships. However, if you have food, shelter, and people in your life, is it all that bad?

Again, I don’t know you or your life. However, when you look at it from a matter of basic necessities, is your life bad? Do you have food, clothing, shelter? Maybe not, and if that’s the case I hope you can get help. However, if you aren’t homeless, naked, and starving, maybe your life isn’t so bad overall.

Whatever your circumstances may be, odds are that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad. As bad as the outside pictures are, the inside might be far more benign. Your life might be stagnant or in motion, it might be great, just okay, or have issues. Yet when compared to the outside ideas of it all being really bad, is it so bad?

Take stock of your life. Assess who, what, where, how, and why you are. In light of the picture of a world going bad, is your life also that bad?

Keep this in mind – there is always room for improvement. That’s part of life. You grow, evolve, learn, change. What you desire in your 20s tends not to be what you desire in your 40s. That’s normal.

How do you take stock of your life? Employ mindfulness.

Mindfulness shows how bad it is – or not

Mindfulness, in this context, is active conscious awareness. It’s all about being aware, in this present moment, of your inner being.

Becoming mindful is easy. All you need to do is ask and answer, here and now, questions like,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?Is my approach positive or negative?What am I doing or not doing?

Each of these questions, answered in the present, informs you about your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self. That lets you connect to your subconscious mind. This lets you get a good look at your values, beliefs, habits, and more. From there, you can make choices and decisions to change anything not suiting you.

What’s more, these questions show where your life is or isn’t bad, and how bad it is – or not. This is, of course, utterly subjective. What you might consider bad I might consider nothing or truly abysmal – and everything in between.

You, and you alone, know what works and doesn’t work for you and your life. That’s because you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul. I can’t tell you who, what, where, how, or why to be. You can’t tell me, either.

A great many of the outside pictures of the bad of the world are truly bad, yes. However, many are also exaggerated, emphasized from a certain bias, and/or allowed to spread misinformation because it makes the narrative sell things.

The only way you can change anything at all on any level is by starting with yourself.

Photo by Jose Vazquez on UnsplashThis is not selfish

You are the only you that there is. You’re one of a kind, unique, worthy, and deserving of living your life how you desire to. It’s not selfish to turn inwards, be mindful, and live your life while bad things are happening in the world.

Planet Earth has over 578 million square miles of space, 8 billion human beings, and a mind-numbing number of insects and other animals. Given these truly vast numbers, the truth of this is that bad things can, will, do, and will always happen. This will always be so.

For every birth, there’s a death. For every firing, a new job is started. With every home being moved into, another is being evacuated due to fire, flood, or other disaster. That’s the way it works. The world is as full of shit as it is of Shinola.

Ergo, focusing on the negativity and bad is just as destructive to your mindset/headspace/psyche self as ignoring it completely. This is where toxic positivity gets it wrong. You can’t ignore the bad. It simply is.

Finding your good, even in the bad, is not selfish. Seeking positivity in the face of negativity is not selfish. It’s a choice. That choice is intent on not letting the negativity of this fear-based society and the bad overwhelm you. This is not selfish.

Yeah, it’s bad. However, is it all that bad for you? Probably not (though it might be). It’s okay if it’s not. You’re not a bad person or a selfish person if your life isn’t so bad.

The more you and I recognize and work with this, the more we can turn the narrative from fear-based to reason-based. That seems like a worthwhile endeavor to me. How about it?

Seeing that it’s bad – but maybe not that bad – 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 bad things can, do, and will happen, you can work with this to focus on your life and do what you can to lessen any bad that’s happening within it. Knowing that you’re not selfish if your life is not bad, even in the face of overwhelming bad things in the world around you, you can use that to help others see the same and shift the way you and those around you approach your lives.

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 more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can 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 in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred and thirty-fourth (534) 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 It’s Bad, But How Bad Is It? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

“They” Don’t Care About You and Me

Mindfulness empowers you and me to care and make real change in the world.Photo by Ignacio Ceballos on Unsplash

Big business. Government. Religion. Each of these entities, separately and combined, are the “they” of the world around you and me. Each uses money, fear, faux-power, influence, and the bully pulpit to sway you and me to their ideals, buy their products, elect their officials, accept their morality, and the like.

This is both subtle and blatant. Big business tends to be blatant, utilizing advertising to play on your fears, sell sex, and convince you and me that our lives are lacking without the product or service they’re selling. Government is both, creating false narratives around “us” versus “them”, pitting liberals against conservatives while picking the pockets of both in a variety of blatant and subtle ways. Religion tends to be more subtle, implying the displeasure of the Almighty and suffering in an afterlife that may or may not exist. Sin against the almighty and there will be consequences.

Then you get manipulated into arguments, fights, and wars over which religious entity, government, and/or business has it right.

There is, however, one inescapable truth about all of these entities. The “they” that they are. It’s this: “They” don’t care about you and me.

The proof that “they” don’t care about you and me is obvious

When you look at each entity individually, it’s clear where they stand, and that they care about themselves, but not you and me as anything but a means to their ends.

Business

Big business is the easiest to prove. Profit margins and making money for the leadership and executives of the business, as well as the shareholder investors, is the primary goal. This has become bloated beyond reason in so many ways.

People no longer recognize that profit is money made above and beyond any and all operating costs. Any widget has a cost in materials, labor, advertising, and so on. Say the widget thus costs $10 to make. They sell it for $20. Every widget sold makes double its cost. That’s profit.

Businesses and individual billionaires tell you and me, loudly, how much of an imposition it is to pay taxes on their profit, hire sufficient skilled workers at living wages, and the like. Never mind that doing these things means rather than a profit – above and beyond all costs – in the tens of billions would only be in the billions. So? You’re still plenty wealthy and lacking nothing. It’s utterly ridiculous when you look closely at their bullshit.

Government

Government is easy to recognize. The lies are incredibly blatant. The one side tells you that the other side is going to let the “other” – whether that “other” is a Jew, Muslim, homosexual, transgender, black, or other not-white male – take all you have. They disrespect your way of life and will take everything away that you’ve ever strived to build for yourself.

Meanwhile, they’re taxing you and me heavily while lining their pockets and expanding their false, artificial, so-called power.

Do oil companies that make billions of dollars in profit need subsidies? Of course not. Would you and I benefit from the national minimum wage being increased and having universal health care? Duh. Which of these does the government give attention to?

Religion

Religion presents a supposed path of morality and spirituality. That is until it shows intolerance for “the other”. When one set of beliefs is used to bully and override anyone else’s, their true colors are shown. They care only about the overarching idea, not individual people.

Look closely at every prophet such as Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammad. They had the exact same message – be kind and compassionate to one another. That message was not followed by “or else you’ll be converted, subjugated, and/or destroyed.” Yet religion has done its damnedest to work itself into politics and business to control as much as it can.

It’s very evident how “they” care not at all for you and me. Hell, you and I hardly ping their radar. Yet people look to them – business, government, and religion – for validation, respect, support, and even a sense of purpose.

What if that can be found within you and me?

Photo by Duy Pham on UnsplashYou and me and mindfulness

Active conscious awareness – mindfulness – is only partially about the externals of the world. Its core is the internals of you and me as individuals.

“They” don’t and can’t know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, your approach, or what you will or won’t do. They guess at it all the time, and they do everything in their power to direct you and me. However, when all is said and done, “they” can’t and don’t know you and me. At all.

The only person who can know you is you. Genuinely, truly, deeply. I can’t know you any more than you allow me to, and even then, I’m not in your head, heart, and soul. “They” are constantly attempting to sell you and me on them having our best interests at heart. Do they? No. “They” don’t care about you and me.

Why does this matter? Because when you and I stop attempting to please and appease these faceless, uncaring entities, you and I can turn the focus toward what we can impact within and without.

“They” love the false narrative of selfishness. Making self-care a selfish act is utterly disempowering. Worse, it tends to be unprofitable. “They” care far more about how much they can make off of you and me than anything else. The machines of disempowerment “they” employ are many and distressing.

Active conscious awareness – mindfulness – empowers you and me. When you and I are empowered, we can see how “they” matter very little in the end.

A thinking and feeling revolution

The only way you and I can do anything to create real change in the world is by starting with ourselves. You can be mindful, practice self-care, and start by focusing on being healthier physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That begins with your thoughts and your feelings. It’s an inside job.

From there, you become empowered. Your empowerment via thoughts and feelings can be shown to the people you care about. Helping them think and feel more, starting with themselves, empowers them, too.

Recognizing and acknowledging that “they” don’t care about you and me is huge. With that recognition, you and I can turn the focus away from these faceless, uncaring entities and practice caring for ourselves first.

It’s easy. Start by giving yourself more kindness, compassion, and empathy. It’s not about what “they” want, it’s about what you need. There’s nobody who doesn’t desire kindness, compassion, and empathy.

Once you give it more to yourself, you can give kindness, compassion, and empathy more to others. It’s a grass-roots narrative that “they” strive to cut you and me off from. Recognizing, acknowledging, and then working from there empowers. When you and I are empowered, “they” lose the false control they seek.

That’s how you and I can change the world. Since “they” don’t care about you and me, let’s stop wasting time, energy, and resources giving them power.

In the words of the late, great, John Lennon,

“Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world / You

You may say I’m a dreamer / But I’m not the only one / I hope someday you’ll join us / And the world will live as one.”

Can you see not only that “they” don’t care about you and me, but that you can be far more empowered without them?

This is the six-hundred and forty-fourth (644) 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 “They” Don’t Care About You and Me appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

The Gratitude Of and From Giving

Tangible or intangible, giving powers positivity.Photo by Igal Ness on Unsplash

About every 6 months or so, my wife and I purge our space.

I come from a long line of pack rats. Not hoarders, nobody lives in piles of utterly useless junk. Pack rats. Both sides of my immediate family – my mom and stepdad and my dad and stepmom – have a lot of stuff.

Some, of course, is useful stuff. Other stuff, however, is either sentimental, valuable but not useful, or a showcase of affluence. I write this with no judgment, simply a statement of fact.

Given these examples, I have a lot of stuff. Some is useful or at least semi-useful. Clothes, books, art, camping gear, and other stuff. There’s also a lot of stuff that’s not so useful. Tchoztkes, boxes of classic Star Wars and other sci-fi toys, medieval garb worn only once a year, and random items I’ve held onto for sentimental reasons – or, more often, because I’ve forgotten I have them.

When my wife and I go through our stuff to perform a purge, we gather everything together and create a decent-sized pile of bags, boxes, and larger items. However, rather than throw these things out, we donate them.

There are charities and so-called charities we will not give anything to. I’m looking at you, Goodwill and the Salvation Army, for example. Usually, we give our purged items to a veteran’s charity.

At the completion of this task, our home feels cleaner and less cluttered. More than that, there’s a sense of peace and overall goodness that comes with giving.

This is part of why the gratitude of and from giving is so powerful and empowering.

The tangibles

Over the years, I’ve come to better recognize my privilege. I know full well that I have it pretty good. No matter how bad things might get, there are fallbacks among friends and family. I’m extremely grateful for this and the privilege that comes with it.

While I’ve struggled at times to earn a decent living, I’ve been incredibly fortunate. Thus, I still strive to be giving when I’m able.

Before long, I find there’s stuff I’ve held onto that I didn’t need anymore. Clothes, for example. Perfectly good gear, but items that no longer fit tend to occupy drawers and closet space. This includes stuff that fit when I weighed less, and hold onto until that occurs again. This, however, gets to be a bit much. Hence, when I participate in the active purge of stuff, I finally get rid of these items.

Similarly, I live outside of Philadelphia. At a couple of points in the city, there tend to be homeless people gathered. Anytime I can, I will give them food and sometimes blankets or the like.

Then there’s money. Giving to worthy causes, friends in need, and the like, makes me feel good. I’m incredibly grateful for being able to give when I can. The main reason I desire to earn more money is to be able to be able to give more.

As I’ve gotten older and studied mindfulness, Buddhism, and the interconnectedness of all, my desire for tangibles has decreased. Giving what I have that no longer serves me or brings me contentment or joy is incredibly worthwhile.

As much as there is to give from the tangibles, the intangibles include vastly more.

Giving the intangibles

When it comes to the material, tangible things in the world, they’re in abundance. All messages of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are false. All you need to do to see this for yourself is look at how much profit oil companies, retailers, electronic manufacturers, and the like are making.

Remember that profit is money earned beyond operating costs. This means if product “A” costs $10 to make (parts, labor, and the like), and is sold for $20, they make $10 for each item sold. Ever notice how veritably everyone selling something that’s in a “limited supply” is making obscene profits? Abundance.

However, as abundant as the material and tangible is, the intangibles are far more abundant. The reality is, most of what you desire is intangible and immaterial. Tangible items you buy largely invoke intangible feelings and senses.

You buy the Acura over the Honda to show you’re affluence, which then makes you feel important, powerful, and like you’ve achieved something. Maybe that’s true, but it’s less about which car you bought and more about how it made you feel. Then, it sucks when the feeling is fleeting and/or accompanied by needing more, bigger, increasingly impressive things, and the like.

What people want and desire most are intangibles. For the most part, this comes down to kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy. Giving these to others comes with zero cost and very little effort.

I can give kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy without having to spend any money or be anyone other than myself. Even better, giving these intangibles tends to draw them back to me. That’s empowering both given and received and creates a positivity feedback loop.

The well of intangible, immaterial things is endless and abundant.

Photo by Morgan Housel on UnsplashMindfulness reveals this truth

When you practice being actively consciously aware, here and now, you’re being mindful. Mindfulness tells you who, what, where, how, and why you are. From that place, you can see what you have, and if it serves you or not.

More than that, you can recognize the incredible abundance of intangibles. This begins by being in the now, fully present in the moment, and knowing what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and what actions you do or don’t take from there.

If you’re reading these words, you have at least a degree of privilege. The device you’re reading this on is the proof of that. You can be grateful for this truth, and from there draw more positivity and things to be grateful for.

Genuine positivity – unlike toxic positivity – recognizes negativity. It also recognizes how necessary negativity is to any given narrative. Shit happens, life deals bad hands to everyone from time to time, and you’re challenged by things along the way. Despite that, you always have kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy available. They might seem somewhat out of reach at times, but they’re always there and always abundant.

One of the best ways to draw them to you is to give them to others. Gratitude and giving from a place of thankfulness is a two-way street. You give and receive empowerment from the act, whether you’re giving a tangible or intangible.

One important caveat here. Giving with gratitude is very different from sacrificing. Sacrificing is not an act of gratitude, because it comes with an expectation of suffering. In the abundant universe you and I live in, sacrificing is not truly necessary, and it’s also unnecessarily disempowering. Mindfulness will show this to be true.

Recognizing the gratitude of add from giving 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 it feels good to give, whether that’s material/tangible or immaterial/intangible, you can see how giving is a part of gratitude and generates positivity. Knowing that giving feels good is something positive that you’re worthy and deserving of, you can employ this to give more, especially the incredibly abundant intangibles – like kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, love, and joy – to improve your life experience for the better.

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 more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can 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 in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred and thirty-third (533) 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 Gratitude Of and From Giving appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Communication Is Never Just Words

Communication styles vary in many ways.Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It’s never just the words you use. Even the written word can convey a degree of tone, intent, and attitude.

Communication is a complex mechanism of expression employed to convey ideas. It’s how you and I can share notions, agree and disagree, and expand (or, frankly, shrink) our overall knowledge base.

Communication can be both internal and external. When you are thinking about this, that, or the other thing, you’re communicating in your head. Maybe I can do this or perhaps I should do that or I can’t stand that other thing and the like. This can get complicated when you find yourself arguing with, debating, and/or contradicting yourself in the process.

That, turned outward, can become even more complicated. Why? Because communication is never just words, and when you start to talk to other people, additional cues and such become part of the overall process.

Sometimes this is easy to read. When you stand there, hands on hips, glaring, this conveys to me, beyond words, that you’re probably angry. Other times, however, it’s far more subtle, and frequently misconstrued, misunderstood, and misinterpreted.

This is why it’s important to recognize that communication is never just words.

Subtle and not-so-subtle elements

When it comes to communication, the non-verbal, unwritten elements add a layer of complexity that can cause tons of misunderstanding. This gets especially tricky with interpersonal conversations. However, it also applies to talking to and with yourself.

I strive to journal daily. This practice allows me to write out thoughts, feelings, intentions, concerns, and other bits that are crowding my head. While this is great, it lacks the subtlety of certain aspects. Especially the many, many intangibles involved.

Whole people are made up of 4 specific elements. One is tangible, the physical. The other three are intangible, the mental, emotional, and spiritual. Everyone has these four elements to themselves, yet how developed each is varies wildly.

The intangible elements have a rather intense impact on how communication works. This is why it’s more than words. Words are physical. That means there is still a mental, emotional, and spiritual element to all communications.

Most of these are incredibly subtle. That’s because of the intangible nature of the mental, emotional, and spiritual. This is also where miscommunication is frequently born.

Words and body language go hand-in-hand when it comes to in-person conversations. Looks, how you stand, sighs, what you do with your hands, coupled with the words you speak convey an almost surreal amount of information.

Yet there’s often more happening beneath the words and body language. This ties directly into the three intangible elements of the self. These incredibly subtle forms of communication are most open to debate and misunderstandings. They’re why we go to war, learn to hate, and fail to show we care, be compassionate, and worse.

Communication is never just words

Welcome to the internet. Here, not only are you almost entirely communicating via words, but also with a degree of anonymity. This place has given the whole world the ability to connect and see one another in real-time. However, rather than increase our closeness, it’s driven us further apart.

Many people wear the sometimes blatant and other times subtle anonymity of their online presence to say things without context. They write things that are meant to be pithy but instead come across as haughty or mean. Thought, feeling, and intent are hard to convey via words alone.

This is not, however, reserved for online. You can be with a person, in the same space, and still misspeak, misinterpret information, and misunderstand. A recent experience in this department prompted me to write about this today. You think you’re expressing yourself, you think you’re reading another’s cues, and then learn you utterly failed to communicate with one another properly, and now there’s hurt.

Even the unintentional hurt caused by miscommunication feels bad both given and received. Worse, it can drive wedges between people because the languages we speak are so variable.

This isn’t just applied to the words and if they’re English, Japanese, Hebrew, or any other language. How you communicate things might be vastly, almost incomprehensibly different from how I do. This is a result of many elements of variation between every single individual on Planet Earth.

Ergo, there aren’t just 6000-7000+ living languages in the world today, but arguably 8 billion (8,000,000,000). Is it any wonder people often don’t fully get one another?

What can you do to be a better communicator?

Photo by Randy Tarampi on UnsplashRecognizing and acknowledging communication beyond words

The first step is to recognize that words are one of many, many forms of communication conveyance. The next step is to acknowledge this truth. Then, the third step is to make an effort to bridge the existing gaps.

This will not always work. That’s just the reality of it. No matter how hard you try to explain yourself, discuss the missed cues, the nonverbals, and the mental, emotional, and spiritual individual needs via communication, you might not get one another.

What do you do when this happens? That’s the hard part. This can end friendships, relationships, and drive wedges between people. At its worst, it can expand outwards and encompass others. No doubt, you’ve watched a couple break up and their collective friends get put in the position of choosing sides. That can lead to some major ugliness along the way. Hell, it can lead to wars.

The biggest problem with all of this is the inherent human need to be right. You and I tend to intentionally or unintentionally reach a justification. Because of this, the drive to prove points, establish right and wrong, and the like causes conflicts great and small.

You have a choice when this happens. And it will happen. Keep fighting to be right. Make your point, argue your perspective, push back. Or concede. Admit your guilt/fault/wrongness, and apologize.

The biggest thing to remember here is that you can’t undo communication of the past on any level. If I misunderstood you, even repeatedly, I can’t go back in time and fix it. This is even harder when our nonverbal communication is incompatible or further apart than any bridge can gap.

Sometimes you need to swallow your pride and walk away

I hate to be wrong. It sucks. But you know what? I have been wrong before. It’s entirely probable I’m wrong about something now. I’ll be wrong about something in the future.

I have a choice when this happens. Stick to my guns, keep communicating all the ways I believe myself to be right, and obfuscate, misdirect, or even lie to maintain my sense of or belief in my rightness. FYI, that way lies madness. You create broader miscommunication and detach yourself from your personal truths, wellness, and wellbeing. At its worst, it leads to belief in demonstrably untrue things. I’m looking at you flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and Trump supporters.

Or I can admit I’m wrong. I can acknowledge where and how you and I misunderstand one another, where I fucked it all up, and the like. Further, I can recognize, acknowledge, and be accountable and responsible for my part in a communication failure.

It takes two to tango. Communication with others is never just words, and the numerous language variables of the intangibles are differently challenging with different people. That, however, begins within you and me.

Become more consciously aware and mindful of your own nonverbal, wordless communication styles. I’ve had a real eye-opener into how what I do and don’t do, without words, can create an incredible degree of misunderstanding, which in turn leads to hurt feelings. That sucks.

Yet I can choose to learn a lesson from it, and by recognizing, acknowledging, and being accountable for my failed communication beyond words, I can grow and learn. You can do this, too.

Maybe, just maybe, when more of us do this for ourselves we can impact the collective consciousness and improve communication beyond words to and with others.

Do you recognize your nonverbal communication styles?

This is the six-hundred and forty-third (643) 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.

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Why the Language You Use Reflects Your Approach

Connecting mindfulness more clearly.Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

Words matter. What you say often reflects your inner being and provides insight into your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach.

Approach is a recent addition to my view toward active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness. Yet, on close examination, it holds up with the rest of the bits and pieces that go into it.

Thought is where everything that makes you, you, begins. Not only that, but thought is how all things in the world today, yesterday, and tomorrow are made manifest. Thought is the point of origin for everything.

Feeling is how thought is energized. Feeling is made of two components – what and how. What is the name for feelings, like anger and joy. How is the presentation of the feeling, like red-hot anger or butterflies-in-the-stomach joy.

Intentis the why of combining thought and feeling. You had the thought, mixed it with feeling, and now you have intention. This is how you make, do, or be this, that, or the other thing.

Action is the doing. Thought, combined with feeling, and given intention, leads to action. Or not. There’s always a choice. However, nothing can be made manifest with intent if you don’t apply mindfulness to it.

There is, however, another factor that goes into manifestation – big or small. That’s approach. Approach is the direction you face on the flexible cylinder between positivity and negativity. This choice of yours can be the difference between all-in or half-assed.

Language is a big part of approach.

Positivity, negativity, and approach

To be fair, neutrality lives somewhere between the positive and negative. However, neutrality has no energy or anima to it. Neutrality merely is, and from that place, you tend to be subconscious, disinterested, or lacking passion.

Think about it. Neutrality in and of itself is a place of no direction. While this can be a respite from time to time, it’s not conducive to conscious reality creation or doing anything with intent.

That’s why approach matters for mindfulness. It goes deeper than thought and feeling because it’s what they are often based on.

When you create with any intent and mindful conscious awareness, approach can have a huge impact. If your approach is one of positivity – I can, I will, I’m able – you’re putting that beneath but also interwoven with your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Likewise, if your approach is one of negativity – I’ve never before, I don’t believe, I’m uncertain – that’s what lies below it all.

There’s a catch, of course. A negative approach can still energize the other elements, but only when it’s followed with a strong intent – I’ve never before, I don’t believe, I’m uncertain, BUT I’m going to do it anyhow – is empowering.

In the end, it’s all about empowerment. While positivity is stronger when it comes to conscious reality creation and mindfulness, negativity still has energy that neutrality lacks.

The best way to know and check your approach is language.

Photo by Ümit Bulut on UnsplashLanguage is not just external

Years ago, I wrote about choosing words with care several times. Words are a concrete form of language. They give names, shapes, colors, and forms to what you’re thinking and feeling.

This is why I’ve also written about using want versus desire. Want frequently comes from a place of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. Desire, on the other hand, gives more intent and positive connotations to the same concepts. It’s a matter of choice of language.

Neutrality neither wants nor desires. That’s why it doesn’t enter into approach. Of course, there are times and places where neutrality is a wise course of action. Doing something to create, build, change, or just be in general is often not it.

Most people – apparently, not all, however – have an internal dialogue ongoing. This can be quite a jumble of information, but when you work to be actively consciously aware, mindfulness is how you ask the questions to untangle it all and make some sense of it. Language is important here.

The only way to question what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, what your approach is, and what actions to take or not is via language. Language in your head or spoken aloud gives you power and empowers you to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.

Recognizing your approach via the language you use helps you manifest anything, big or small, that you’re striving to create mindfully. Using this to your full advantage empowers you and opens the way to choosing and deciding who you desire to be and what that looks like.

From there, who knows what you can do? The potential and possibilities are nearly endless.

Recognizing what language you choose to use 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 the importance of your approach in the manifestation of anything tangible or intangible, you can choose the language you use for an approach of positivity or negativity. Knowing that positivity builds, and neutrality has no energy, language employing positivity in your approach makes you stronger and gives you maximum control to power your choices and decisions for you and 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 more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can 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 in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the five-hundred and thirty-second (532) 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.

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