M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 2

You’re the Protagonist of Your Life Experience

It’s incredibly easy to forget that.Photo by Javier García on Unsplash

It’s not disingenuous to say that life is a story. It has a defined beginning, middle, and ending. Along the way, you have rising and falling action, meet colorful characters, heroes and villains, and everyone in between.

The story of your life does have one, single, solitary constant. The protagonist. Across every aspect of your life, from beginning, middle, to the end, the protagonist remains the same.

That would be you.

While you, the protagonist of your life experience and story, are always that character, like all other protagonists, you change.

Who you were at age 10 is not who you are at age 20. Similarly, who you were at age 20 isn’t who you are at age 30. Constant, frequent change is part and parcel with the journey of life.

That can be terrifying or exciting, infuriating or comforting, and sometimes multiple conflicting emotions simultaneously. Change can be fast or slow. Sometimes you have zero control over it; other times you can direct it.

Active conscious awareness opens the door to you taking the pen and writing your life story experience. That allows you to take some control of the protagonist.

Your hero’s journey

Joseph Campbell’s definitive work – The Hero with a Thousand Faces – coined the popular phrase “The Hero’s Journey.”

The idea is embodied in countless, timeless stories. From Jane Eyre to Luke Skywalker, the archetype of the challenges the story’s protagonist faces has matching patterns, highs and lows, and lessons from failure and triumph alike.

One reason why the experiences of fictional characters like Spiderman, Bilbo Baggins, or Ender Wiggin resonate so well with people is because of the journey they go on and the growth that ensues from it. It’s relatable because it’s not so far removed from real life journeys all of us take.

There is no certainty in life, save death. Sorry, no matter what you do, death is how your life will conclude. What happens between your birth and your death, however, is utterly and wildly variable.

You grow, change, and evolve whether you do so with open eyes and joy or kicking and screaming with resistance. Whatever approach you take to your life, there is another truth apart from the given ending you can’t escape.

You are the protagonist in your life story.

Photo by Jodie Cook on UnsplashThe protagonist is yours to empower

There are forces in the world that do not want you and me to recognize that we are our own life’s protagonists. They fear that when we realize this truth, “they” will lose their influence and false control over us.

The truth is that they do not have any control, sway, or influence unless you and I give it to them. Hence, this idea of “woke” being negative is utterly, patently false. Being awake and aware means you are the author of your story, not just reading what someone else is writing.

This can be terrifying. Now you have to be responsible and accountable for your mistakes and fuckups. Yet now you are also accountable and responsible for your achievements and successes.

When all is said and done, you alone are in your head, heart, and soul. Nobody else can look out at the world through your eyes, feel your emotions, or decide what you will value and believe. That’s not to say outside influence doesn’t impact this, but how much impact it has is on you.

Because you are the only one in your head, heart, and soul, you can change who, what, where, how, and why you are. You can write and rewrite your life experience and story because you’re the protagonist.

Your empowerment comes from using your external, six senses to gain awareness, then corroborating that with your internal knowledge of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. What doesn’t suit you can be altered and changed by you.

Nobody gives you that power. You simply need to be aware of it. That’s mindfulness in practice.

You write the journey for your protagonist

Because you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, you’re the author of your protagonist’s story. Not enjoying the story thus far? Rewrite it.

This won’t necessarily be easy. But it is and always has been in your power to control. Not wholly, not without challenges, but that doesn’t make it any less yours.

The first step in writing your life’s story is recognizing that you are the protagonist. It’s incredibly easy not to, because of the nature of blame culture, shunning accountability, and the like. But you ARE your life’s protagonist, and recognizing this goes a long way.

Then, you must acknowledge it. Recognizing it is one thing, but if you don’t acknowledge it, you aren’t opening yourself to doing anything with it.

Once you recognize and acknowledge that you are your life’s protagonist, you empower yourself. That’s because you’ve activated your conscious awareness. Now, via mindfulness, you can make choices and decisions for where your hero’s journey takes you.

One very important caveat to all of this: You will get this wrong, face unexpected and unwanted obstacles, distractions, and issues. Some of your choices and decisions will fail you. Welcome to the human experience. Nothing is written in stone, and you can close one chapter and open a new one with new choices, decisions, and actions.

Woke bullshit? Perhaps. But I know I prefer to be the one writing my story over letting someone else do it. Don’t you desire to direct your life experience over letting someone else do so for you?

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-second (722) 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 repost and share this.

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

The post You’re the Protagonist of Your Life Experience appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Right and Wrong Matter Less Than Choices Made

When you don’t choose, you cede your power.Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

There are a lot of voices in the world telling you who, what, where, how, and why you should have, do, and be. Everywhere you turn, someone is going to tell you to do this, that, or the other thing. Be like this or suffer. Do like that or face pain.

It’s intimidating, scary, and confusing. What’s the right choice? If I choose wrong, will I suffer, and how badly? For that reason, many people decide not to decide and choose not to choose.

Right or wrong, choices made are what matter most. Why? Because when you don’t make choices and decisions, you cede your power.

You have more power than you realize

It can feel like you’re powerless. Like, no matter what you do, the choices you make, who you are, none of it matters. It can feel like “they” are always judging you, so what’s the point?

The point is that you are the only one inside your head, heart, and soul. Hence, you, and only you, know what it is you desire. Only you can know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and your actions.

It might not, on the surface, look like much. But the truth is that it’s everything. You alone perceive the world around you. No matter what anyone else says, how anyone else tells you things are, your perception belongs to you. Only you.

Hence, if something doesn’t feel right, makes you unhappy, distresses you, or anything else negative, you can find and/or create an alternative. It might not be obvious and immediately noticeable, but it can be found and/or created. You just need to pause, be here in the present, and look inwards to your subconscious beliefs, values, and habits to initiate change.

That’s what your power is. You can look at who, what, where, how, and why you are – right here and now – and then change what doesn’t suit you.

Maybe not instantly. It might take time, effort, and more. But you can find a way.

Unless, of course, you cede your power by not making choices.

The choices made will be both right and wrong

This is important: Every. Single. Person. Makes. Good. And. Bad. Choices. Every single solitary human being makes choices that are good and choices that are bad.

What’s more important than the good and bad of any given choice is that choices made matter. When you don’t choose, and you allow influencers, politicians, parents, teachers, friends, random people you meet on the street, and anyone else to direct you.

Yes, in the end, you choose to cede your power. That’s why it’s far, far better to make choices than not to make choices.

Photo by Polina Rytova on Unsplash

Choices made are, in and of themselves, neutral. The outcome is where good and bad get attached. More than that, however, good and bad are not set in stone.

It might look like a bad choice, and the outcome might suck, but when you learn something incredibly valuable? When the bad choice leads to making a better choice? Was it necessarily so bad?

Unless it kills you, you will get to choose anew. You might get it wrong more than once – likely you will make multiple bad choices along the way – but what that teaches you might be far more valuable than what the good choice could have.

Lots of things that make the world better are the result of a failure. The vulcanized rubber for the tires our cars ride upon, Post-it notes, and bubble wrap failed what they intended to be, but were ultimately successful in the end.

Bad choices can result in good, too. So long as you make choices.

Not making choices leaves you powerless

When you don’t actively make choices via conscious awareness, you let life live you. You cede your greatest power.

Choosing and deciding from the almost infinite options human beings get is what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Most of them only choose what gets them food, shelter, and propagation of the species. Humans are the only creatures who can live in any environment, can consume a huge range of foods, and can communicate instantly across the globe via incredible tools that were created by our hands and minds.

Choices made lead to every invention, every innovation, and progress. Personal or otherwise, choices and decisions are how you drive your life’s narrative. When you live by rote, routine, and habit, subconsciously on autopilot, you cede your power to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.

This is not going to be easy, but that’s part of how you and I grow, evolve, and change. Since change is the one and only constant in the universe, and we can’t avoid it, why not make choices and decisions to drive how it works within our life experiences?

Choices made are the force that empowers you to do just that.

Recognizing that choices made matter more than right and wrong isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that choices and decisions that you make, via active conscious awareness, are how you have any control over who, what, where, how, and why you are, you gain a superpower. Knowing that you ultimately choose and decide how your life experience plays out, you can see that choices made are far better than ceding your power and not choosing or deciding for you, your life experience, and yourself.

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

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

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them as well. That is an amazing conduit to help reason to overcome fear in the collective consciousness.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-tenth (610) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post Right and Wrong Matter Less Than Choices Made appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Your Path Begins Within You, Not Without

Only you can choose via your head, heart, and soulPhoto by Yulia Gadalina on Unsplash

Everyone faces certain big questions along the way. Who are you? What do you desire? Why are you doing that? Sometimes these questions feel invasive. Other times, you can answer them with certainty. Most of the time, you need to look within to truly know what the answers are.

None of the answers to these questions are static. They change. That’s because change is the only constant in the universe. Who you are, what you desire, why you do what you do shifts, changes, grows, and evolves.

Unfortunately, change terrifies people. That’s the primary reason for sexism, racism, and any and all forms of systemic inequality. The change represented causes feelings of loss, abandonment, and uncertainty that some just cannot accept. Apart from voting in elections, boycotting bad business, and attending protests, there’s little to nothing you or I can do about these people and their issues with change.

However, you can stay on top of who, what, where, how, and why you are. It’s just a matter of practicing active conscious awareness. That lets you make choices and decisions to seek, find, and travel any given path. Your path, whatever it is, begins within you.

Get to know your mind

All human beings are of three minds. The unconscious mind is not within your control. It’s where your heart beats, lungs breathe, neurons fire, and so on. Unchecked, it does its job, and you live.

The subconscious mind is like a computer’s hard drive. This is where you store your beliefs, values, memories, and habits. Like a hard drive, things just sit there until you search for them and access them. Also, beliefs, values, and habits become the software that runs the computer, and can get infected with malware, viruses, and other undesirables.

The conscious mind is your ability to engage with the world within and the world without, here and now. It only works in the present, right now, because it’s your active mind. In the computer analogy, it’s more like RAM or any open document you’re working on.

When you practice active conscious awareness, you practice mindfulness. Mindfulness lets you engage both your six senses and your inner thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. With mindfulness, you can look at what’s in your subconscious mind and examine your beliefs, values, memories, and habits.

When you engage your subconscious mind consciously, you open yourself to being an active participant in change. Ultimately, you open yourself to choosing a path by reaching within you.

Photo by Valeria Reverdo on UnsplashYour path begins within you

When you choose to ask a person out, buy a car, apply for a job, start a business, or anything else big or small, the path this puts you on begins within you.

To be fair, outside influences, information, and people, places, and things can show you options. How can you know about a job opportunity at any given company if you don’t use outside information to learn about it?

The biggest downside to formal education is that it only focuses on what’s without. I’m not knocking learning history (please, for the love of sanity, learn some damned history), or scientific facts, or math, and so on. The trouble is that formal education doesn’t address looking within and seeing the impact of what you learn on your mindset/headspace/psyche self, let alone what is embedded in your subconscious mind.

Hence, people have no idea how to look within. Because of this, people are easily lost, disempowered, and seeking outside influence, validation, and the like. It’s good that we have all those resources available, but when you don’t know how to look within, you absorb like a sponge. Before you know it, you hold beliefs and values that aren’t genuine or authentic to you.

That can lead to uncertainty, depression, and worse. This lack of education for looking within you is why the world is in a massive mental health crisis that nobody in a leadership position gives a shit about.

You, however, can make a different choice.

Choose to be mindful and start by looking within you

Active conscious awareness is a choice. That’s why so many people are seemingly asleep at the switch. They don’t choose to think for themselves, and thus allow their subconscious to do the driving.

Rote and routine have their time and place. Certain habits on autopilot via the subconscious mind are great, like brushing your teeth, practicing good hygiene, minding your diet and exercise, making your bed, and so on. Nobody, however, can live by rote, routine, and automation all the time.

You can’t choose any path if you don’t make use of applied mindfulness. That begins from within. To start, you must become aware of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and what actions you’re taking. If any of those don’t match how you desire them to be, you can now make choices and decisions to change them.

Nothing is written in stone. Everything grows, changes, and evolves, like it or not. You have the ability to seek, find, and/or create paths for your life experience. Learning about options for paths you can take can come from without, but walking the path starts entirely within you.

This is very much a superpower. Even when faced with adversity, you can employ it to choose who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be. Yes, it takes time and energy. But when all is said and done, don’t you prefer to make your own choices and decisions over allowing someone random to do it for you?

This is the seventh-hundred-twenty-first (721) 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 repost and share this.

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

The post Your Path Begins Within You, Not Without appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You Can Choose to See the Dark or Seek the Light

The decision is yours.Photo by Dyu – Ha on Unsplash

Everywhere you turn, there’s doom and gloom. All across social media, new reports, conversations with friends and family, it’s like a cloud constantly hovering above you.

None of this is normal. The sense of fear, uncertainty, and hopelessness dominating it all? This is not normal.

Then, to complicate matters, finding the balance between knowledge and being informed versus oversharing and being inundated is always challenging. You can’t ignore what’s happening, wear blinders, and pretend this isn’t happening. Neither can you give it all of your focus and attention without making yourself utterly miserable.

Moment to moment, whenever you are consciously aware, you can choose to see the dark or seek the light.

The argument to be For rather than Against

In my home state, there’s a contentious race for governor going on. The thing is, I don’t think it would be so contentious were it not for how both sides are approaching it. Both are on the attack, each telling you why you should be against the other. Yet, because of the focus on standing against, the obvious problem candidate has traction.

The collective consciousness is under a constant attack by those telling you who and what to stand against. While I agree that we need to put up a united front against things like tyranny, hate, and greed, being against them often gives them more. Why? Because they are what get all the focus.

Consciousness creates reality. That’s not just some hooky-spooky idealism. It’s a law of the universe. Even if you stand against something, that something is still getting all your attention, your energy, and focus.

That makes it stick out like a sore thumb. And that, in turn, gives it more power. Why else is so much advertising and news about negative things? Because standing against sells.

What you focus on, you attract. Hence, pausing to reflect and then shifting your attention to what you’re for rather than against helps give that which you are for more power. But that’s not all. It also empowers you.

How do you feel when you give your time, energy, and attention to things that upset, anger, and scare you? You feel worse. That lowers your frequency and spirals you down to keep you feeling worse. And when you feel bad, you’re disempowered.

You, however, have the power to change this.

You can choose to see the dark or seek the light

I am in no way, shape, or form advocating for ignoring, disregarding, or pretending the bad things happening out there aren’t happening. Doing that robs you of your ability to make informed choices and decisions. It leads to entropy, disenchantment, and disconnection. Why do you think the majority of registered voters in the USA don’t vote at all? Apathy born of willful or despondent ignorance.

You do get to choose to see the dark or seek the light. It’s wholly in your power to decide to be present, here and now, and apply mindfulness. When you do that, you open yourself to finding and creating better.

Photo by Emily Webster on Unsplash

To seek the light is not to disregard, ignore, or shunt away the dark. They are yin and yang and need one another to both exist. The dark and the bad often inspire the light and the good. This is awful, what can I do about it? is a lot more powerful than This is awful, I see no options.

You might, in the immediate moment, see no way. That’s no surprise, given the constant barrage of doom and gloom hurling toward you all the time. Yet a way can be found. You can seek the light.

Make your choices and decisions

You are empowered to choose and decide what you do. To see the dark or seek the light is in your power. It just might take a lot of effort and energy to rise out of the deluge of negativity.

I believe that much of what ails the world today is the result of weaponized fear and implied disempowerment. The invisible, ever-present “they” love to tell you that you can’t do anything for yourself, but “they” can make it all better for you. Just cede control and let them do it.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Know why? Because you’re the only one inside of your head, heart, and soul. Ergo, you alone can know what you’re thinking, feeling, and intending. Only you know the positivity or negativity of your approach and choice of actions or inactions. No matter what anyone else might say, nobody can make you think, feel, or do anything – only you can think, feel, and do for yourself.

Empowerment is the recognition and acknowledgment of you being the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Then, from that, making consciously aware choices and decisions, here and now, to do something. Or not.

You can choose to see the dark or seek the light, no matter what is going on around you. That can change your life experience. When you do that, and you’re empowered, you become a beacon to help others find what to be for, and to seek more light to overcome the dark.

More power to you.

Choosing to seek the light when you see the dark isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that you are the only one in your head, heart, and soul, you can make choices and decisions to seek the light, take a stand for rather than against, and become more empowered. Knowing that you ultimately choose and decide what you see and do in this life, you can take action to work past the ongoing hail of madness of the world around you for yourself as well as the greater good.

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

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

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them as well. That is an amazing conduit to help reason to overcome fear in the collective consciousness.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-ninth (609) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post You Can Choose to See the Dark or Seek the Light appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

No Path In Life Is Obstacle-Free

Are they obstacles or unique opportunities?Photo by Luba Ertel on Unsplash

Some weeks, this article gets written the day before I post it. Other weeks, like this one, it doesn’t get done until the morning I create it.

It never ceases to amaze me how it just flows with ease one week, while another it’s a struggle to find what I desire to write about. This is one of the latter weeks.

It doesn’t help that it’s a rainy day. Not in the sense of a nasty, cloud-filled sky and drizzly rain, but a proper rainy day. I can hear it on the roof outside my window, on the street, and see it in the air. I love this sort of rain.

The trouble is, it’s very distracting. I don’t want to write, I want to sit down and read. Take a nap. Get in bed with a lover and enjoy each other’s bodies with the rain in the background. Sitting and doing my work, walking my path? Do I have to?

This is just another example of how no path in life is obstacle-free. And that’s because no life is obstacle-free.

What are obstacles?

This is often a matter of perspective. One person’s obstacle is another’s opportunity. What you might see as being in your way and problematic, I might see as being an interesting challenge and encouraging. Your mileage may vary.

When you choose to walk a path in your life, anything that gets in the way of doing your work is an obstacle. And by your work, I mean that which is the path you’ve chosen.

Obstacles in and of themselves are neutral. They just are. The bump in the road, the unexpected detour, an unplanned expense, and the like are just things that happen in everyone’s life. Nobody gets a free ride.

When you face an obstacle, how you react to it is wholly on you. Do you see it as a problem or potential? An ending or a beginning?  Do you choose to face it, run away from it, tackle it head-on, or detour around it? That’s entirely up to you.

I am listening to the rain come down and facing this blank screen. The obstacle is there, but I’m choosing to set it aside and focus on my work.

This is particularly challenging today.

Photo by Andrea De Santis on UnsplashNo path in life is easy

There are a couple of nonfiction audiobooks I listen to over and over again. Three of them are by Steven Pressfield. The first is his absolutely brilliant The War of Art. The second is Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be. The third is Turning Pro.

All of these titles explore the trials and tribulations that come from knowing what path in life you most desire to tread and the consequences of doing it and not doing it. Mr. Pressfield explores what not taking the path you desire will do to you, as well as what happens and how it feels to choose to walk a path in life.

He also does a deep dive into the primary obstacle everyone comes up against. He calls it Resistance. Resistance usually presents itself as an obstacle, a diversion, a distraction, or the like. It can appear reasonable and logical, but in reality, it’s your scared ego trying to circumvent change.

Every day, you choose if you let Resistance win and hold you back, or fight it and overcome it. For me, that includes doing this blog,1500 words of fiction a day, and a few other necessities I consider essential to my path.

The point is that no path in life is easy. All of them come with challenges, obstacles, and the unexpected. What you do in the face of that is entirely up to you.

You choose your path in life or not

There are going to be days when you aren’t traversing the path in life you’ve chosen. There’s an obligation you must meet to help a friend, hours at the DMV to renew a license, time spent sick and unable to get out of bed, and so on. That’s just a part of the human condition.

Sometimes the obstacles are meant to make you reconsider your path. Is this truly what you desire to do? If so, then the obstacle might teach you something new or provide a stimulus to double down. Or it might just be an elephant in the room staring as you ignore it and do your work.

No path in life is obstacle-free. More often than not, it’s less an obstacle and more an opportunity. That’s determined not by the obstacle itself, but what you choose to do when faced with it.

When you choose poorly – and you will – forgive yourself. As a human being, you’re perfectly imperfect. Ergo, sometimes you don’t overcome the obstacle, sometimes it takes you off your path, and sometimes it makes you choose to do nothing. So long as you don’t give up and give in, you can make a new choice and change.

I know the world is nuts right now. A lot of crazy shit is going down. Rather than let that be an obstacle to my path in life, I’m keeping it in mind enough to make choices and decisions while living my life as best I can. And, hopefully, helping others become empowered to do so, too.

What do you do when you encounter an obstacle on your life path?

This is the seventh-hundred-twentieth (720) 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 repost and share this.

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

The post No Path In Life Is Obstacle-Free appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Pause And Clear the Schmutz Off Your Glasses

A simple act with a deeper meaning.Photo by GlassesShop on Unsplash

As I sit here, trying to figure out what to write about today, it occurs to me that the lenses of my blue blocker glasses are seriously smudged. How often do I notice that and ignore it?

Today, I paused, grabbed the spray and cloths, and cleared the schmutz off my glasses. That’s better.

These glasses I wear when I work at my computer don’t correct my vision. I only wear them to lessen eye strain and protect my eyes. So, any schmutz on these glasses is only an annoyance.

But how long until that smudge you’re noticing becomes more than just an annoyance? What happens when the schmutz gets worse, and your vision becomes clouded?

Before you know it, all you see is the negative, the problems, the bad.

When you don’t pause and clear from time to time – anything, really – the build-up of schmutz can be problematic.

The pluses and minuses of autopilot

Our world loves automation. Convenience. Instant gratification. We are constantly creating and using tools to provide shortcuts, exploring life hacks, and taking lots of other steps to make things easier.

This, however, comes with a price. We think less critically, allow rote and routine to dominate our day-to-day experiences, and find ourselves wondering how this world has gone so completely mad.

A lot of that comes from insufficient pausing and clearing. Everything moves so fast, you don’t realize how much schmutz has accumulated on your glasses, in your eyes, on your hard drive, in your home, and so on. You pile on more and more, subconsciously, unchecked. When you don’t pause and clear it from time to time, it can be overwhelming.

How else can you explain people following so-called leaders who are harming them? Knowing how seldom people pause and clear their heads, hearts, and souls, those people hide in the schmutz and whisper sour nothings. They both blatantly and subtly suggest the schmutz isn’t the result of anything you did or didn’t do. Nope, it’s the fault of “them”. Because of the “other,” your life is the smudgy mess it looks to be.

There’s nothing you can do to pause and clear anyone else’s vision. You do, however, have total and complete control of yours.

Pause and clear your vision

This is easy to do. However, you need to take some time to do it. Also, you can’t do this for anyone other than yourself, and nobody else can do it for you.

These are the five steps you can take to pause and clear your vision:

Recognize that your vision is schmutzed. Smudged. Less than clear.Acknowledge that your vision is unclear. Recognition is not the same as acknowledgement. Just because you recognize that something is there doesn’t mean you acknowledge it. This is important so that you don’t choose to ignore it.Be consciously aware of it. Recognize it. Acknowledge it. Don’t shunt it to your subconscious or ignore it; mindfully address it, here and now.Pause. Take a moment to be present.Clear. Get out the cloths and wipe the lenses clear. Stop doomscrolling social media. Turn off the news channel. Step away from the sources of constant doom and gloom.

This can only be done in the present. Hence, via applied mindfulness. By being actively, consciously aware – right here and now – you can see what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and what you are or aren’t doing. If any of these are schmutzed, you can choose to pause and clear them.

Photo by whereslugo on UnsplashYou have choices and decisions – but only for yourself

You cannot pause and clear the vision of anyone else. That’s not to say that you can’t offer to clean off their glasses for them. However, just because you wiped the schmutz away, you can’t be in their head, heart, and soul. You can’t make them see clearly.

One of the most dangerous issues facing the world today is the lack of discourse. Polite, civil discussion has been thrown out the window in favor of jingoism, ego, opinion, and self-righteousness disguised as expertise. Some people dig in their heels, cover their ears, and scream “LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” no matter how reasonable you strive to be.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t help them clear their glasses of the schmutz. What I am saying is, don’t expect them to see what you see. Maybe they will get there. Perhaps they will also pause and clear themselves. But you can’t be anyone other than you.

When you take this into consideration, pause and clear the schmutz from your vision, you empower yourself. Empowered, you can make active, mindful choices and decisions to be your best, do your best, and show up as a beacon others can see when and if they pause and clear, and also choose to do so.

It isn’t hard to pause and clear the schmutz from your vision

It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that your vision has been clouded by things you haven’t been actively, consciously aware of, you can choose to pause and clear it. Knowing that you ultimately choose and decide what you see and do in this life, you can work to pause and clear what derails you from being and doing your best.

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

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

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them as well. That is an amazing conduit to help reason to overcome fear in the collective consciousness.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-seventh (607) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post Pause And Clear the Schmutz Off Your Glasses appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Who Do You Think You Are?

No, seriously, who do YOU think you are?Photo by Alexei Maridashvili on Unsplash

It’s all too easy to worry about what others think of you. Hell, whole industries exist to address this.

Almost every single advertisement sells you on the idea that if you don’t buy this product or service, you won’t get laid, everyone will think less of you, you’ll miss out, and so on. Be the envy of your friends and family by buying “X” rather than the butt of the joke or the least among others.

It also doesn’t help that over the last decade or so, many people have become celebrities and influencers only because of how they go out of their way to make an impression on other people. Look at all the reality TV featuring horrid, obnoxious, self-absorbed examples of people.

It’s all too easy to lose sight of yourself when you feel as if you must compete. Except, truth be told, for the most part, we are not in competition.

True competition

Professional sports and athletics are competitions. Football games, races between runners, drivers, or jockeys on horses, spelling bees, numerous cooking shows on Food Network, and the like. These are all competitions.

Unless you’re participating in something of this nature, you are not in competition with anyone else. Yet social norms often hold up this, that, or the other thing as being all about competing.

Politicians often get elected by convincing people that everyone is competing against them to take what’s theirs. They create an “other” competing with you for resources that must be stomped out. Never mind that we’re not in competition because most of the supposedly finite resources are not so finite (and the other is surprisingly similar to you in most ways). But I digress.

In truth, who YOU think you are is far more important than what anyone else thinks. And that’s for one very specific, important reason.

Only you know what you think of yourself

You are the only one in your head, heart, and soul. You, and you alone, know your thoughts, feelings, intentions, positivity or negativity of approach, and actions. More than this, however, you alone can control and change them at will.

Who, what, where, how, and why you are will be impacted and influenced by many things outside of your control. You didn’t choose where you were born, who your parents were, your family’s social status, and more. This might have created some limiting factors that have proven challenging to overcome.

Yet, you have the power to overcome almost all of them. It might not be easy; some of the choices you make along the way could be partial or between the lesser of two evils. Nonetheless, you have the power over your life experience.

At least, if you’re reading this, you have a degree of freedom you can choose to work with and from.

Your superpower is that you get to choose who you think you are. That, however, is not necessarily easy.

Photo by Bekah Russom on UnsplashEnter combat with the brain weasels

Lots of people have inner dialogues that can cause distress, self-sabotage, a lack of self-esteem, imposter syndrome, and the like. Endless chatter telling you that you’re not good enough, smart enough, wise enough, thin enough, and on and on. We often personify this as squirrels in the brain or brain weasels.

These obnoxious, unhelpful thoughts make you question who you think you are. Not from a good place, however, but a place of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. They will tell you that your self-care is selfish, self-esteem is egoistic, self-thought is narcissistic, and that putting yourself first in any way makes you a bad person. Or worse.

For many, before you can determine who you think you are, these need to be addressed and often stomped out. These are subconscious elements and the ego clinging to comfort zones for fear of what you might become if you grow. Or fear that you are unworthy and undeserving, and should be more concerned about what others think of you.

Which —and this is massively important — is something you can’t control at all and is seldom what you believe it to be.

Who they think you are and who you think they think you are don’t align

Pause a moment. With the exception of certain individuals you don’t know but are constantly bombarded with information about, who do you think anyone else is? Do you analyze and think that much about siblings, parents, coworkers, friends, or anyone else – when they are not in your immediate presence?

In all likelihood, the answer is no. President Trump and his merry band of assholes might occupy some of your thoughts along this line, but people in your everyday life probably don’t much, if at all.

That goes both ways. You don’t think about who they are, and they don’t think about who you are. When all is said and done, that’s because who, what, where, how, and why you are is about you alone, and nobody else. Likewise, who, what, where, how, and why anyone else is bears on them alone. Not you.

Hence, rather than focus on others and what they think of you, give more time and energy to what you think of you. This is not selfish; it’s how you become empowered to live life on your chosen terms.

Who do you think YOU are?

Only you know the answer. If it’s not an answer you like, only you can change it. That starts by knowing the answer in the first place.

The answer is found by practicing active conscious awareness. Via mindfulness, you can determine what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and what actions you are or aren’t taking. All of these, when identified here and now, can be altered, changed, and redirected by you if so desire.

You can only change your life. That can be distressing, but it’s the truth. To do that, you must first know who you think you are. That can only be determined here and now via mindfulness.

Your subconscious mind and your ego are not who you are, but they might be who you think you are. They will strive to keep you safe, even when that safety is utterly false. Hence, comfort zones are a misnomer and are often uncomfortable false-stability zones.

Change is the only constant in the universe. Opening yourself to it empowers you. That’s why it’s important to know who you think you are. Because if the answer displeases you, you have all the power to change it.

So, who do YOU think you are?

This is the seventh-hundred-nineteenth (719) 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 repost and share this.

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

The post Who Do You Think You Are? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Nothing Lasts Forever

That’s more positive than negative.Photo by Brian Kelly on Unsplash

We are living in a bizarre, uncertain, distressing world right now. Tons of progress made toward a more equal, diverse, inclusive, amazing world are being shredded by scared, greedy, uncertain, thoughtless people on many levels.

It’s hard to find positivity in much of anything regarding the world at large. It’s hard to accept anything in your personal life that’s good without feeling guilty or selfish. Yet, truth be told, there’s almost nothing you can do for those big picture issues.

It’s not that there’s nothing you can do. But almost all of it, unless somehow you’re directly in the thick of it, is majorly limited. You can vote, protest, boycott those supporting the awfulness, try to show those unable to see the harm they’re doing will harm them, too, and obsess over it all. That’s about it.

There is also one more thing you can do. It’s the easiest but also feels the most disingenuous and potentially selfish. Live your life. Do what you can for your life to live the best life you can. Do all the things you desire to do that do no harm to the planet, the beings inhabiting it, or the people around you.

Because nothing lasts forever.

This, too, shall pass

There is only one constant in the universe. Change. Change is the one and only thing you can absolutely count on.

Sometimes it’s slow, subtle, and done with little notice. Other times, it’s swift, sudden, and constructive or devastating. Fast or slow, microscopic or ginormous, change always occurs. No matter how hard you would like things not to change, they can, will, and do. Sometimes you have control, other times you don’t.

Frequently, change is neither good nor bad. But the impact of it and what comes next, colored by humans and their acceptance or rejection of it, will create the course the collective consciousness finds itself upon.

Many of those cheering for the unfathomably destructive administration are reacting to change they believe left them behind, negatively impacted their lives, and colored their world (or, more often than not, whitewashed it). They feel emboldened to follow the examples of unkind, uncompassionate, uncaring leaders.

It’s infuriating, distressing, depressing, and scary. And when one of the main dominant parties refuses to hold dialogue and the other sometimes eats its own, we wind up in uncertain, freaky times.

But nothing lasts forever. Because change is constant, this, too, shall pass.

Nothing lasts forever, and that’s hugely positive

No matter what it is, good, bad, or indifferent, nothing at all lasts forever.

Even the most staid and steady constants can, will, and do change. The sun will one day burn out all its energy. Every human being is born, lives, and dies. The day gives way to night, and the night gives way to day. Nothing lasts forever.

Every single person in the world has good days, bad days, amazing days, horrific days, and everything in between. Yet, realistically, every day is a mix of good, bad, amazing, horrific, and more. A day that starts amazing can turn horrific, while a day that starts horrific can turn amazing. That’s because nothing lasts forever. This truth means that even the worst things you can imagine can, do, and will change.

Photo by Strange Happenings on Unsplash

So long as you’re alive, you will experience ups and downs, sorrow and joy, scary and nonthreatening, and much more. When the meaning of life is TO LIVE – which it is – that means experiencing things.

Every emotion, every employment of your senses, every person you meet, all the things you learn, tangible and intangible, make up your life experience. That is why the meaning of life is to live, to revel in the experiences, to not just coast through your time, but soak it in and make choices and decisions for how to experience it.

Nothing lasts forever, so any awfulness you see will change. Change is inevitable.

Employ mindfulness to face this

Your superpower is mindfulness. Mindfulness is active, conscious awareness. While it includes external senses, it is rooted in your thoughts, feelings, intentions, positivity or negativity of approach, and actions. You have the power to make choices and decisions to drive/direct your life experience.

Maybe things have happened that were not what you desired. But in the end, who, what, where, how, and why you are is yours to choose. Because nothing lasts forever, all choices made can be made anew.

Note: Not undone, redone, or dismissed. Past choices can’t be changed; new choices can be made by you.

So long as you’re alive, you can employ mindfulness to make new choices and decisions frequently. That opens you to take control of yourself, and with that control, you work with change, alter change, guide change, and be the most genuine you that you can be.

That’s empowering. That’s why no matter how uncertain it all seems, no matter how seemingly out of control and scary and distressing the world appears, it’s good that nothing lasts forever. What can you do for yourself to make positive changes in your life?

Appreciating that nothing lasts forever is a positive isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that change is the only constant in the universe and that nothing lasts forever, you can shift your mindfulness to your life experience. Knowing that you ultimately choose and decide who, what, where, how, and why you are, you can use active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to experience life fully, here and now, and push through the madness.

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

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

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them as well. That is an amazing conduit to help reason to overcome fear in the collective consciousness.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-seventh (607) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post Nothing Lasts Forever appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Be Mindful of All the Distractions?

When you’re distracted, you become disempowered and cede control of your life.Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. The biggest downside of the information age, the internet, and social media, is how much junk is out there to distract you.

This, coupled with the inherent fear-base of our society, is being increasingly weaponized to cause chaos, misguidance, and disempower the masses. It’s gotten to the point where there are distractions from the distractions.

All of this is designed to move you further and further away from self-awareness. Why? Because the more those in power can keep average people off balance, the more they can influence and control the masses in abstract ways.

The entire MAGA movement is one giant distraction. It focuses entirely on blaming this, that, or the other thing, and taking ZERO responsibility or accountability for anything. The leaders play on the fears, hopes, and dreams of people in subtle and unsubtle ways. That’s why they treat “wokeness” as a bad thing. Because being awake, aware, and “woke” means you can see where responsibility and accountability should be.

The biggest issue with this is finding the middle ground between knowing and becoming overwhelmed.

Knowledge is power, but empowerment is more important

Unless you’re a sociopath, you have a desire to help people in the world. That might extend only as far as immediate circles you can physically access, or it might reach out to abstracts in the world at large. To be a productive, useful human being capable of helping yourself and others requires both inner and outer awareness.

Too often, we put greater emphasis on knowledge without. School is about learning history, how systems work, interaction with others, and various outside matters. This is important because you don’t live in a vacuum, and other people matter just as much as you do.

However, you have zero control over anything outside of yourself. None whatsoever. You might have some sway, input, and influence, but that’s incredibly limited. For that reason, you only need enough information and knowledge of what’s happening outside yourself to make choices in elections, boycott terrible businesses, avoid warzones, and the like.

I am not dismissing education and learning. The more you learn, the more you open neural pathways to increase your ability to learn things. That’s important. The trouble is when you sacrifice giving time and energy to inner knowledge.

You alone know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, the positivity or negativity of your approach to things, and your actions. Nobody outside of you can know or control this. With this knowledge, you can control how you live your life via all the choices and decisions that you make.

This is where active conscious awareness comes in. Mindfulness is being present, here and now, and making active choices and decisions.

Which is challenging when you have all these distractions.

Why be mindful of all the distractions?

Here are a couple of hard truths. You can’t do anything directly or immediately about the destructive actions of Trump and his administration, the media allowing politicians to dictate free speech, Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, Netanyahu and his government’s handling of Palestine, or the like. There is nothing you can do, directly, about these matters.

Yes, there are indirect things you can do. This includes voting people out of office, campaigning for better people, protesting, boycotting, and sharing ideas via blogs and social media. They are good and useful things to do, too. That, however, is about all that you can do for these matters.

Yet all these overwhelming things are in your face 24/7. Everywhere you turn, there’s an advertisement, a scathing article about atrocities, commentary both wise and foolish, and so much more. And all of these are distractions that are meant to disempower you.

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash

When you focus on things you have no control over, you cede what you can control. Namely, your life experiences. When you let your subconscious mind swim in the distractions of the world, unchecked, you become disenchanted, disturbed, unsettled, angry, scared, uncertain, and all sorts of other disempowering emotions.

It’s all too easy to let the distractions take you away from being mindful and employing active conscious awareness. When you’re mindful, you can see the distractions for what they are. Then you can dismiss them via the choices and decisions you consciously make.

Important note

I am not in any way advocating for toxic positivity, shutting yourself away from the news, or being oblivious to world affairs. If you don’t know what’s happening out there, you can’t do anything in any way to change it for the better.

However, when it consumes you, leaves you enraged and dreading what’s next, what can you do via your hyperfocus on it? Nothing. Knowing every single detail of the latest awfulness from the administration, business world, or foreign war doesn’t empower you to do anything about it. It distracts you from choices and decisions that you do have at your fingertips.

Disempowering yourself by letting the distractions rule your life helps nobody and leaves you without any fuel to do anything for anyone. Ultimately, this is why it’s important to be mindful of the distractions.

Recognize and acknowledge the distractions

To be mindful of the distractions out there, you need to first recognize them. See them there, pulling your attention away from the things in your life you can do something about.

Then, acknowledge them. Recognition without acknowledgement leaves the distractions running in the background. Recognition is like seeing that the TV is on, even though nobody is watching it, at full volume. Acknowledgement is grabbing the remote and choosing to switch it off.

Finding the balance between knowing and being overwhelmed is up to you. My threshold is not yours, and vice versa. But when you’re mindful of the distractions, you can shift from allowing your subconscious to soak it all up unchecked to consciously moving past them via the choices and decisions you make.

This is your superpower, and it empowers you. When you’re empowered, you gain control of your life experiences. That opens you to new ideas, potential, and possibilities. I don’t know about you, but that’s preferable to expecting nothing but doom and gloom.

Lastly, it is in no way, shape, or form selfish. If you don’t make choices and decisions for how to live your life, who does? Your life is yours. When you’re empowered, you gain what control you can and open yourself to see beyond distractions.

Do you see why it matters to be mindful of all the distractions?

This is the seventh-hundred-eighteenth (718) 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 repost and share this.

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

The post Why Be Mindful of All the Distractions? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What Will Today Bring?

Applied nontoxic positivity can help answer this question.Photo by Yosep Surahman on Unsplash

No two days are alike. Similar, sure. Alike? No. This is because variables will make every single day different and unique in some way or other.

For example, even if you wake up at 6am, on the dot, every morning, the sun isn’t precisely where it was the day before. No matter how close the temperature of the air is today to what it was yesterday, the humidity and barometric pressure are different.

This is due to the one and only constant in the entire universe. Change. Fast or slow, wanted or unwanted, change is ever-present, constant, and ongoing.

This fact, however, is often glossed over, weaponized, or demonized as being awful. Whole industries and governments exist to resist and fight change, despite its inevitability. People are told that this, that, or the other thing that is changing will negatively impact their life experience and cause them to suffer.

Fear of suffering is why ours is a fear-based society. From the blatant to the subtle, the innocuous to the intentional, fear of suffering is used to overwhelm you and me to keep us disempowered and feeling as if we have little to no control over anything at all.

That, however, is not the truth. Recognizing this is a choice you get to make. One way to start that engine is by asking, “What will today bring?”

Mindfulness is just active conscious awareness

Everyone is of three minds. The unconscious, which is how your vital life functions, such as neurons firing, blood pumping, lungs breathing, and so on, takes place. The subconscious is where your beliefs, values, memories, and habits live. Then there is the conscious, where you can be awake and aware, here and now, of what’s happening both outside and inside of yourself.

The subconscious is always absorbing everything around it unfiltered. Hence, if you’re scrolling mindlessly across social media and engaging with increasingly negative things, you start to absorb them and, because you’re working subconsciously, think and feel negative.

Conscious awareness is where you gain control. You do so by being an active participant, which occurs by making choices and decisions. Choosing and deciding is often held up as being about the big, important things. But the reality is that every little choice matters. Specifically, making even small choices mindfully.

That’s not to say that all things done by rote, routine, and habit are problematic. That subconscious automation allows you to handle a vast range of life necessities. It becomes problematic when you don’t engage active conscious awareness and cede all to your subconscious mind.

When you make active choices and decisions about how you spend your time, what you give focus and energy to, you gain necessary insight into that which you can and do control. Namely, your thoughts, feelings, approach, intentions, and actions.

That opens the way to choose what any given day will bring.

What will today bring?

Every. Single. Day. Is. New. This is something easily forgotten. Especially when there are tons of loud, overbearing, forceful things telling you what to think, how to act, who to be, what to feel, and so on.

Advertising tells you to buy this thing or use that service, or else you’ll suffer. Maybe you’ll be disregarded, found unattractive, or otherwise unworthy. It’s often incredibly subtle, but still like a drill boring into your subconscious.

You have the power to take the wheel. It begins by pausing and being present, here and now. Not looking back to the past or forward to the future. Here. Now. Present. This moment alone.

Photo by Kemal Alkan on Unsplash

When you are wholly present, now, you gain use of active conscious awareness. From there, you can make choices and decisions about who, what, where, how, and why you are. This door opens when you look at what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, if your approach is positive or negative, what your intentions are, and what you’re doing.

From that knowledge, if you find that the answers aren’t what you desire for them to be, you can choose and decide to change them.

Asking “What will today bring?” can only be answered here and now via active conscious awareness. Applied mindfulness that you can use to choose and decide this, that, or the other thing.

Yes, this is “woke.” How, in any way, is that a bad thing? Not being awake and aware means your subconscious is being driven by people, situations, and other things that you might really prefer it wasn’t being driven by, and you might feel negativity because of that. However, there is something you can do about this.

Applied nontoxic positivity

When you don’t ask what will today bring, you are letting your subconscious drive. That means that if you had a bad dream, start the day reading about the latest insanity from the government or various horrid world affairs, odds are that you’ll feel negative.

When you question what will today bring, you open yourself up to seeking useful, good, positive things. I’m not talking about giant changes or pie-in-the-sky notions. These are things like getting a good cup of coffee or tea, kissing a loved one, petting a dog or cat, enjoying the sun or rain on your face, and other seemingly insignificant things that are good and positive in your life.

This empowers you. Nontoxic positivity doesn’t ignore or disregard reality. It opens your active conscious awareness to making choices and decisions to impact how your day will be.

That’s something you and I can control that can make the difference between having a good day or a lousy day. Why not employ this for your betterment? It not only does no harm to you, but it can also spread to people around you and help them have a better day, too.

Worth it.

Asking and answering “What will today bring?” isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that applied mindfulness and active conscious awareness put you in the driver’s seat of your life, you can ask these and similar questions to be mindful and thus drive your life experience. Knowing that you can make your own choices and decisions, and take control of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions, you open yourself to more potential and possibilities on multiple levels.

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

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

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

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

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-fifth (605) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post What Will Today Bring? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.