M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 19

So What if My Guru is a Muppet?

Some of the wisest words of wisdom I’ve encountered come from Yoda.Photo by Nikhil Mistry on Unsplash

When I was a small child, my parents took me to see a movie that would have a tremendous impact on my life. In 1977, Star Wars was this mesmerizing, amazing piece of fiction that had so many unexpected nuances wrapped into Campbell’s Hero’s Journey amid spaceships, lasers, and swords made of light.

Yes, I’m well aware of the imperfections in the story and that it’s not high drama. You can’t deny, however, the cultural phenomenon that it began. From that one movie, a whole industry emerged, and you could argue that the current greater acceptance of geek culture in the mainstream started here.

Then, in 1980, the second movie came out, The Empires Strikes Back. It was dark, it revealed an unexpected plot twist, and it featured multiple losses, but without loss of hope. It also introduced a character with a level of wisdom I’d never encountered before.

Yoda is from a species never identified, even to this day. He is one of 3 known to Star Wars fans, which include Yaddle and Grogu. He lived to be 900 years old. His speech patterns are bizarre and unlike any other character in the series.

Throughout Star Wars and its movies, cartoons, and live-action shows, Yoda has provided a tremendous amount of sound wisdom. I quote him often because that wisdom isn’t just reserved for sci-fi. It applies to our everyday life.

Yes, I admit, Yoda is my guru.

My guru is a Muppet

I watched The Empire Strikes Back in the theatre probably a dozen times. After that, I rewatched it first on VHS, then on DVD, and now via streaming. It is arguably the best movie in the series. It was also the introduction of the Jedi Master Yoda.

This tiny, green, gremlin-like creature, voiced by Frank Oz, took the idea of the Force, the mystical energy that powers the Jedi, and gave it a whole new spin. You could do more than sway the thoughts of the weak-minded, create distractions, and instinctually wield a lightsaber. You could also use telekinesis to lift rocks, throw equipment around, and other astounding feats.

How? By opening your mind. You had to be open to the Force to use it.

Before you start to think I’m some kind of nutter, yes, I know the Force isn’t real. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try to move objects with my mind from time to time. How cool would that be?

From the depths of the Force is the wisdom Yoda spouts. It’s not wisdom reserved for this sci-fi universe. It applies to us and our lives, here, on Earth, today.

Yoda was modeled in no small part from the Buddha. Hence, much of his esoteric wisdom is expressed in a similar manner. When you’re a 9-year-old kid, and this is your first introduction to this sort of philosophy, it can make an incredible impact.

This is why I unabashedly accept and share how Yoda, a Muppet, is my guru.

Three trilogies, three wise sayings

Since the first Star Wars movie, now commonly called Episode IV: A New Hope, there have been two other connected trilogies. Each is approximately 30 years apart from the other. Yet in each of these, Yoda has provided some amazingly sage advice with a depth of meaning akin to any other guru.

It all began with The Empire Strikes Back, and the words I frequently quote and have picked apart most of my adult life.

“Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

As a kid, I struggled to understand. How can you do something without trying it? From a purely literal standpoint, my reasoning is sound. When you dig deeper, it’s a much more important statement.

Prior to saying those words, Luke half-heartedly said he’d “try” to raise his X-Wing fighter out of the swamp. That half-hearted “try” was what Yoda was addressing.

Lots of people give lip service to “trying” this, that, or the other thing. They don’t truly DO it. With a few exceptions, half-assed action gets half-assed results. “Try not” means don’t half-ass it, “do or do not”, give it your all.

It goes deeper, still. Action is how we grow and evolve. Doing is action. When you merely try, with weak intent, that comes with weak action. Ergo, trying rather than doing is less productive and effective.

Mindfulness is active, conscious awareness. It is the real-life epitome of “do or do not.” That’s because only via active, mindful action can you control your life experience, choose your paths, and do what you desire.

Not bad advice from a fictional character, right? That’s why Yoda is my guru.

Photo by Nadir sYzYgY on UnsplashMy guru the Muppet’s additional wisdom

As I wrote above, there are three trilogies of Star Wars films. At the end of the 1990s into the early 2000s, George Lucas gave us the prequels.

These are, unfortunately, flawed in many ways. However, the return to the galaxy far, far, away still made me extremely happy.

A slightly younger Yoda played a prominent role in these films. Once again, he offered sage wisdom way beyond the scope of a sci-fi universe.

“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

This is important because we live in a fear-based society. Fear is around us all like a warm, down blanket, and we don’t always recognize this. Advertising sells us shit based on our fears of missing out, being lesser, and the like. Politicians weaponize fear to stir us up and get us angry so that we will support them and act against our own best interests. This all leads to unnecessary suffering, doesn’t it?

Yoda knew what he was on about.

The more recent sequel trilogy, starting with The Force Awakens in 2015, gave us another amazing bit of sage wisdom from Yoda in The Last Jedi.

“The greatest teacher failure is.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned as much, if not more, when I’ve failed as when I’ve succeeded. Failing doesn’t mean we’re bad, we’re wrong, or any other negatives. It means we did something that didn’t work.

Welcome to being human. We are perfectly imperfect beings. When we fail – and we all will – it’s not death or the ultimate ending. It’s a chance to learn. When we learn from our failures, we grow. That’s why Yoda’s right – failure really is the greatest teacher.

It’s the wisdom, not the guru, that matters

Even the gurus of the real world, who aren’t from a wide-ranging sci-fi series, are fallible. They’re imperfect. Some of their advice is wise and some foolish. They might come from a place of privilege or a place of poverty. Some of their personal beliefs might be reprehensible while others are incredible.

The wisdom that we get from them matters most. Especially when it rings true to and for you.

Yoda is my guru because so much of what he says has been true to my perspective of life, the Universe, and everything. It resonates with my values and has offered guidance when I’ve gotten stuck along the way.

Maybe my guru is a Muppet, but that doesn’t mean the ideas he shares aren’t worthwhile and amazing.

I believe the largest message he offers is this: be open to possibilities and potential beyond what your senses recognize. It’s all about energy, whether you call it God, the Universe, the Powers-that-be, the source, or the Force. We are it and it is us. Connecting to it isn’t hard, we just need to be open. That’s where wisdom lies, and it’s not just for some, it’s available to all.

Thank you, Yoda, for opening me to this.

What gurus, if any, have inspired you along the way?

This is the six-hundred and thirty-seventh (637) 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 So What if My Guru is a Muppet? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Every Day You Get to Choose Your Life Approach

This is incredibly empowering for us all.Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Over the years, I’ve made some adjustments and alterations to how I define mindfulness. Specifically, what goes into it.

Mindfulness, as I define it, is active conscious awareness. It’s the practice of being actively, consciously aware of your mindset/headspace/psyche self, here and now. In the present, the only time that’s really, truly, real.

Initially, I quantified what went into practicing mindfulness as knowing what you’re thinking, how and what you’re feeling, and what you’re doing. In time, as I developed my definition of mindfulness, I added becoming consciously aware of what you’re intending.

Thoughts, feelings, and actions are easily defined. Thought/thinking is your ideas, notions, concepts, and the like. It’s the starting point for everything. Feeling is the sensation of how you feel, warm and fuzzy, cold and furious, the anxiousness – good or bad – of butterflies in your stomach, and so on. Feeling is also what the emotion is. The reason what and how are separate is because how you feel can vary depending on circumstances, situations, time and place, and other variables largely outside your control. What you’re doing is easy. It’s the actions you are or aren’t taking.

Intent is how you tie thought and feeling together via active conscious awareness to do or not do something. It’s the goal you seek from the action, the achievement your action will lead to, and the why behind the action devised from the thought and feeling.

All these elements are necessary parts of active conscious awareness and mindfulness practice to get from here to there, no matter what the distance is.

Change being the one and only constant in the Universe, how I am approaching the practice of mindfulness is changing again. This involves approach.

Your angle of approach to life is another choice

Positivity and negativity are opposite ends of a spectrum. They’re frequently compared as opposite sides of a coin. I’ve reimagined this, however, as more of a cylinder, since there’s a lot of space, color, and nuance between positivity and negativity. What’s more, the cylinder is flexible because today’s positive can become tomorrow’s negative and vice versa.

More often than not we find ourselves not at either end of the spectrum, but instead somewhere towards the middle. However, from that midpoint, we always have a choice. That choice is which end of the cylinder to face.

Where in the center of the spectrum on the flexible cylinder between positivity and negativity that you exist varies. Mood, environment, time of day, who you’re with or not with, weather, your health on every level, and numerous other factors move you along the cylinder between the positive and negative ends.

You always exist somewhere between positivity and negativity. However, when you’re not actively consciously aware, you are living subconsciously. When you’re living subconsciously, all sorts of outside factors will impact your thoughts, feelings, overall mood, and general state of being.

When you let rote, routine, and habit do the driving and live subconsciously, all sorts of factors will move you. Some will be subtle and others blatant. However, when you practice active conscious awareness, you take control.

When you start to take control, you start to practice mindfulness. This is where knowing your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions comes into play. If they’re not aligned with your desires, you can change them.

There is, however, one more element you can control via mindfulness. That’s your approach to life. This is not the same as intent because it’s specific to which direction your face on the flexible cylinder between positivity and negativity.

Choices are the key to empowering yourself

It’s surprisingly easy to lose sight of your approach. When you’re largely living subconsciously, you might not know which direction you’re facing.

This can be especially challenging when you have been living subconsciously and find yourself in an existential crisis, uncertainty, or that hard-to-fathom sense of wrong, something not being right, or things being off you can’t put into words. Living subconsciously, as such, tends to mean you are being influenced by outside factors that will draw your attention. Often, these are negatives.

Why? Because we live in a fear-based society where lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and playing on our fears of missing out, losing what we have, losing our sovereignty, and the like are used to persuade us. That’s how advertising sells us shit we don’t need, politicians who don’t care about anyone but themselves keep getting elected, religious leaders foment hate for other religions and atheists, and business leaders convince us that losing some of their surreal profit to pay taxes or better wages is a hardship.

When we’re not being actively consciously aware, we tend not to pay attention to what we’re taking in and consuming via our mind, heart, and soul. Before long, we can find ourselves feeling disempowered because of that.

To regain our empowerment, we just need to make choices. These aren’t big, earth-shattering choices like where to live, who to date, or the like. Neither are they smaller tangibles like what you put on after getting out of the shower, what you should eat for lunch, and if you should take the stairs rather than the elevator.

These choices are about what you think, feel, intend, and act upon, as well as direction on the flexible cylinder between positivity and negativity that you face.

It really is that simple.

Photo by David Herron on UnsplashNot choosing is still a choice, but not empowering

Some people might consider neutrality. Isn’t choosing to face neither positivity nor negativity an option?

It is, but with neutrality comes complacency and disempowerment.

Take elections, for example. People who don’t vote often tell you it’s because they dislike their choices. That’s fair. However, when you are facing false equivalencies, or ignoring the fascist tendencies of one side over the other, you set yourself up to be complacent and reactive if/when shit goes down.

Likewise, not making a choice or choosing to remain neutral isn’t empowering. Why? Because you aren’t exercising the power you have to take control over the parts of your life wholly in your control.

What parts are those? What you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you’re doing, your intent, and what approach you’re taking. In other words, your active, conscious awareness. The control that, ultimately, lets you take the wheel to drive your life.

If today was a bad day, tomorrow you get to choose anew. When you sometimes choose poorly – and you will – you get to choose again. Change being the only universal constant means you can always change via your own choices and decisions.

This isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it. That’s because who better than you should be driving your life?

Choosing your life approach isn’t hard

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

When you recognize that you always exist somewhere between positivity and negativity on the flexible cylinder between them, you can make choices as to what direction and approach to take at any given time. Knowing that positivity and making choices empowers, and neutrality and not making choices disempowers, you can make those choices and decisions, choose to approach life from a place of positivity rather than negativity or neutrality to take control over 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 twenty-sixth (526) 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 Every Day You Get to Choose Your Life Approach appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What Would You Do If You Could Do Anything At All?

No limitations, no restrictions, no caveats, just do the thing you desire to do.Photo by That’s Her Business on Unsplash

Lots of people talk about bucket lists. Those things they would do without restrictions, obligations, financial issues, and so on.

Additionally, lots of people have things they will do when they have enough money, lose enough weight, get that promotion, publish the book, dump the dead-weight relationship, and so on. Get that one thing done, the prerequisite must be met, and then you do the thing.

While many of those things are probably tangibles, like trips to exotic places, visits to expensive spas, fancy cars, new clothes, and the like, many more are sensations. Experiences. Intangibles.

Often, at least in my life, the restrictions, prerequisites, and the like were covers for other things. Fears mostly. The necessary benchmarks needed to be reached are unnecessary obstacles. While these are frequently blamed on outside influences, the more I look at this the more I think that’s an excuse.

Often, what we would do if we could do anything at all is a lot less grand than it’s played up to be.

It’s the intangible experiences we desire most

Why does anyone think that they need that car, that home, that vacation, that money, and so on? Because we’re led to believe that the material things will make us feel ultimately happy and satisfied.

I’m not entirely discarding that material things can make us happy. Visiting a beautiful place on this planet can make your heart sing, eating that umami-bomb burger can be an incredibly sensory experience, and a home with a great view and familiar things can be a source of incredible satisfaction.

Yet it’s not the material thing that we seek. It’s the sensation that it produces. Feeling content, happy, satisfied, accomplished, or any similar positive. There is an unspeakable sense of rightness that defies both logic and emotion. That, ultimately, is what we seek when it comes to doing this, that, or the other thing.

This is where our consumption-driven, capitalist, fear-based society utterly fucks with us all. Movies, books, TV shows, pundits, and a wealth of other sources imply or state outright that it’s the material where happiness lies.

Take all advertising, for example. If you don’t buy that shiny, you will pay a terrible price far worse than the MSRP. There will be a hole in your life that isn’t being filled. You will have great suffering. Also, you won’t get laid, you’ll be less attractive on every level, and people will think less of you.

They tug at your need and desire to not suffer, to experience positive feelings and emotions, and then you buy to resolve that.

The car, the clothes, and/or the vacation can be incredible and worthwhile. However, they’re not the things we truly desire in life.

You could do anything, really

The truth of the human experience is that most of our limitations are completely artificial. They’re built from a false belief in lack, scarcity, and insufficiency we keep building and reinforcing in our culture.

Yes, there are actual limitations that we do have. Some people live with great privilege and more opportunities to experience this than others. There are people in the world with mental, emotional, and physical limitations they must work with and through. However, everyone everywhere is empowered to do anything at all that brings those positive emotions out.

One of the best codifications of the reality of this comes from the preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It is the pursuit of happiness, and difficult to define intangible, that most people give their lives to. Happiness gets tied to everything that they do, and that becomes the central tenet of anything they do. The pursuit of happiness drives society on every level.

Our fear-based consumer society often claims that only via capitalistic materialism can you find happiness. You must spend, buy, replace with better, go big or go home, and the like – or else happiness will elude you.

What if it’s not that complicated and far more readily available to all than that?

Becoming mindful of the artifice

We’ve created some truly amazing tools to connect us together. Wi-fi opens the way to the internet, a trove of information, social media, and free thought that allows us to be virtually anywhere together at any time.

Rather than fulfilling its promise of greater connectivity via technology, it’s instead created greater disconnect. We tune out the world around us for a virtual world, we get caught up in the hype and flash of demagogues and blatant untruths, and in the process divide ourselves from ourselves.

How many times, when you go to a restaurant, do you see a family around the table not talking to one another, not laughing together, but instead in their own worlds on their smartphones? Rather than interact with the people right there with us, we’re instead isolating ourselves in games, social media, and other distractions.

The disconnect goes far deeper than between individuals. We have created a disconnect in our own minds.

Everybody is of three minds. The unconscious mind is how we breathe, our heart beats, our neurons fire, and the minute-to-minute needs of our finite bodies are managed. There, but largely ignorable.

The conscious mind is your self-awareness. It’s your mindset/headspace/psyche self, taking in the people around you, doing things physically, and existing in the here and now, the present. The conscious mind is the human, being. It is how we actively engage the world without and our inner beings within.

At our depths lies our subconscious mind. This is where our beliefs, values, and habits live beside our memories. It’s via our subconscious that we can set routines in place by habit to live by rote. This is how you can be on autopilot and most easily fall prey to outside influences.

Control only exists in our conscious mind.

Photo by Upgraded Points on UnsplashYou can do anything when you start with mindfulness

When we coexist in a society together, a blend of people from different backgrounds, different perspectives, and a wide variety of morality, spirituality, and free will, there’s a need for basic laws. These serve as a framework so that we can function together because human nature at its base is all about survival of the individual first.

Over time, we accepted that in addition to the laws, we needed leaders. We broke ourselves into an utterly artificial system of classes, races, nationalisms, religions, genders, colors, and more. Each has been used to justify oppressions both blatant and subtle, and to strive for control of others.

Our artificial leaders use lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and fears around them to persuade and influence us to live subconsciously. Let the rote and routine carry you along and accept the place that they’ve made for you. Accept these limitations and that you can’t do anything at all because you lack the money, are undeserving, unworthy, and blah blah blah.

If the meaning of life is as simple as I believe – that it’s TO LIVE – what does that mean? It means that we do things to have experiences, learn things, grow, evolve, and explore all the potential and possibilities that these lives have to offer us.

That never begins from without, it only begins from within. Ergo, it’s all about active conscious awareness in the conscious mind.

In other words, it’s all about mindfulness.

Specifically, mindfulness of our individual, inner mindset/headspace/psyche selves. To become consciously aware and mindful, all we need to do is ask questions in the here and now like,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?What do I desire to do?

Asking and answering these, here and now, puts you in your conscious mind.

This puts you in control

The only person over which you have any control, whatsoever, is you. You have no control at all over anyone else. Period.

Likewise, you have zero control of the weather, traffic, sunrise, or anything else outside of yourself. Despite all the messages that you can have more power over this, that, or the other thing, the truth is that you can’t.

This, however, is good. Why? Because nobody truly wants to have control over anything other than their own lives, experiences, and ultimately their feelings.

When you stop living subconsciously and start to apply active, conscious awareness, you gain control over your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and approach to it all. If you are thinking about something you’d rather not be, you can change it. The same goes for what and how you feel, what you intend, and ultimately what you do and don’t do.

The car, the house, the amazing food, and/or the vacation experience aren’t the things you truly desire. It’s the sensation, the feeling, the emotional experience that you’re genuinely after. That’s not to say they won’t contribute to that achievement, it’s that they themselves aren’t the answer.

We are all of us – ALL OF US – empowered to have experiences. In that way, we live and evolve. The reality is that you don’t need to do all the bucket list things, have the best of everything, and take exotic trips to do anything at all to reach that sensation of happiness. It already exists within us and our reach.

The point is you can have, be, and do the material things that make you feel good, empowered, and happy. Just recognize that they in and of themselves aren’t what you’re truly ever after. You can do anything at all because the intangibles you seek are abundant and available to you.

What will you do when you realize that you can do anything at all with the intangible to define what makes you happy?

This is the six-hundred and thirty-sixth (636) 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 What Would You Do If You Could Do Anything At All? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

I Don’t Hate Myself, But Some Days I Don’t Like Myself

Kindness, compassion, and empathy are necessary for ourselves, too.Photo by Dylan Van Niekerk on Unsplash

Today I got really upset. Angry, mostly. At myself.

Why? Because I’ve put on a bunch of weight, I have a bizarre nerve pinch in my left hand that’s causing recurrent pain depending on my grip, I’m a bit flustered trying to decide on a new editor for my book series, I feel like I’m letting people in my life down, I’m failing to live up to my potential, work as hard as I should be, and other stuff both in and out of my control.

I went for a walk to get some sun and try to work through the negativity. That led to new problems. My pants wouldn’t sit right because of my gut, I couldn’t adjust them because of the nerve pinch, my knee started to protest, and I got upset. How had this come to pass? How had I gotten to this point?

This spiraled to a crash, and I was just driven to tears, devastated by my inability to process. It’s been a long time since I’ve been hit with such a deep sense of negativity. But more than that, such a degree of self-loathing. Not hatred, but definite dislike.

In this state, it’s easy to sink into a deeper depression. However, I know that doing so will just make everything more challenging.

Okay, so I don’t hate myself, but on days like this, I don’t like myself. What can be done about that?

Begin by becoming actively consciously aware – i.e., mindful

All of the thoughts and feelings that got me upset were not conscious. They were subconscious notions buried in memories, sitting amongst my values, habits, and beliefs. Lurking, more than sitting. Like ninjas in the shadows, waiting to pounce.

The target? The edges of my conscious mind. So, they struck, ganging up on me like neglected children in desperate need of attention. Old brain weasels and other bits of negativity about myself that hide in my subconscious mind, rising to the surface to be felt and noticed.

Many of these things are half-true at best. Most are not entirely of my making. Old ideas lodged in my head by others, society, and expectations both possible and not. Mostly kept at bay because they’re not the truth.

What keeps them at bay? Active conscious awareness. Mindfulness, in practice, is how I can analyze my subconscious mind and pick at, view, work with, and/or change any beliefs/values/habits. To be mindful, and actively consciously aware, all I need to do is ask questions to identify what I’m thinking, what and how I’m feeling, what I’m doing, my intentions, and if I’m currently facing a positive or negative approach to things – in the present, here and now.

Sometimes, however, I lose sight of this. Things happen that distract me, or something I read or watch lodges into my subconscious, which in turn dredges up these stealthy negative concepts. Or maybe an unexpected pain, indigestion, or something physical brings these intangibles to light. No matter what the case might be, the first step to do anything about this is to practice mindfulness.

This leads to identifying how not hating myself, but not liking myself, is tied directly to kindness, compassion, and empathy.

Kindness, compassion, and empathy for ourselves

It never ceases to amaze me how the most unkind, uncompassionate, and unempathetic person towards me is me. While walking, I said some nasty, unkind, even hurtful things to myself.

No wonder society at large needs more kindness, compassion, and empathy. Many fail to give it to themselves just as much as I do. If we can’t be kind, compassionate, and empathetic towards ourselves, how do we give/share that with others?

Via mindfulness, it’s easy to see the lack of kindness, compassion, and empathy towards myself. Those thinky-thoughts lodge in, force their way out of the murky parts of my subconscious mind, and before I know it, I’m spiraling down. Not fun.

On the days I see that I don’t like myself, this is often connected to a lack of self-directed kindness, compassion, and empathy. But where does that come from?

The subconscious, which stores everything whether you actively put it there or passively do so. Our culture and collective consciousness inundates and bombards us with so much data that we can take it in without even realizing we’ve done so. To gauge that, we must practice being more mindful. That can only work here and now. But it can and will work for anyone and everyone with a little practice and self-awareness.

Photo by Dylan Van Niekerk on UnsplashIs the truth that I like myself or dislike myself?

I’m imperfect. But then, realistically, so is everyone. We’re all perfectly imperfect beings.

Still, the things that I find I dislike the most about myself are changeable. It’s just a matter of taking action and doing the work to actively, consciously, and mindfully change.

A great many of the matters that cause me not to like myself are not from myself. They’re embedded in my subconscious via outdated beliefs and values, things I’ve absorbed from outside influences, and even the generalized “they” of society at large.

When I use my conscious awareness, I do like myself. I embrace my imperfections and flaws. This also allows me to see what I might desire to change, and then how I can go about doing that.

Yes, I’d like to get into better shape. I’m working on resolving things to improve multiple elements of the bits I sometimes dislike. But there are days when the subconscious demons surface and fuck with me. However, I ultimately can reclaim control via active conscious awareness. That opens the way to offer greater kindness, compassion, and empathy for myself and deal with a setback like I’ve had here.

Why bother? Because I’m worthy and deserving of a good life, having good things, and living how I choose to. I can give kindness, compassion, and empathy to myself as readily as I give it to others. Lastly, mindfulness shows that those negative thinky-thoughts aren’t the truth. I’m a good person doing my best to live as best I can but also be positive and positively impact the world for the better, too.

Everyone has bad days. The choice is, do we allow our subconscious to drive us, or do we use our conscious awareness to take the wheel and drive ourselves?

Working with some days when I don’t like myself isn’t hard

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

When I find that I don’t like myself, I have the power to shift things via mindfulness and active, conscious awareness. Knowing that I’m worthy and deserving of all the kindness, compassion, and empathy I love to share with others for myself, I can work on combatting the subconscious beliefs and values that aren’t true, yet some days arise to mess with me.

You also have the same power and are worthy and deserving it employing it, too.

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 twenty-fifth (525) 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 I Don’t Hate Myself, But Some Days I Don’t Like Myself appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

To Live Life, If Not Today, When?

The best time to live is now.Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

Apologies if this is triggering, but I need to say it anyhow. You could die tomorrow.

Death tends to be the most terrifying topic for many people. The thought of no longer being, the questions of what – if anything – might come after this life has led to debates, arguments, and wars. Somehow, we still ignore that it’s inevitable. Life ends at death. That’s the nature of every living thing that we know.

You’re born. You live. Then, you die. Birth and death are, in and of themselves, quick and almost equally unpredictable (no due date or expiration date is ever guaranteed).

What does it mean to live? This question has stumped philosophers, theologians, scientists, and everyday people for millennia. The quest for the meaning of life has driven people to do both amazing and terrible things.

What if the meaning of life is ludicrously simple? I think that it might be. More and more, I believe that the meaning of life is simply TO LIVE. But what does it mean to live?

What does it mean to live life?

More than once, I’ve written about my belief that there are three primary ways people choose to live their lives.

The first, and most predominant, is to let life live you. Arguably, this is what society prefers of us. Don’t rock the boat. Follow the prescribed path, and be a cog in the machine of society. Adapt yourself accordingly to be “normal”.

The second is to curl up in a ball and await death. This is a perspective of seeing life as naught but struggle, futility, pain, and the like. It can be both literal and figurative. Focusing on preparing in this life for an afterlife is the same as making few to no choices for fear of pain and suffering. 

The third option is to take the wheel and drive life. This is when you make choices and decisions to do things, have experiences, learn things, and so on. You apply active conscious awareness to do, have, be, and experience things. In other words, you choose to live.

Truth is, you will shift between these in your life. Everyone does. That’s because of change, the one and only constant in the universe. Change will come unexpectedly, sometimes subtly, and sometimes abruptly. When it happens, it can and will put you off your game. You will be, as such, shifted between these three ways to live life.

They are also not the only three ways to live life, just the most common and easily identifiable.

Much of this comes from your perspective of and approach to life. Do you see life as a negative, painful struggle – or – a positive, unpredictable challenge? The answer might be yes, both, or yes, depending on x, y, or z.

While no two lives are the same, and no two people have the exact same perception, all of us have the same capability to choose what our lives will look like and how we approach that.

It’s all about choosing and deciding

When all is said and done, to live life is a matter of choices and decisions. When you are actively choosing and deciding things for your life, you position yourself to experience and grow or avoid and stagnate.

A great deal of this comes down to fear.

Fear can be healthy. When our ancient ancestors needed to survive harsher extremes, fear kept them alive. Fear was how we knew to avoid lions, steer clear of cliffs and swift currents, and protect ourselves from death.

To all intents and purposes, human beings have conquered the world and its dangers. Most of the threats to us no longer come from everyday facets of living, but instead come from other humans and elemental and environmental extremes.

Hence, nearly all our modern fears are intangible. Few, if any of our fears, have anything to do with death as a result of the thing you’re afraid of. Mostly, our fears are about suffering. More than that, they’re about a fear of perceived suffering.

What if I do “X” and fail? How will that make me look? Will I be rejected, scorned, and mocked for that? How awful will that make me feel? How much will I suffer? What other consequences might come of that? If any of those questions are familiar to you, then you know intangible fears.

The biggest issue that comes of this is not choosing to live life. Take no chances, avoid certain experiences, and keep from coming to harm and experiencing suffering. That, of course, leads to a whole other form of suffering. Now you question what could have been, what might have been, what you’re missing, and second-guessing and doubting because of fear keeping you – and how you choose to live life – at bay.

Photo by Julentto Photography on UnsplashTo live life in fear is a choice

Lots of things can and will get in the way of making choices and decisions for how you live your life. This includes not only fears of suffering due to intangibles, but also living entirely according to societal expectations and norms.

For some people, there is happiness and contentment in living a life of rote, routine, and habit. They find happiness and joy in this, and that is their way of living life. The experiences of those choices sustain and drive them with contentment and a sense of purpose and self. More power to you if that’s your experience.

For many people, the daily grind is exactly that. A grind. Slogging through for the off-hours. Do a job that bores you to tears because you must work to participate in society, earn your living, and so on. Accept that, because that’s all there is, that’s how it’s always been and always will be and blah blah blah.

The current “norm” of working at your job 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, is only about a century old. How we each live life changes frequently. Thanks to technology and automation, the tools for choices and decisions to take the wheel and drive life have expanded exponentially. So much so that many “traditional” and “conservative” forces feel lost and are grasping to maintain a status quo.

One way they do that is by weaponizing fear.

“They” will take your way of life from you. “Those people” will harm you and your way of life. Be wary of the technology because it’ll destroy everything you know. All of these are weaponized messages of fear.

When you allow fear to determine your life, you are likely to miss out on its many possibilities and potential.

If not today, when?

My mother-in-law very recently passed away. I in no way wish to speak ill of the dead, but her life illuminates the point of this essay. To live life, if not now, when?

Knowing she had a finite time remaining, she let her fear keep her from having what might have been some amazing experiences before the end. My wife observed that for most of her life, fear kept her from doing things and having experiences. She spent her last days in fear of both life and death because she frequently avoided making choices or decisions.

All of us will die. Sorry, I know that’s harsh. Yet it’s the truth. You, as you perceive yourself in this time, that place, and that body, will eventually end. Like everyone else, you were born, and you will die.

Between birth and death, however, is life. Life is what we have, here and now. It includes past experiences and future potential and possibilities. Yet here, now, we are. Life is happening even as you read these words.

When I was 27, I was trying to find myself. Who was I? What was I doing? This frequently led me to move from job to job, relationship to relationship, and even place to place. I was seldom fully present, most often I was depressed about some past thing and/or anxious about some future matter.

Then one day, I nearly died. I have no memory of more than a week of my life surrounding leaving my house, getting hit by a car while crossing the street, the following hospitalization, surgeries, and worried friends and family constantly by my side.

I learned the true meaning of the question – if not today, when?

Be here now and live life

To begin to make active, consciously aware choices and decisions, you must practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness of the world without is easy. You get that from your 6 senses. Mindfulness of your inner being, your mindset/headspace/psyche self, requires you to get to know your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and chosen life approach.

The only time you can become fully consciously aware of your inner self is here and now. That’s because the only time, as we perceive it, that’s truly real is now. The present. This moment.

The past has passed and cannot be undone, redone, or shunted away. The future is unwritten and can’t be predicted. Here and now, in the present, you’re empowered.

You always have a choice. Decisions are always within your reach. To be fair, sometimes there are limitations. Also, the choices might be between the lesser of two evils. Yet so long as you are exercising the muscles of choices and decisions, you empower yourself to have, be, and do more. You open yourself to almost unimaginable potential and possibility.

You will choose wrong. There will be pain and suffering sometimes. Yet that will also come with new experiences, teach you new things, and lead to some amazing possibilities.

Is it worth it? I think so. Since that accident, I have lived more fully, had more incredible life experiences, and treasured what is yet to come. There’s been pain along the way, too, but I would not trade it for the incredible experiences alongside it.

I prefer to take the wheel and do the driving as much as I can.

The path of your life is yours to choose. If not today, when?

This is the six-hundred and thirty-fifth (635) 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 To Live Life, If Not Today, When? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How do I Release the Discomfort?

What steps go into centering and balancing?Photo by Pablo Guerrero on Unsplash

Depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses have common threads to them. They are comprised of elements of thought, feeling, and various blended and/or mixed emotions.

Though I can’t and don’t know for certain, I believe that everyone feels their feelings in different parts of their body. Sometimes it manifests as a buzzing in the back of your head. Other times, it’s butterflies in your stomach. Maybe you experience a sensation like a weight on your chest or shoulders. Whatever the sensation is, you know it’s mental/emotional/spiritual and intangible, despite the tangible sensation it produces.

One of the most disturbing sensations that this can produce, for me, is discomfort. This manifests as a sinking feeling in my chest, a knot in my stomach, and/or a general sense of wrongness. Part of that is because there are times that it manifests when there is nothing I am consciously upset, anxious, or otherwise feeling negative about.

Yet, there it is. For example, as I am typing out these words, the sun is shining on me. I love sunlight. I swear sometimes that I’m a solar battery, and sunlight does, in fact, charge me. Yet despite the comforting sunlight, I have an uncomfortable sinking feeling in my chest. As if something is wrong, there’s a problem at the edge of my consciousness that wants my attention. Yet I am not able to discern it.

How do I release this discomfort? I believe that there are three distinct steps to process this.

The first step is to identify, recognize, and acknowledge the discomfort.

The second step is to practice active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness – to analyze the subconscious connections and what my current approach is.

The third step is to take action to release the discomfort via mindfulness.

Step One  – Identify, recognize, and acknowledge

The subconscious mind is an amazing, multifaceted construct. Within the subconscious are your beliefs, values, habits, and memories. These things just are, they exist and sometimes rise to the surface and touch your consciousness unbidden.

Unchecked, the subconscious mind will wind up taking the wheel of your life and driving you by rote, routine, and habit. While there’s nothing wrong with that at times, it can become disconcerting because the deeper you get into rote, routine, and habit, the more you can become disconnected from your conscious awareness.

As a result of this, you might find yourself feeling a sensation you can’t consciously identify. Hence, discomfort that makes no sense when all else is okay.

The first step to take to release the discomfort is to identify the sensation. What is it? Where is it? How does it feel? What does it make you think about? What emotions tie into it?

Once you’ve identified it, now you recognize it. Obvious? No, lots of people will deny the discomfort. That’s in large part because we as a society are not fans of discomfort and the uncomfortable. Hence, you might identify it, but then pretend it’s not there and refuse to recognize it.

Recognition leads to acknowledgment. You identify the sensation – say it’s a knot in your stomach and a feeling of sadness. Then, you recognize it for what it is – I’m feeling unexpectedly sad and I don’t know why yet. Finally, you acknowledge it – Okay, I feel this sensation. It’s in me. Where did it come from and why is it here?

Now is when you move to step two.

Step Two – Practice active conscious awareness, i.e., mindfulness

My definition of mindfulness is not hooky-spooky or deeply psychological. Mindfulness, as I define it, is active conscious awareness.

Everyone is of three minds. The unconscious mind is how your heart beats, lungs breathe, neurons fire, and so on. Then there’s the subconscious mind, where beliefs, values, habits, and memories live as previously mentioned. Finally, there’s the conscious mind, from which you are ultimately aware of the world without as well as your inner being.

Awareness of the outside world comes from your six senses. These can also inform awareness of your inner being, but your inner being is best identified as your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and approach to life.

When you are consciously aware of your inner being and your mindset/headspace/psyche self, you become enabled and empowered to take control. That control allows you to make choices and decisions in answer to what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you intend, what you’re doing, and how you are approaching life overall. The choices and decisions can be in support of the answers you find or to change them for the better if they don’t suit you.

If you are not mindful, you don’t have the necessary power to take control of your life experience. If you have any discomfort or other mental, emotional, or spiritual issues, they’re virtually impossible to adjust without practicing the mindfulness of active conscious awareness.

Ultimately, this is how you make choices and decisions about who, what, where, how, and why you are. To do anything at all with this, however, you must take the third and final step.

Photo by Bekky Bekks on UnsplashStep Three – take action to release discomfort or make any other changes

There are several things that you can do to release discomfort that comes from mental, emotional, and spiritual states. Some require more time than others. Certain steps will work in one situation but not in another. Also, there will be times when it takes more than one thing to clear that sensation of pressure, weight, discomfort, or however it has manifested itself.

Here are some of the actions you can do to help release any discomfort caused by thinky thoughts, emotional matters, fears, concerns, and anything else impacting you subconsciously.

Do some stretchingPractice 2-5 minutes of deep breathingTake a walkMeditate 5-30 minutesTake a shower or bathGo out in natureJournalPut on music that changes your moodDo some cleaningChange your scenery in some wayGo somewhere to screamTalk it out with yourself or someone you feel safe with and trustPlay with a cat, dog, or other animalWatch something that makes you laugh

This is by no means a definitive list. However, each of these are available actions you can take for variable amounts of time to release discomfort from mental, emotional, and spiritual issues.

Please note that it’s entirely possible you won’t be able to release or fully release the sensation. However, what you can do is move from a place of discomfort to a place of centering and balancing. This is achieved simply in step two and practicing active conscious awareness to gain mindfulness.

When you’re centered and balanced consciously, you can better recognize and work with and from who, what, where, how, and why you are, here and now. Finally, remember that you are worthy and deserving of achieving this.

Working out how to release mental, emotional, and spiritual discomfort isn’t hard

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

When you take the above steps – identify, recognize, and acknowledge the discomfort; practice active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness and then; take action, you give yourself the necessary tools to change your subconscious processes and find your balance and centering. Knowing that you can do this – and are worthy and deserving of making it happen – you can make choices and decisions to release that discomfort caused by the intangibles. That will help you get yourself to a better place now to help you go forward with your day and your overall 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 twenty-fourth (524) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post How do I Release the Discomfort? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You Can Always Take Back the Wheel on Your Life Path

Who’s driving this life anyway?Photo by Rodrigo dos Reis on Unsplash

It’s all too easy to get distracted and unwittingly allow outside influences to take the wheel and do the driving.

Much of this is due to modern society’s near obsession with automation, ease, instant gratification, and the like. This obsession leads to doing more and more by rote, routine, and habit. So much so that even personal matters take that form, too.

Rote, routine, and habit aren’t part of the conscious human mind, but rather the subconscious mind. When that’s how you tend to operate, you can easily fall into patterns and flows that might not be the paths you’d choose for yourself.

What’s more, society often prefers it that way. On the one hand, we reward and revere successful entrepreneurs (no matter if they’re genuine successes or fakes, and no matter if they do good for the world or are driven by money, power, and the like). Then, on the other hand, we warn the burgeoning artist or entrepreneur in our close circles to be reasonable, consider security, and that acting outside the norm is something to be feared.

Is it any wonder we have a mental health crisis? It never ceases to amaze me that more people aren’t schizophrenic. When you are being told in one breath that sex is dirty and shameful while being sold sex with nearly everything you can consume, that’s easily overwhelming.

Yes, some things cause us obligations and necessary duties that are unavoidable. As a parent, you have obligations to your kids. As an employee, you have work duties. When you’re a student you have assignments you must complete. These are just a few examples.

Yet you can always take back the wheel at any time on your personal life path.

Pathwalking and your life path

I started to explore and share my life philosophy, Pathwalking, in 2012. Over time, it has changed, evolved, and shifted in various ways. Given that change is the one and only constant in the Universe, this should come as no surprise.

What is Pathwalking? Pathwalking is using active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to make active rather than passive choices and decisions. Ultimately, it’s the core of the idea of conscious reality creation.

Consciousness creates reality. What that means, to me, is what you give your energy and attention to makes your reality.

Your reality, it should be noted, is wholly unique to you. While there are shared elements we all call reality – the sun, moon, stars, sky, and such – perception of reality is unique to everyone. Yes, that means there are 8 billion separate perceptions of reality in the world. As Einstein said,

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

What that means is that you have the power to choose how you perceive the reality of your life experience. While that does connect to the collective consciousness, perception of it on your mental, emotional, and spiritual level is wildly variable.

This is why everyone is ultimately capable of choosing their own life path. That means that if you’ve been living subconsciously by rote, routine, and habit, you can take back the wheel on your life path at any time.

Take back the wheel on your life path

What does it mean to take or take back the wheel on your life path?

It means that you use active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to gain insight into yourself. That insight opens the way to taking control of your thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and approach to life.

From there, you now gain the ability to make choices and decisions to be who, what, where, how, and why you most desire to be.

Living subconsciously and allowing rote, routine, and habit to drive your life puts you in the passenger seat or maybe even the backseat. That’s because living subconsciously is passive and yields control. To be fair, there are times this is perfectly helpful and good for you. The trouble comes when you allow it to be your way all or most of the time.

This manifests as distress, discontent, discordance, and a feeling of being lost and/or out of control. It might be slight and subtle, blunt and abrupt, or anything in between. In its most extreme forms, it can manifest as depression, anxiety, and other mental, emotional, and/or spiritual issues.

Taking back the wheel on your life path is you being actively, consciously aware and choosing and deciding what you are doing, being, having, and so on. The first step to doing so is by practicing mindfulness.

This part is easy. To become actively consciously aware, all you need to do is ask questions like,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What am I intending?Am I taking a positive, negative, or neutral approach to things?What am I doing or not doing?

Each of the above questions can only be answered in the now. The present. That makes you actively consciously aware. You thus take the wheel.

Photo by Jack Delulio on UnsplashObstacles will still appear

It’s important to note that very few paths are perfectly straight, are roads without obstacles and ongoing construction, and that the unexpected will occur.

That’s because you can only take the wheel for your life. You have no control whatsoever over other people, places, or things. Anything or anyone outside of yourself can’t be controlled by you. No matter how much influence you might or might not have, you have no control.

Some people demand complete and utter control of everything. That, however, is impossible. You can’t, don’t, and never will control it all. That’s because outside of your own head, heart, and soul, you have no further control.

Accepting this is not disempowering. It’s empowering. Why? Because when you accept this, you can work to make choices and decisions for yourself so that you can take the wheel and drive your chosen life path.

Even when you surrender the wheel to drive your life to your subconscious, you can always take back the wheel on your life path. No matter the obstacles and challenges you encounter along the way, your life belongs to you.

There is an important exception to address.

Choosing to let the Universe take the wheel

No matter what choices or decisions you make in your life, there will be a time when you have to have faith. This has nothing to do with God or religion or any Powers That Be. This is faith that the choices and decisions that you’ve made are done and underway.

At that point, you need to let go of the wheel, trust that the autopilot is engaged, and allow what will happen to happen. This can be an especially squirrelly time in your brain because that lack of control is not due to relinquishing mindfulness, but rather to surrendering to allow the unseen to be made manifest.

That’s why you can always take back the wheel on your life path. There are times when practicing active conscious awareness means staying in the car on the path but allowing the unseen to do the driving.

What’s the difference between this sort of allowing and living subconsciously? Active choices and decisions versus passively not choosing or deciding and just letting life live you. It’s a part of being an active conscious creator rather than a passive observer.

You are empowered to make choices and decisions for conscious reality creation. It’s not easy, but it’s utterly worthwhile, satisfying, and enlightening.

You can always take back the wheel to make choices and decisions to live life rather than just go with whatever you’re presented with and allow life to live you. Nobody but you can do that. You have all the tools you need, you just get to choose to use them or not.

Will you take or take back the wheel when it comes to choosing and driving your life paths with this information?

This is the six-hundred and thirty-fourth (634) 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 Can Always Take Back the Wheel on Your Life Path appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why is Doing the Uncomfortable Thing Positive?

Growth comes only from leaving our comfort zones.Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

As I’m writing this, I’ve reached the end of my third foray to Farpointcon. This sci-fi con in Maryland has allowed me to meet and hang out with other like-minded geeks. As a guest author, I also get to sit on some cool panels and get an hour at a table to sign and sell books.

Despite being an actor in HS, a DJ in college, and serving as a court herald in my medieval organization – and speaking publicly in front of hundreds, sometimes – I’m more introverted than extroverted. Ambivert is a fair approximation for me.

I have never attended this con with anyone. My wife doesn’t come with me, and I’ve never brought any friends along. This means I have an entire weekend among mostly strangers. That can be really uncomfortable.

Even the couple of people I speak with regularly while I attend the con are naught by acquaintances. Thus, a great deal of the time I spend at this three-day con is either alone, among strangers, or otherwise outside my comfort zone.

Despite this, doing this uncomfortable thing is extremely positive for my overall life approach.

Why and how does that work?

You can’t grow from your comfort zone

Modern society is obsessed with comfort. Arguably, this obsession is to our detriment.

Why? Because when you get too comfortable you become complacent. Complacency leads to discomfort. That’s because humans need to experience things. We are ultimately meant to live. Living involves having experiences – both good and bad – and growing and changing.

Not long ago, I postulated that the meaning of life stares us all in the face, virtually mocking us for not recognizing its simplicity. What is it? The meaning of life is TO LIVE.

What does it mean to live? It’s not simply a matter of existing, of being half-present, of just surviving. It’s about thriving. Having experiences, learning things, meeting people, doing things, and the like. Unfortunately, this means there will be pain and bad things. However, that’s just a part of the life experience. Living isn’t always comfortable, and that’s okay.

Growth comes from experiences. Some are tangible, others intangible. There are good, bad, and uncertain experiences. Everything you do can and experience teaches you something new. All the new things you learn will enhance your life and help you grow and change.

Thus, if you remain in your comfort zone, you lessen your growth. However, this can and will lead to uncomfortable things.

You might ask – why do I need to grow? For starters, because change is the one and only constant in the Universe. Then, because you are always changing, inside and/or outside your control. Hence, you evolve, change, and grow, no matter what you do. It’s an inevitability of life.

Finally, actively growing is empowering, and opens you to all kinds of potential, possibilities, and options.

Becoming comfortable getting uncomfortable

This is just like any muscle. The more you work it the stronger you get.

Every year I attend this con is the equivalent of lifting weights. I am building muscles – mental and emotional muscles. These are some of the most difficult muscles to work. That’s because you can’t see them often and you can’t show them off like strong biceps to others.

It is equally important that you work and grow your mental, emotional, and spiritual muscles like you would your physical ones. This also applies to endurance. Most of the physical benchmarks we set can also be set for our mental, emotional, and spiritual selves.

This will be uncomfortable. That’s largely because you are stepping into the unknown. There is no certainty in the unknown save uncertainty and the unknown.

This reminds me of the famous FDR quote,

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Fear takes many forms. Mostly, however, what we fear is discomfort and suffering. Nobody likes to be uncomfortable, and nobody likes to suffer. However, more often than not, we blow the potential for suffering way out of proportion to any actual suffering we might experience. That also gets applied to discomfort.

Yet getting uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily equal suffering or discomfort. All it truly is is leaving the known, familiar, and comfortable – mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and/or physically. To do so with greater ease is achievable by employing active conscious awareness. That’s mindfulness.

Photo by Victor He on UnsplashGetting mindfully uncomfortable

The first step in the process is to identify what you desire to change. It can be big or small. For me, this is where discomfort starts. For example, despite my excellent cardiac health and physical endurance, I’m growing increasingly concerned that my excess weight represents a potential for future health issues. Considering how to address this and take the initiative to make some changes is uncomfortable. Especially because food has often been a source of comfort for me.

The first step is mindfulness around this topic. That, however, begins with acquiring conscious awareness of my thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. What am I thinking about my weight? What and how does that make me feel? Now, what do I intend to do and what do I or don’t I do with that? Just thinking and feeling this out is a step away from my comfort zone. That’s because it points me in the direction of the unknown and uncomfortable.

How will this make me feel? Can I maintain any changes I make? Am I willing to do some hard things and cut certain things I know aren’t good for me out of my diet? Can I get comfortable doing the uncomfortable?

The only person who can answer these questions is me. Mindfulness can only be practiced by each of us individually. Yet we often skip this step and go straight to action of some sort without consciously checking in first with our thoughts, feelings, and intentions. Hence, a great deal of unnecessary discomfort gets associated with change.

Change and the unknown can be scary. Yet they don’t need to be. This is where your approach comes into it.

The power of non-toxic positivity

More than maintaining a positive attitude or positive thinking, when actively doing something – tangible or intangible – positivity is a tool of empowerment.

This is not some end-all-be-all notion. This is specific to the approach you’re taking. Take my approach to going to this con, for example. Being among strangers, even like-minded ones, on my own, is uncomfortable, but it empowers me. I get to share my expertise on the panels I’m on and open the way to make new connections. That is a positive approach.

When you choose to get uncomfortable, taking a positive approach isn’t about denying the negatives that exist. It’s about, as my example above, working with and through them.

Another example. I love food. Yet I know that I’m eating larger portions than I should, ingesting too many processed foods and too much sugar. Despite how it makes me feel to eat, the after-effects are concerning. I get to decide if I will choose to get uncomfortable and take action to change my dietary habits. Doing so will lead to my clothes fitting better, pressure being taken off my arthritic knee, and other benefits.

Looking at both the positive and the negative – and choosing a positive approach – is genuine positivity. Toxic positivity ignores, disregards, and discards the negative. That’s unrealistic, unhealthy, and of course toxic.

Doing the uncomfortable thing via conscious awareness is a positive approach that can help you actively grow, change, and evolve. Growth comes only from leaving our comfort zones. Since I would rather take the wheel and drive my life than just go for a ride, this is how I empower myself, and is worthwhile to me.

That’s why doing the uncomfortable thing is positive. How empowering is that?

Recognizing the positive in doing the uncomfortable thing isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that you can only grow and change by leaving your comfort zone, you can mindfully act to work with the uncomfortable and start whatever it is you desire. Knowing that getting uncomfortable is necessary to grow, evolve, and experience more, you can practice mindfulness to make choices and decisions to take control over your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual being to grow, experience, and change your life.

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 twenty-third (523) 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 Why is Doing the Uncomfortable Thing Positive? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why and How Do Little Annoyances Add Up?

They might not be much by themselves, but altogether they’re something.Photo by Waranont (Joe) on Unsplash

I live in an apartment. It’s an amazing home for my wife, cats, and me. We each have our own office space, shared bedroom, decent-sized kitchen, and a small deck. The apartment is on the second floor of a three-floor unit, and in the winter we get sufficient heat from the neighbors around us that we’ve never had to run heaters during the winter.

The neighbors below us have a mostly quiet dog, though sometimes she’ll get barky. The neighbors above us mostly keep to themselves, except the teenage girl – whose room is above my office – sometimes plays her music too loud and has had a temper tantrum or three that I was unfortunately privy to.

While writing full-time, I also have a couple of part-time jobs to help pay bills, do my book editing, and cover art. I work for two amazing entrepreneurs. They operate very differently from one another. Sometimes their expectations of me and their need for my time can be a bit overwhelming.

I love my two cats. They play favorites, so for each, one of us serves as the “spare human.” The cat who favors me – Thalia – feels the need to jump on my desk, walk across the keyboard, and sit just adjacent to it while making it hard to type. Then, she insists on having me allow her to climb onto my chest and turn me into a Bond villain. Love the affection, but it can be a bit much.

There are times, though, when these little annoyances add up. When they do, I get a kick to my depression, feel overwhelmed, and get cranky.

Analyzing the annoyances

For the most part, I have very little control over these. I can’t do anything about the neighbors above and below me. Because of the nature of my jobs, sporadic occurrences of work will happen. If you have a cat or dog, you know the challenge of moving them when they’re being demanding. We love them and their affection, even when it’s a bit much. This makes pushing the animal away undesirable.

Each annoyance, by itself, is nothing. I can ignore the kid upstairs, the dog only goes off on occasion, and the cat will go away if I ignore her or nudge her gently. When a couple of these occur at the same time, however, that can become a problem.

Overwhelm can take many forms. Sometimes it’s purely intangible, other times it’s much more literal. It can also be nearly impossible to see it, let alone stop it before it hits you.

So, those little annoyances might in and of themselves be nothing. Yet as soon as they start to add together, they can add up to overwhelm.

What is overwhelm?

Overwhelm can take a few different forms. Sometimes it’s fairly literal. You have a deadline to meet at the same time as a proposal being due at the same time as an activity you’re expected to attend at the same time you’ve set aside for meditation and, and, and…

That can get incredibly overwhelming. All those things by themselves are no problem. One atop another on top of another? That can quickly add up to be overwhelming. That can take the form of feeling crushed, getting easily perturbed, feeling frustrated, getting angry, feeling sad, and more. How overwhelm presents itself varies from person to person and circumstance to circumstance.

Sometimes overwhelm is more intangible. Thinking about this, remembering that, planning for the other thing, while feeling the beat of the bass from music that’s too loud, all while trying to focus on a project, can overwhelm you just as easily and in the same way as the literal matters.

Overwhelm, no matter its cause, tends to be a sense of too much. Too many demands on your time and your person. More expectations than you can fully wrap your head around. Too many distractions or little annoyances.

Each, alone, is no big deal. All added together, now you struggle. What can you do about this? Step one is mindfulness.

Photo by Arnaud Mariat on UnsplashBe mindful of the annoyances, great or small

I would suspect that you can name a few things that are big and annoying. These annoyances are probably less directly impactful on you and your life – but nonetheless annoying. Politics is a perfect example of this.

The little annoyances, however, tend to get ignored. They’re not just small but often fleeting. Yet when you are not mindful of them, they can add up.

How does this work? First, you need to be consciously aware of yourself. Who, what, where, how, and why you are. This is, however, relatively easy, as it comes from recognizing what’s happening within your head, heart, and soul.

This recognition comes from knowing what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you’re intending, your general current approach to life – positive or negative – and what you are or aren’t doing. That makes you consciously aware and present in the here and now. That’s mindfulness in action.

When you’re more mindful of yourself it’s easier to be mindful of outside influences. Since all annoyances, big or small, are triggered by things without, they’re automatically outside influences.

However, they are tied to inner thoughts and feelings. For example, if work has you feeling stressed, that annoying music from the obnoxious neighbor can amplify from a little annoyance to a big one. The thing is, it has little to nothing to do with the thing happening. The annoyance is born of overwhelm, and that begins within.

Mindfulness is the key to identifying this. Once you do that, now you can figure out what you can do to deal with it.

How do you deal?

There is no single answer to this question. Dealing will differ from person to person. There are many different options, and I share a few here.

You can step away. Take a break. Move away from where you are to somewhere else. Even for just a few minutes, step away.

You can meditate. Or take a couple of minutes to just do deep breathing. Clear your mind and move past whatever is going on.

You can go exercise. Take a walk. Do some stretching. Go for a run. Head into nature. Get your blood flowing and your heart pumping.

You can journal. This looks rather familiar. When you’re flustered, dealing with annoyances, or whatever, journaling and writing it out can be incredibly cathartic.

There are lots of other ways and means available. This, however, should be a sufficient example to get you started.

Why and how do the little annoyances add up? Because everything, good or bad, no matter what it is, starts small. Little annoyances piled atop one another, without being put in check, can easily add up to a big annoyance.

You have the power, however, to change your situation. Be empowered and act in some way to cope with the little annoyances however best that works for you, to prevent them from becoming major annoyances.

Can you see why and how little annoyances add up in your life?

This is the six-hundred and thirty-third (633) 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 Why and How Do Little Annoyances Add Up? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Does Your Approach to Life Matter?

Your approach is a choice that determines if you merely survive, simply exist, or thrive.Photo by Jonas Verstuyft on Unsplash

The status quo never lasts. Never.

That’s because change is the one and only constant in the Universe. Like it or not, work with it or ignore it, you cannot avoid it. Change can, will, and does happen. Recognizing this is huge. Accepting it is even larger.

Everything you know is subject to change. If you don’t believe it, apply it to yourself. Are you who you were as a child? How many ways do you differ today from who you were 10 years ago? Both of these examples come from the same thing. Change.

Because of the inevitability of change, there are some large limits on the number of things we can control. Most, if not all those things, are within us. Then, to add insult to injury, society tends to recommend focusing on everything outside of us rather than what’s within.

Before you know it, you’re so inundated with people, places, and things apart from yourself that you yourself take a backseat, and/or are treated with less importance by you, yourself. It’s surprisingly easy to lose who you are and cede the control that’s yours as a part of this.

The key to getting inside of yourself and doing the inner work is active conscious awareness. In other words, mindfulness.

Mindfulness to know yourself

When it comes to working out who, what, where, how, and why you are, there are several specific elements you need to know. Also, you need to know them right here, right now. They are only truly knowable in the present moment, after all.

These include your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions. Getting to know them via active conscious awareness – practicing mindfulness – comes down to being as present as you can be and asking questions. These are simple questions that include,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?What am I doing?

When you ask and answer these questions, here and now, you become actively consciously aware. That conscious awareness then allows you to make choices and decisions to take control over your life experience.

Yet there is another factor worth considering here. That’s your overall approach. While there are nuances as well, there are three main approaches you can take,

PositiveNegativeNeutral

Here’s an important truth: Just because you aren’t actively choosing your approach to how you live your life doesn’t mean it’s not positive or negative. By and large, a neutral approach is a lack of conscious awareness about the approach you’re taking. But not always.

This begs an important question.

What is meant by your approach to life?

Knowing your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions is important. That’s how you can become actively, consciously aware of what’s driving you. What moves you. Yet there is another factor involved, and that’s your approach.

Everyone has their own perspective on life, the Universe, and everything. As part of that, everyone has a different idea about what the Universe has to offer. Some see it as lacking, limited, and unkind. Others see it as abundant, limitless, and compassionate. Of course, some people give this little to no thought overall.

Once you gain active, conscious awareness – mindfulness – of your life, you can see if it’s what/how/why/where you desire it to be. Or not. If not, you gain the power to make new choices and decisions to change it. These choices and decisions, ultimately, will be informed by how you perceive the universe.

Seeing the Universe as lacking, limited, and unkind is a reflection of a negative approach. On the other hand, seeing the Universe as abundant, limitless, and compassionate is a reflection of a positive approach. What’s more, the former makes any attempt to change difficult and likely problematic. The latter won’t necessarily be easier, but it’s more likely to be viewed as challenging and informative.

The bottom line is that your approach to how you live life will inform the difficulty or ease in finding or creating change. If up to now you’ve not been aware of your approach, or neutral in not choosing one, you can decide to change and choose.

Photo by José Martín Ramírez Carrasco on UnsplashYou can always make new choices and decisions

For the most part, little to nothing is permanent. As I began this essay, the status quo never lasts due to the inevitability of change.

I used to be hugely afraid of making the wrong choices. Thus, often I’d hardly make any choice at all, or only soft choices for fear that my wrong choice would have serious consequences. Meanwhile, I missed out on a lot of potential and possibilities, and also unnecessarily complicated my life and fed my depression.

The truth is that very few choices are permanent. So long as you’re here, alive, and can physiologically take control of your brain, new choices and decisions can be made.

To be fair, there are times when the choices and decisions available to you are limited. Life circumstances can cause necessary and unnecessary limits. Even so, there are still choices. Every single choice you make strengthens your ability to choose. Choice is like a muscle in this respect. The more you use it – the more choices and decisions you make – the stronger it gets.

When your approach to life, the Universe, and everything tends negative, you place limitations on yourself. Lack and scarcity are wholly products of negativity, after all. That’s why when you approach life, the Universe, and everything tending to the positive, you’re open to potential and possibilities. Abundance is a product of positivity, after all.

This is why it’s important to recognize that almost all lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are false. They’re nearly always a construct being used by someone as a means to disempower.  Take diamonds, for example. They are one of the most abundant gemstones in the world. Not only that, but they’re easily synthesized. Yet they’re held up as a scarce, ultra-precious stone via wholly artificial notions of lack and scarcity.

The abundance of intangibles

This is even more true of intangibles. Kindness, compassion, and love are abundant beyond our wildest imagination, for example. How can something so essential to life be limited? It can’t because it’s not. All the intangibles we desire to experience are abundant.

Yes, the intangibles you would rather not experience are indeed equally abundant. That’s a good thing, though. Why? Because, as Yoda put it best,

“The greatest teacher, failure is.”

Bad things can, will, and do happen. While they tend to suck a lot in the immediacy of their happening, the lessons they can teach us are full of potential to generate more good and positivity.

It’s not always apparent that this is so. Mental, emotional, and spiritual pain can be terribly debilitating and unpleasant. Once the visceral, immediate moment has passed – and it will – your approach will inform what can come next. That leads to what you choose and decide on from there.

Your approach is a choice that determines if you merely survive, simply exist, or thrive. A negative approach leads people to merely survive, a neutral approach to simply existing, and a positive approach to thriving. There is possibility and potential available to and for everyone. That means you have it within you, too.

That’s why your approach to life matters. How empowering is that?

Recognizing your approach to life and why it matters isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that you have the power to decide whether to approach your life from a negative, neutral, or positive perspective, you open the way for your choices and decisions to help you determine how you live. Knowing that your approach is in your control, and can be changed and altered via employing mindfulness, you can direct your life and control more aspects of it and ultimately who, what, where, how, and why you are.

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 twenty-second (522) 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 Why Does Your Approach to Life Matter? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.