M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 23

Sometimes Should Doing Nothing Be What We Should Be Doing?

The constant go-go-go of our culture isn’t healthy or sustainable.Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

I frequently write about the need for action. If you desire to make any changes in your life, you must act. Conscious reality creation, mindfulness, and any work to manifest anything you desire requires you to do something.

Rather than living life passively, going with the flow, and allowing life to just live you – taking action, doing something – is how you can be in control of who, what, where, how, and why you are.

However – it’s also necessary to pause, take stock, and simply be – without actively doing.

While it’s empowering to be an active participant in your life experience – and to practice active, conscious awareness – sometimes doing nothing is what we should be doing.

Isn’t that counterproductive?

No. But lots and lots of messages in the world today will tell you that it is.

Look around you. Messages that inundate you from TV, billboards, social media, your email inbox, and everywhere you look hype constantly doing. Go here, do that, taste this, experience those, work that, travel here, go there. Do, take, act, work. Keep going, don’t stop. Rest is for the weak. You can rest when you’re dead.

All of these messages imply or state outright that a constant state of action is the key to it all. Success, wealth, joy, happiness – do something, or you can’t have them.

I’ve been a regular proponent of doing. Acting. Taking action. You can’t have, be, or do jack shit without action. And this remains true of active mindfulness to control your life experience, as well as anything that goes into conscious reality creation.

However, that’s intentional action. There is a time and place for intentional action. You move yourself to action as the final step of practical mindfulness.

It begins with thought. An idea. A notion. Some concept. Then, feeling. What and how do I feel when I have that thought? What emotion does that idea, notion, or concept evoke? This moves to intent. How do you take the thought, and apply feeling to it with intent? Now you have action.

Intentional action is not just for the sake of doing something. There’s a goal and purpose to it. But can you be in action all the time?

No.

Sometimes doing nothing is what we should be doing

Human beings are not designed to be on the go all the time. We need to rest and recuperate. Without proper rest and restoration, we suffer.

Sometimes, that means that doing nothing is what we should be doing.

What is nothing? It can take many forms. These include productive, counter-productive, passive, and neutral.

Productively doing nothing might include reading nonfiction, taking an online course, listening to a podcast, conversing with a subject matter expert, meditating, or anything of this ilk that includes doing little to nothing. There’s positive intention in the nothing of this.

Counter-productively doing nothing might include smoking, eating when you’re not hungry, reading comments on social media, watching the news for hours on end, avoiding or putting off work you desire to do for no apparent reason, and the like. There’s negative intention – if there’s any intention – in the nothing of this.

Passively doing nothing is literally doing nothing. You might just be sitting somewhere – intentionally or not – and being. Maybe you’re just petting a cat or dog, listening to music in the background, riding as the passenger in a vehicle, or just doing nothing specific. There’s no intention here, and it’s neither positive nor negative.

Neutrally doing nothing might include things like reading fiction, intentionally watching a movie or TV show, playing a game, meditating, and is very similar to passively doing nothing. The difference between passive and neutral is intent. The former is without, while the latter has something behind it.

All of the above examples are interchangeable. Meditation can be counter-productive, playing a game can be productive, petting a cat or dog can be neutral, and putting off work can be passive.

But, you might argue, all of these are somethings, not nothings. Are they, though?

Photo by Danny SwellChasers on UnsplashDefining nothing

Productivity tends to focus on results. Tangible or intangible, material or immaterial, productive work – doing something – results in something.

Maybe you create a tangible something. Perhaps you develop a new, intangible way to calm a racing mind. Whatever the case might be, there’s a result.

Doing something is about producing results. Lots of the notions in the section above don’t produce results. That’s what makes them nothing.

At least, in the context of productivity, they’re doing nothing. But the truth is that, apart from sleeping, we’re seldom doing nothing at all.

Doing nothing productive is necessary to reset ourselves. What’s more, the constant need to build, build, build – go, go, go – takes a toll on us. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, we can only be productive some of the time, not all the time.

This is why sometimes doing nothing is what we should be doing. Naps and sleep included.

It’s essential that we refuel. Even the finest, most fuel-efficient car on the planet can only go so far without refueling. The human vehicle, without sufficient fuel, will cease functioning, too. Only rather than sputtering out in the middle of the road, you’ll have a mental breakdown, get sick, suffer depression or anxiety, or some horrific combination of all these consequences.

If nothing is defined as not being productive – can you see how doing nothing isn’t such a bad thing?

Normalizing doing nothing starts with you and me

It’s taken me a while to embrace the power of doing nothing. For a long time, I believed that if I wasn’t being productive, I was actively contributing to failing at anything I set my mind to.

Wrapping my head around the importance of doing nothing for health, wellness, and wellbeing is not easy. It feels counter to a lot of the work I’ve been doing over the years – and the messages the world lobs my way daily.

Yet I increasingly see how the always-on, constant drive for productivity ideal isn’t ideal. It’s unsustainable – because human beings need rest.

What’s more, if your idea of ultimate success includes owning a luxury yacht, do you think you could enjoy it without doing nothing but being on your yacht at sea somewhere?

I am a human, being. So are you. Sometimes just being – rather than doing – is what we should be doing. Rest in whatever form it takes – and just being without doing – refuels, rejuvenates, and restores us.

Society won’t shift its collective consciousness this way via groupthink. It will only shift when individuals – you, me, our friends, and family – start normalizing doing nothing and being okay with that. When you and I accept this and apply it – and it does us good – others might take it on for themselves.

I know it’s cliché – but be the change you wish to see. Recognize, acknowledge, accept, and embrace doing nothing from time to time. Doing nothing is never truly nothing – it’s something for our overall better health, wellness, and wellbeing.

Can you see how doing nothing might be doing something good – rather than bad – for you and your life?

This is the six-hundred and seventeenth (617) 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 Sometimes Should Doing Nothing Be What We Should Be Doing? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Can Gratitude for What You Have Get You What You Desire?

Yes. But it also alters what you genuinely desire in important, positive ways.Photo by Heidi Fin on Unsplash

Overall, I have an amazing life.

I’m deeply grateful for all that I have. This begins with the basic necessities. This includes ample food, more than adequate shelter, and enough clothing that I need to donate things I seldom or never wear to a worthwhile charity.

Beyond the basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter – I am incredibly grateful for the other “needs” that are fulfilled. I have a phenomenal wife, great friends, family, cats, and tons of love and support. When it comes to material things, I have a great car, my home office equipment, a smartphone, books, and various tchotchkes collected and gifted to me over the years.

I have an amazing life. And for that, I have tremendous gratitude.

Gratitude is something we easily take for granted. That’s not anyone’s fault, per se. But when you live in a mass-consumption, consumer-driven, fear-based society, gratitude is easy to shunt away and take for granted.

By having gratitude for what you already have, you can get what you desire. However, having and expressing gratitude for all you already have alters your desire in positive ways.

Do you really need that?

Advertising bombards you everywhere you turn. From billboards to vehicle wraps to TV and the internet, someone’s selling you something from every angle.

The hype and hoopla can utterly draw you in. Nearly subconsciously, you believe that driving the Acura over the Honda equivalent vehicle will improve your status. If the tech you have isn’t up to date, you’ll look bad, be mistreated by others, and suffer.

Every year, Apple releases a new iPhone. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan and love my iPhone. But I don’t feel the need to upgrade annually or biannually. Overall, I’ve only upgraded when my existing smartphone started to run out of memory, not hold a charge, and its functionality was increasingly slipping away.

The point is – I don’t need to upgrade my phone just because a newer and “better” iPhone has been released.

When it comes to what you desire – especially the tangible – it’s easy to fall prey to this. Do you really need that car, watch, home, designer outfit, or the like? Will what you desire have genuine, real meaning for your life experience?

This can also be applied to the intangible. Do you really need that person, experience, validation, release of endorphins? Or do you think you need it to be better, happier, healthier – because you genuinely desire it, or you believe that you should?

The best way to answer if you really need that is mindfulness.

Gratitude and mindfulness

Mindfulness – as I define it – is active conscious awareness of your inner being. It’s achieved by a combination of sensory input (via your 6 senses) and knowing – in the present, here and now:

What you’re thinkingHow and what you’re feelingWhat your intentions areWhat actions you are or aren’t taking

Being consciously aware of these makes you mindful. And it tells you, right now, who, what, where, how, and why you are.

When you’re present and actively consciously aware, you can recognize what you do have. Material and immaterial, mindfulness opens the door to look and see what you have for your life.

With this awareness, you can offer thanks and practice gratitude for those things.

Why is that important? Because if you’re not grateful, how do you expect to change anything or get anything new?

For example – as a child, you probably got things from your parents. With a few exceptions, I suspect they told you that saying “thank you” for what you received strengthened bonds and made them more willing to give you other things. And when you didn’t give gratitude for what you got, they were less inclined to give you more.

Unfortunately, this also sometimes gets expressed in the immaterial. Conditional love instead of unconditional love can do a lot of harm.

Even when it comes to the impersonal – the powers that be, God, the supreme being, the Universe, or just the random ethers – gratitude gets you more, too. But more importantly, genuine gratitude is never negative, and this positive action empowers when both given and received.

The author and one of his catsThinking, feeling, and saying “thank you” builds bridges

Often, we believe that we desire something that we don’t truly desire. Advertising sells us a product we believe we need – tangible or intangible – to better our life experiences.

This can be both blatant and subtle – sometimes both. They tell you without item “X” you’ll suffer. That suffering might be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – or all the above. But they will do everything they can to convince you to buy their goods and/or services because without them you’re lesser.

When you practice mindfulness, you’re creating inner self-awareness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. That active, conscious self-awareness in the now makes you wholly present. Once you gain mindfulness within, you can look at the intangibles you have. Your emotions become clearer.

Then, you can turn your head, heart, and soul to your outer world. With a clear perception, you can see the things you have, the people in your life, and the good therein. When you see this from such a clear, mindful perspective, it’s apparent the good you have.

Sure, it might be imperfect. Guess what? Everyone is perfectly imperfect. Room for improvement is part of life’s experience. This is how we grow, evolve, and gain greater knowledge and wisdom – both individually and collectively.

When you express gratitude by thinking, feeling, and saying “thank you”, you open your heart. This is a positive frequency elevator that raises your frequency. Higher frequency energetic vibration is positive. Since like attracts like, you invite more of what you desire to you.

Gratitude also shows you – and the Universe – if your desire is genuine or based on consumerism. When you’re grateful for what you have, what you need – really need – becomes clearer and easier to get. Ergo – yes, gratitude for what you have can get you what you genuinely desire.

Expressing gratitude for what you have to get what you genuinely desire isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that you have things in your life to express gratitude for, you can better recognize if what you think you desire is something you genuinely desire. Knowing that gratitude for what you already have opens the way to draw more good to your life, you recognize if your desire for anything tangible or intangible is genuine, necessary, and worth your time and effort.

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

Taking an approach to positivity and 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 sixth (506) 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 Can Gratitude for What You Have Get You What You Desire? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Do You Give Your Best and Do Your Best?

This is not in comparison to anyone else.Photo by Mubariz Mehdizadeh on Unsplash

I strive to be the best person that I can be. As a friend, a worker, a family member, a lover – I work to do my best and give my best.

However, there is only one person who can judge what my best is. Me.

My best is about being genuine, authentic, true to myself, and expending necessary effort. It doesn’t matter what the topic at hand is – nobody else can define what my best is but me.

One problem I’ve run into with this over the years is comparison. It’s hard not to compare yourself to others. No matter how hard you might work not to – it’s difficult to avoid.

Why? Because we live in a fear-based society. Much of the fear-base focuses on lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. We get repeatedly told that there’s not enough “X”, too little “Y”, and that we are in competition for these.

Add to that a consumer-driven culture where you’re being regularly sold crap you think you need – but probably don’t.

Additionally, this isn’t just about tangible, material things. It’s often further spread to the immaterial.

Hence, my best and your best on a given topic get compared, contrasted, and judged one versus the other. By you, by me, and seemingly be “them”, too.

The thoughts and feelings of others are outside your control

No matter what you do – you have no control at all over how anyone else thinks or feels. Even the people closest to you. You can control only yourself and your life.

While sometimes that can feel really limiting, the truth is that it’s deeply freeing. Why? Because it relieves a lot of external pressure when you get right down to it.

If you are being genuine, honest, and true to yourself – and you give your best and do your best – then whose expectations are you living up to? Yours, and yours alone. Since the thoughts and feelings of others are outside of your control, you can’t know how anything you do impacts anyone else.

One very important caveat here – don’t be a dick. When you give your best and do your best, it’s about the effort you’re expending. Though you have no control over the thoughts and feelings of others – that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take them into consideration. Giving your best and doing your best should do no harm to anyone else.

Kindness, compassion, and empathy should be part of giving your best and doing your best. Why? Because I’ve yet to meet a single person who doesn’t desire to receive kindness, compassion, and empathy from others.

Knowing that you have no control over the thoughts and feelings of others, you can stop trying to do for others and live up to expectations that aren’t your own or don’t suit you. Give your best and do your best as it pertains to you being your most authentic, genuine, truest self.

How do you give your best and do your best?

As with just about everything that makes you, you, knowing what your best is comes down to active conscious awareness.

Yes, that means we’re going to get into mindfulness here.

Mindfulness can be about awareness of the world outside of you, but frankly, that gets too much focus. In fact, lots of things and people want you focused without rather than within. Why? Because if your focus is external rather than internal, you lose sight of yourself.

Losing sight of yourself means you aren’t capable of being your most genuine, authentic self. Simply because you’re unfamiliar with that. And when you’re less familiar with yourself, you become easier to manipulate. Ever notice how the people most swayed by others seem least self-aware?

Real mindfulness is active conscious awareness of yourself by knowing what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, and your actions. These coupled with your six senses tell you who, what, where, how, and why you are.

Knowing who, what, where, how, and why you are makes you more genuinely and authentically you. And then, from here, you can give your best and do your best.

While this looks easy, there’s still a challenge. This comes from being social creatures.

Photo by Aziz Acharki on UnsplashOther people

You have other people in your life. Friends, family, coworkers, that clerk at the convenience store you see every morning, the neighbor with the gorgeous dog you always pass on your walks, and so on. And as far as your brain knows, each and every one of them is judging you.

Your brain believes that their thoughts and feelings get directed towards you in a judgmental way, no matter what you do. People you know and don’t know – when they encounter you – pass judgment about you.

Your brain is convinced of this. But is it true?

For the most part – no. Maybe – at the moment of encountering someone – they have or form an opinion of you. Chances are, however, it passes when you do. No true judgment is formed.

How do I know this? Do you judge random people? Sometimes, you probably do. But for the most part – they just pass.

Yes, it’s more likely the people close to you, or regularly interacting with you, judge you in some way or other. How do I know that? Because if I form judgments of people in my life, you surely form judgments of people in your life.

But – here’s the rub – how well does anyone know you? The answer is – only as well as you can know them. What does that mean? It means you, and you alone are in your head, heart, and soul. Ergo, only you truly, genuinely know you – like only I truly, genuinely know me.

Because we’re social creatures, we still take other people into account in all that we do. But the thoughts and feelings of others are outside of our control.

Give your best and do your best

The only judgment that matters – when all is said and done – is yours. But this is not regarding other people. This is about you.

The harshest judge of me and everything I do or don’t do tends to be myself. Nobody can be as unkind, uncompassionate, or unempathetic towards me as I can be towards myself. I’d bet that’s true for you, too.

Most of us have been wired by our parents, teachers, leaders, and other authorities to be harshest in judging ourselves. That’s because we’ve been regularly and frequently measured against other people, standards and norms, and lots of intangibles that – upon close examination – make little to no sense.

You, and you alone, can know you. To begin to get to know yourself, practicing active conscious awareness – mindfulness – opens the door to more complete knowledge and self-awareness. From there, you can find the measure of and for you where you best exist.

Then, you can give your best and do your best in anything you exert effort for. Your best isn’t measured against anyone or anything else. It’s measured solely up against you and your skills, abilities, talents, and everything else that makes you the complete package.

Finally – you are worthy and deserving of giving your best and doing your best. It’s good enough because when you’re true and genuine with yourself, you present the world with the amazing, singular, unique badass that you really, truly, are.

This is one of my daily affirmations:

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

That’s true for everyone.

Do you give your best and do your best to the best of your ability?

This is the six-hundred and sixteenth (616) 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 Do You Give Your Best and Do Your Best? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What If You Could Program Your Brain Like a Computer?

Spoiler alert – you can totally program your brain like a computer.Photo by Mo on Unsplash

The human brain is an incredibly complex piece of machinery. Everything the brain does – whether on the unconscious, subconscious, or conscious level – is simply astounding. Without our unique, complex, multifaceted brains, we’d be far more like the rest of the animal kingdom.

Human beings are the only animals on this planet who can adapt to any environment, communicate instantaneously around the globe via artificial electronics, and turn products of our imagination into reality.

Yet for all of this and more – we still have a very, very limited understanding of the totality of human potential. As far as we’ve advanced – especially over the last 100 years – we don’t know exponentially more than we do know.

One of the things we tend to know the least about is our own minds. And I don’t mean the overarching human mind as much as I mean the individual mind. We explore the world without regularly – but not the world within very often.

Hence, many people believe what they’re told, believe in certain limitations, and think that there’s little to nothing they can do about their lives, their thoughts, emotions, and more.

What if that’s not true? What if all you need to do is alter your programming?

Program your brain

One of the most amazing things about the human brain is how malleable it is. The programs that make up you are not written in stone. They are just like software – they can be upgraded.

Just because you’ve long believed that something was a certain, specific way doesn’t mean you can’t change it. You change all the time. But you have the power to choose change.

Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. Like it or not, it can, will, and does occur all the time. Sometimes change is glacially, unbelievably slow. Other times it’s so blazingly swift that it leaves you with whiplash. If you’re not a newborn, you’ve already experienced change many, many, many times.

Your brain has changed along the way. For example, there might have been a time in your life when you believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Underpants Gnomes, and the like. But then along the way you changed that belief. Which means that you reprogrammed your brain.

Like certain updates to your phone or computer software – some of the reprogramming of your brain is poorly timed or even unwanted. But apart from this – you have the power to choose to reprogram your brain.

Choosing to re-program your brain is done via active conscious awareness – in other words, mindfulness – of your conscious self and subconscious beliefs, values, habits, and more.

Mindfulness of the conscious and the subconscious

Everyone is of 3 minds – the unconscious, subconscious, and conscious.

The unconscious mind is what keeps your heart beating, blood flowing, and neurons firing. It’s how your brain operates your whole body. Think of this as the BIOS when you first start up your computer. It’s the code for controlling the hardware.

The subconscious mind is where your beliefs, values, habits, and the like exist. For the most part, they’re just there – but with a little effort, they can be accessed. Think of this as your operating system. Within it is every program you have, underlying data, and everything you have downloaded or installed to be accessed and used – some actively, some passively.

The conscious mind is your mindset/headspace/psyche self. This is your awareness – sometimes passive, sometimes active – of who, what, where, how, and why you are. Your conscious mind is like any software on your computer or app on your phone. Accessing it makes it active – though you can leave it running passively.

Via the conscious mind, you can access the subconscious mind. Just like software and apps can access the operating system. Through that access – changes can be actively, intentionally made.

Photo by That’s Her Business on UnsplashTo program the brain takes effort

Every time you learn something new – you’re programming your brain. That doesn’t mean that everything you learn helps you or is useful – but that’s true of everything on your phone and computer, too.

When it comes to the human mind, reprogramming or actively changing your programming begins with a conscious act. Via mindfulness – active conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to drive your action – you can bring information from without and install it within.

To do that, you must access your subconscious mind. Using your conscious mind, you can choose to look at any beliefs, values, and/or habits – no matter how old or how deeply embedded – and repair, remove, and/or replace them.

However, doing this requires work. Sometimes diligent, thoughtful, ongoing work. But without effort and mindful action – you’re less likely to successfully re-program your brain.

What this requires can include reading, repetition, meditation, affirmations, or any combination of these. You must have the drive and desire to reprogram your brain.

But howsoever you might desire to reprogram your brain – you can. You’re empowered to do so. But that begins via thought.

Thought, feeling, intention, and action

There are numerous theological, philosophical, and even scientific arguments that everything in the Universe begins with thought.

Thought can be an idea, a notion, a concept, or some other spark that you observe. Some are random and just as quickly dismissed. Some, however, resonate with you. They spark something, and that something creates a drive and/or desire that you can’t ignore.

When that happens, the thought usually connects to a feeling. The what and how of the feeling will drive if you’d like to avoid or pursue that thought. Either way, the feeling combined with the thought creates an intention. Do or do not. Act or don’t act.

Thus, you have the elements of mindfulness. Thought, feeling, intention, and action. When all is said and done – these are the things that you have the most control of and over in your life. Through active conscious awareness – mindfulness – of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions, you can change your life. You can reprogram the computer that is your brain.

It takes effort, and some elements of the subconscious are easier to access and alter than others. But if you desire to take the wheel and steer your life – and reprogram your brain – you have all the power. All you need to do is recognize, acknowledge, and employ it.

Programming your brain – like programming a computer – isn’t hard

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

When you understand that the mind is malleable and can be changed via using conscious awareness to access the subconscious – beliefs, values, habits, and the like – you can choose to re-program your brain and change. This is hugely positive. Knowing that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul – and the only one who can think, feel, intend, and act for you – you have all the power to reprogram your brain as you deem fit.

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

Taking an approach to positivity and 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 fifth (505) 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

The post What If You Could Program Your Brain Like a Computer? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Didn’t You Know What I Thought You Should/Would Know?

Communication is the key to everything in all relationships.Photo by Etienne Boulanger on Unsplash

Have you ever thought that you told someone something or held a conversation that you didn’t? Did you ever go through – in your head – a whole discussion, then forgot that it never truly occurred?  And then, have you gotten mad at the other party because they didn’t know what you thought that they should and/or would know?

Odds are, either you’ve experienced this – or been on the receiving end of it. Sometimes, like the above notions, this was an oversight due to visualization on multiple fronts.

Other times, however, this is about assumptions made based on past experience, prior conversations and discussions, or a belief the other party should know what you think they should and/or would know.

The key to knowing what we would and/or should know in any given situation is communication.

You can’t know what you don’t communicate

It never ceases to amaze me how people get bent out of shape over perceptions. This is especially insidious when they think something should be a certain way – but it’s never been a topic of conversation.

Assumptions get made, presumption occurs, and you think the obvious is – well, obvious. But if communication hasn’t happened – there’s no guarantee anyone should and/or would know what you thought they did.

This applies to all forms of relationships. Platonic, sexual, intimate, work, or any combination of the above. If you don’t communicate, then what you believe someone should and/or would know might not be something they know.

When it comes to communication, however, there’s a very important truth to consider.

Open and honest communication

It’s all well and good to talk. But if you’re not open and honest, neither is your communication.

Long ago, I dated a lovely woman who agreed with me that we must have open and honest communication between us. Great in principle – but then we hit the issue where she failed to mention she was bad at it.

Something would get under her skin. However, she didn’t tell me anything about it at the time it occurred. It would then simmer, fester, and nag at her, until – out of the blue from my vantage point – she was yelling at me, deeply upset by this thing. And – more upset that I didn’t know (but how could I, when she’d never told me?)

The lack of open and honest communication killed the relationship.

Business, friendships, and all other relationships suffer just as much – when communication isn’t open and honest – as they do when it is lacking.

Photo by Dima Pechurin on UnsplashWhy didn’t you know by now?

Many times, in the face of a longtime relationship – family, lover, old friend, and the like – there develops an expectation. That expectation is that you should know how the other person thinks, feels, and intends most of the time.

To be fair, lots of people do develop an active sixth sense for one another in this way. I have friends whom a glance tells a whole story to. Arguably, though, that’s still a form of communication. But similar knowledge can exist from long experience.

However – who is in your head, heart, and soul? No, not your spouse, parent, child, or best friend – only you. You’re it. The only person in your mind, with your thoughts and feelings, and capable of any intent or action – it’s you.

Thus, nobody can know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, and why you take or don’t take action. Yes, you can tell them your what, how, and why. But that doesn’t convey all the nuances of them. That’s because there are elements of our inner beings – mindset/headspace/psyche selves – that words can’t fully reveal or share.

Hence, when someone thinks anyone should know this, that, or the other thing in the same way that they do – this shouldn’t be ignored. Because no matter how deeply you allow someone in, they’re limited by the ability to adequately communicate the often complex and incomprehensible inner workings of the head, heart, and soul.

Communications and your path

As I’ve written before, some people just can’t/don’t/won’t get you. No matter how much you communicate, their perception of you is not in your control.

While communicating and communication is important – sometimes less is more.

No matter what path you’re on – societally acceptable, risky and tricky, one that makes you happy and content, unique, or whatever – it’s your path. You, and you alone, are walking it.

Thus, there are times when nobody needs to know details about it. This is in part because what it is and how you’re traversing it is nobody’s business but your own. It’s also in part because sometimes well-meaning friends and loved ones might try talking you out of whatever it is – because they don’t get it.

Have you ever been asked for information – and found that if you gave more than was asked, it bit you in the ass? That’s what this is.

The only way, of course, to know when to communicate about your path – and when not to – is via mindfulness.

Didn’t you know about mindfulness?

No matter how many times I write this, I know there’s always someone who hasn’t yet gotten the why of mindfulness.

Everyone lives with expectations. Not for themselves – but what is expected of them by others. Friends, family, bosses, coworkers, and the nameless and faceless “they” expect things of you.

Most such things are tied to society, norms, and standards. They’re drilled into our heads throughout formal schooling and into entering the workforce. And they are all about rote, routine, and automation to contribute and fit in.

Mindfulness runs counter to that. Because it’s active, conscious awareness here and now. That will put you in control of your life experience.

Hence, you can be actively consciously aware – mindful – of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, intentions, actions, and inaction on your part. Further, that knowledge empowers you to assume control and change any of these you desire to change.

That puts you ultimately in control of your life.

Mindfulness is an important part of genuine, open and honest communication. Communication is the key to everything in all relationships. Without it, you can’t know what you don’t know – and neither can those you might desire to share with, too.

How do you respond to a question of “why didn’t you know?”

This is the six-hundred and fifteenth (615) 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 Didn’t You Know What I Thought You Should/Would Know? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Not Find Your Joy Where You Find Your Joy?

Don’t let anyone rain on your parade.Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

People love to knock things. Especially online. Everywhere you turn, someone has derogatory comments or criticism regarding things that bring people joy.

For example, I am loving the Ahsoka series from Star Wars nearing the end of its initial run. Yet I’ve seen multiple posts about why it sucks, what’s wrong with it, and so on. Sorry if it’s not bringing you joy the same as it’s bringing me joy.

An even better example is the autumn obsession with all things pumpkin spice. Everywhere you turn, you can find pumpkin spice this and pumpkin spice that. And while to me this seems to go a little overboard – if you’re into it, enjoy.

We have become so deeply hyper-critical as a society that we have seemingly utterly abandoned the idea of live and let live, don’t stick your nose in other people’s business, and the like. Why can’t we just let what brings someone joy to bring them joy without adding a “But” to it?

Thus, for lots of people – they don’t even bother to find their joy. Then, if they do, they keep it under wraps for fear of someone taking a massive steaming dump all over it.

Why are we so afraid of joy?

Modern society seems to have a nearly pathological fear of finding joy. Like if something brings you joy, it’s so damned precious that you can’t let anyone else in.

The larger issue, however, is that when we’re faced with all the pain, suffering, and awfulness in the world – it’s frequently implied that joy is undeserved or wrong in that face of that. How can we have any joy when the world is burning around us?

The truth is – the world is always going to have shit going down. It always has and it always will. One group will oppress another; some group’s rights will be trampled upon; some asshole will use their greedy narcissism to take power over others and abuse it; people will be suffering due to this, that, or the other thing.

There is little to nothing you or I can do for the world at large. Yet this often gets viewed as selfish, unkind, and uncompassionate. But let’s be real here – if you live on the East Coast of the United States, what can you do about the war in Ukraine, atrocities in parts of Africa, and oppression in North Korea? You can attend protests, vote for people who give a shit about foreign policy, and send emails/make calls/post blogs – and that’s about it.

But when it comes to your life, what you do, you have control. You can make choices and decisions to do things that bring you joy. And there is no need to take that steaming dump on someone else’s joy (unless their joy is in the cruelty, uncompassionate, and unkind treatment of other human beings).

A little joy can accumulate. That can spread from you to others around you. In turn, that can begin to impact the big picture.

Energy, vibration, and frequency

To some, this is going to come across as hooky-spooky bullshit. But it’s not.

Everyone and everything in the entire Universe is made of energy. Energy takes on all sorts of forms, tangible and intangible, from the tiniest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy in the cosmos. All energy – material or immaterial – vibrates. That vibration is at one frequency or another. This is all scientific fact.

Lower frequency vibrations are negative. Higher frequency vibrations are positive. This is where the Law of Attraction comes in. The frequency you vibrate at draws like to it. So – if you’re feeling bad and low-frequency, you tend to attract more people and things that will build on that. Conversely, if you’re feeling good and high-frequency, you tend to attract more people and things that will build on that.

Where people often take the Law of Attraction too far is in the notion that via ongoing, positive, high-frequency, you can manifest anything from thin air. Just think and feel positive and voila! Anything you can dream of, it’ll come to you. Enter toxic positivity.

To create anything at all – you must do work. Raising your vibrational frequency is done via a combination of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Active conscious awareness of what you are choosing to think, feel, intend, and act upon. In other words – mindfulness.

While this is relatively easy – the work that goes into it can be challenging. Especially in the face of our fear-based, lack-focus, all-too-frequently negative society. But the only one who can determine your life experience is you.

Photo by Ben Griffiths on UnsplashMindfulness and joy

Mindfulness is active conscious awareness. Via mindfulness, you can determine who, what, how, where, and why you are. This begins by asking yourself questions like,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What am I doing?What do I intend?

You assume control over your conscious awareness, here and now. The now is the only time that’s really, truly, real.

Joy often is seen as a big, overarching notion. But the truth is that joy can be utterly tiny and seemingly insignificant.

Joy is when my cat leaps up onto my desk, crawls onto my chest, and purrs like crazy. The first sip of my first cup of coffee as I read in the morning is joyful. Seeing my words appear on the screen brings me joy. Feeling the sun on my face is joy.

Big, small, or in-between, joy is something everyone has the right to seek, find, and enjoy. It doesn’t matter in the slightest where you come from, what your background is, or anything of that ilk – you are worthy and deserving of finding your joy wherever you find your joy.

Other people don’t need to understand. You can love pumpkin spice everything, the Star Wars prequels, that movie everyone else says is the worst, or whatever else that brings you joy. Don’t let anyone rain on your parade. Celebrate what raises your energetic frequency – because this moment, the present, is the only moment that matters and is really, truly, real. Joy is worth finding, having, and experiencing as such.

Finding your joy where your joy can be found isn’t hard

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

When you understand that you are made of energy, that energy vibrates at a frequency, that higher frequencies are healthier and more positive, and that joy raises your frequency and can spread beyond you – you can find your joy wherever it can be found. Knowing that you’re worthy and deserving of joy and its positive impact, you can seek it out – and disregard if others shit upon it.

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

Taking an approach to positivity and 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 fourth (504) 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 Not Find Your Joy Where You Find Your Joy? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Do Your Inactions Speak Louder Than Words?

The intersection of words, actions, and inactions gives us control over our lives and the paths we choose.Photo by Daniel Schaffer on Unsplash

One of the greatest failings of many politicians is their lack of actions. They talk, and talk, and talk a whole lot about the wonderful things they do or will do – but do nothing actually useful. Frankly, in many cases, their real profession is lying.

Hence, inactions speak louder than words.

This doesn’t apply to only politicians, business leaders, religious leaders, and various authorities. It’s also applicable to people in our lives more directly.

There might be a loved one with a drinking or drug problem. After a particularly nasty episode, epic hangover, or other occurrence, they talk about getting clean. But then, they don’t join AA, enter into a rehab program, or take any other discernable action – and you find them drunk or high once more.

Again, inactions speak louder than words.

This can also be applied to ourselves. And it’s frequently hard to see because our individual focus tends to be narrow.

You might make a New Year’s Resolution to lose 50 pounds. You make plans for this, join a gym, and grocery shop with care. But the month passes, the New Year begins, and you always find excuses not to go to the gym. Maybe you make one healthy meal a week, but order pizza and Chinese and, rushed, regularly grab fast food along the way.

Inactions speak louder than words. Is there anything we can do about this?

Developing self-awareness and mindfulness

Self-awareness and mindfulness aren’t taught in school. If you want to get technical, it could be argued that formal education teaches various forms of groupthink, conformity, and routine.

Ever notice how small children, before schooling, play with abandon? They take joy in their imagination and a level of self-awareness still being developed with every new day, each new experience, and their growth.

When we get to college, trade school, or the workforce, self-awareness is shunted away for fitting in, doing our part, and making money so we can survive in this capitalist society. People are increasingly lost in the collective consciousness, so focused on survival that self-awareness dims.

Becoming more consciously self-aware is a choice. An entirely individual choice. You might wake up one day, tired of the rat race and mere survival, feeling a calling to do an art, start a business, or a need to understand yourself at your core. Or all of the above.

Everyone has three minds. The unconscious, the subconscious, and the conscious. The unconscious pumps blood in your veins, keeps you breathing, fires neurons to make muscles work, and so on. Your subconscious is where beliefs, values, and habits live. The subconscious is where rote and routine automate.

To access the subconscious, we have the conscious mind. The conscious mind is present, in the moment, and works both passively and actively. It’s awareness, here and how, of who, what, where, how, and why you are via your mindset/headspace/psyche.

When you actively engage conscious awareness, you become mindful. This applies to both that which is within you (thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions) and all that’s outside of you (recognized via your 6 senses).

Mindfulness is how you can choose actions over inactions.

Turning inactions into actions

When you are actively consciously aware and practicing mindfulness, you can see if your actions or inactions are speaking louder than your words.

Many of us talk a good game. We go on and on about the things we’re doing or have done, what we’re working on, plans, ideas, goals, and so on. It’s very easy to talk a lot about ourselves.

Some people carry this to the extreme, and that produces narcissists, egotists, assholes, and the like. Their arrogance, know-it-all-ness, and general self-aggrandizement either turns people off or attracts them. But either way, their inactions – in the end – speak louder than their words.

You get to choose to take action. Or not. And this is done via active, conscious awareness – mindfulness.

Mindfulness is applied when you ask yourself questions like,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What do I intend?What am I doing or not doing?

Each question makes you consciously aware – here and now, in the present – of yourself. And if you dislike the answer – you’re empowered to change it.

From here, you can turn inactions into actions.

But how?

Photo by Eneko Uruñuela on UnsplashPractice accountability

Because self-awareness isn’t taught in school, and frequently parents and authorities along the way also don’t teach it, we need to choose to learn it on our own. There are many resources for us to use – books, videos, blogs, podcasts, and more.

When you first begin to take the control active conscious awareness gives you, words are necessary to build empowerment. Yet moving from thought to feeling to intent to action requires steps that can get clouded, challenging, confusing – and lead to inactions.

An excellent way to turn inactions into actions is by practicing accountability. Accountability is you taking responsibility for what you do or don’t do. This is done by recognizing and acknowledging what you do.

Some people employ accountability partners. You ask a confidant to check in with you on the intent to act and see if you’re doing it. For example, let’s say you plan to go to the gym 3 days a week. Your accountability partner might go with you, holding you to actions over inactions. Or they might check in with you via text or by calling, reminding you to be accountable.

I’ve been working on holding myself accountable for my actions and inactions. There are 7 actions I strive to take every weekday. They are,

Edit one of my works of fictionWrite 1500 words of fictionMeditate 5-20 minutesJournal about my inner thoughts and feelingsExerciseGo through my affirmationsDrink 7+ 12-ounce glasses of water a day

To hold myself accountable I’ve got a whiteboard that sits on my desk. I check off each action. At the end of the week, I review my inactions and actions. I then note it in a journal and keep track of how I’m doing.

There’s one last, very important matter to address.

Forgive yourself for your inactions

Everyone fails to act along the way. That’s part of human nature. We plan big, set ourselves up to do something important to us, talk a whole lot about it – then don’t do it. Something got in the way, our schedule went to hell, random happenstance interfered – or laziness and procrastination won.

Often, this creates a domino effect. Inactions in one thing lead to inactions in another. Then, outside influences, societal expectations, and norms call you a failure.

I don’t know about you, but my harshest critic is myself. Nobody is more judgmental, cruel, or unkind to me than I am to myself. That’s why we need to forgive ourselves for our inactions.

Nobody’s perfect. Or rather, everyone is perfectly imperfect in their own, individual way. When our inactions speak louder than our actions or our words, it’s easy to think badly of ourselves. But that way lies madness – or more likely depression, anxiety, anger, sadness, or some combination of these.

You will fail to act. Everyone lets inactions dominate them along the way. But pause, reflect, be accountable, and then let it go. Forgive yourself for your inactions.

This takes time and practice – but recognizing the intersection of words, actions, and inactions gives us control over our lives and the paths we choose. I think that’s an utterly worthwhile pursuit.

What do you do when your inactions speak louder than words?

This is the six-hundred and fourteenth (614) 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 Do Your Inactions Speak Louder Than Words? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Support – Does It Mean What You Think It Means?

Actions speak louder than words.Photo by Stephen Isaiah on Unsplash

Lots of people will tell you that they support you.

They might offer platitudes, tell you about all the ways they’re supporting you, and/or claim they’re being supportive by doing this, that, or the other thing.

But then, when you get down to it – are they taking actions that genuinely support you?

Let’s say you have a “friend” who always must one-up you, always seems to find some way to belittle you, or in certain situations makes you feel uncomfortable. Now, let’s say you tell a friend whom you consider a confidant this, and they commiserate, claim they understand and validate you, and then tell you how much they support you.

That’s what they say and tell you. But then, they host a gathering – and invite both you and the “friend” you have the issue with. Is that genuine support? Of course not.

Whatever the situation might be – genuine support isn’t just words. It’s also actions. You can tell someone over and over how much you support them. But do your actions back this up?

Then, because support can be a slippery slope – what about when the support being requested isn’t reasonable? For example – you have a friend who claims they’ve been harassed and bullied by another friend. But you know for a fact that they were being a bully and harasser to the person they claim to be the victim of. Can you offer support to them in some way without validating their victimhood?

You, and you alone, know true support from false support – no matter the situation.

Let’s start with mindfulness

Mindfulness is active conscious awareness – both from within and without.

Active conscious awareness is derived from external and internal forces belonging to you, and you alone. Those forces are always on – but passively.

Making them active is a matter of actions taken.

Externally, this is about your six senses. Taste, touch, sight, sound, smell, and the hard-to-describe empathic, extra-sensory perceptions. You observe and take in your immediate surroundings around you and outside of your head, heart, soul, and physical body via these senses.

Within your head, heart, and soul – or however you experience your inner, non-physical being – you can be actively consciously aware of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, and your actions (and inactions).

Combined, and actively employed, you use mindfulness to be actively, consciously aware in the present, here and now. With mindfulness, you’re empowered to take control of who, what, where, how, and why you are.

That control is the ultimate control you have of your life experience. To some, it doesn’t appear to be a lot. But it’s everything, and huge.

Via mindfulness, you can recognize genuine support that you receive, and also any support that you provide to others.

Support can be positive and negative, passive and active

Part of the human condition is the need for social interaction. Even the most introverted people need at least some interaction with individuals. The human animal is a social animal, after all.

Support can be passive and active, depending on what form it takes. For example – as an author, some people passively support me by letting me bounce ideas off them. Active support is from readers of my blog articles and people who buy my books.

Likewise, support can be positive and negative. Positive support feels good both given and received, while negative support is a lot more nuanced.

For example, let’s say you feel someone majorly wronged you. You blame them for all sorts of ills in your life. What’s more, you take zero culpability for the things you place on them. Negative support is someone who reinforces this. They tell you that you’re right, that someone gets all the blame, and your victimhood is justified.

Please note – when I write about this sort of victim, I’m not writing about someone who was raped, mugged, shot, abused, or otherwise received pain and suffering that was someone else’s doing. I’m writing about the “victim” who is frequently not accountable for anything in their life. They blame it all on other people, faceless entities, “them”, and the like.

Some people get their point of view reinforced by “supporters” who are either equally lost and seeking answers, too broken to recognize the deception, or narcissistic and charismatic demagogues.

Photo by PAN XIAOZHEN on UnsplashWhat can you do to know if it means what you think it means?

By practicing active conscious awareness – mindfulness – you can use your senses and ask questions of your present, mindset/headspace/psyche self, to look closely at support both given and received.

But – and this is important – you need to forgive yourself.

Why? Because nearly everyone at one time or another supported something or someone – passively or actively – that was negative, or false.

Years ago, when a woman sued McDonald’s for their coffee being too hot and burning her, lots of people thought this was a really spurious lawsuit. Seriously? You got millions because your coffee was too hot?

When you look past the simplistic notion, you learn that it wasn’t slightly too-hot coffee, but dangerously too hot. Worse, the woman wasn’t a little burned, but seriously injured. The notion you might have previously supported – that the whole thing was ludicrous – gets reshaped, and what you support changes.

This is worse when someone you know and trust that you support turns out to be false. Learning that all the time you supported them because they were victimized by someone – who it turns out either did nothing or did something far more minor than what the victim has claimed – can make you feel bad.

When you receive half-assed support or are told someone is supporting you – but their actions say otherwise – there’s nothing you can do about them. But you can distance yourself from them, and recognize and accept that their support isn’t going to be what you need or desire. That won’t lessen your feeling hurt – but it’s not your fault you have zero control of anyone else’s actions or lack thereof.

Finally – being mindful of what you do and don’t support can help you both give and receive it better.

Recognizing the meaning of support given and not given isn’t hard

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

When you recognize via conscious awareness that actions speak louder than words, you can see the power of support that you both give and receive. Knowing that you can use mindfulness to recognize the genuine from the false, you can make choices when and how to give more, as well as when to move away from the disingenuous.

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

Taking an approach to positivity and 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 third (503) 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 Support – Does It Mean What You Think It Means? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Do You Need to Do Impressive Things to Make a Difference in the World?

No. You just need to do the best and be the best you can.Photo by Andreea Popa on Unsplash

I’m a big fan of audiobooks. When I recently came across Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth and saw he was also the narrator, I had to download it.

If you’re unfamiliar with Colonel Chris Hadfield, he’s a Canadian Astronaut who’s been to space 3 times, the last as commander of the International Space Station (ISS). He’s also an excellent singer, songwriter, and guitar player who performed from the ISS with Barenaked Ladies a song he wrote. He’s also an engineer, fighter pilot, fiction author, and used his time on the ISS to help educate the world about what space travel truly looks like.

Col. Hadfield is a dynamic speaker, and his reading of his own book gives it that much more gravitas. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it – and the many lessons he’s learned and the trials he went through to become probably the most famous Canadian astronaut.

In case it’s not obvious, this is someone that I greatly admire and deeply respect.

His life approach is different from mine, but still very much resonates with me. One of the key takeaways I’ve gotten from his book is the idea that you need not be impressive or do impressive things to make a difference in the world.

So, what do you need? You need quiet competence and an open mind.

I’m going to paraphrase one way that Col. Hadfield shares for this in his book that I think is relevant to all.

Choose to be a minus-one, a zero, or a plus-one

Most people believe that to make a difference in the world – big, small, or in between – they need to stand out. It requires tremendous excellence and other matters of impressiveness. They want to be a plus-one.

This, however, presents numerous problems. There are times when being the loudest voice in a room doesn’t make you stand out – it makes you stick out like a sore thumb. You risk coming across as arrogant, a know-it-all, and thus alienating people. Clearly, not the way to make a difference in the world.

Col. Hadfield shares a concept that I think presents a far better approach. It’s much more realistic, and it can open doors and lead to paths that can make a difference in the world.

Be a zero, rather than a minus-one. Let me put that into context. A minus-one is a person who detracts from doing something. They get in the way, cause problems, and negatively impact those around them. A minus-one is often someone who is trying to make a good impression but instead makes a bad one.

A zero, on the other hand, is going for quiet competence. They aim not to detract from a group or situation. A zero strives to avoid having a negative impact by doing what needs doing to the best of their ability. They work hard, give their best, do their best, and strive to achieve excellence by not causing issues for others.

Being a zero is not a zero-effort idea. Rather, it’s giving your best and doing your best without trying to be showy, impressive, or seeking validation from others.

From zero, what you do can make you a plus-one along the way. Because as a zero, you are competent.

How can I make a difference in the world?

There are two reasons I write my blogs. The first is a form of catharsis. My head is full of ideas, philosophies, fictional stories and characters, traumas, happy and sad experiences, and everything in between. I’m an overthinker, overanalyzer, and have fought clinical depression on and off for most of my life.

The first reason I write my blogs is to get ideas out of my head and put them somewhere I can examine them in specific and greater detail.

The second reason is because I know I’m not alone in this. Most people have a lot going on in their heads. And everyone copes with that differently. Some people do primal scream therapy, some smoke and drink, some people repress, and on and on.

By sharing my thoughts with you, the idea is that you can see you’re not alone, either. Together, we can look at these ideas and decide if they resonate the same way.

Maybe they do – and you take what I share to heart and use it for yourself. Maybe they don’t – but you still see something that helps you find a different approach from mine that helps you.

And that’s the primary reason why I write and share these. To help. I’m striving to make myself a better person, to grow, evolve, and learn all the time. Then, I’m sharing what I learn because I want to help everyone be a better person, to grow, evolve, and learn all the time.

This is one way I want to make a difference in the world. It’s not flashy, it’s not loud. It might reach a very small few. But if even one person takes something away from this that helps them do and be better – that is what I strive for.

Photo by Gary Bendig on UnsplashThe butterfly effect and making a difference in the world

Are you familiar with the butterfly effect? If not, allow me to share this summary of the concept. It comes from chaos theory and postulates that the beating of the wings of a butterfly in California can cause a typhoon in Japan. A seemingly insignificant thing leads to a big thing.

This can be negative or positive. For example, let’s say you’re a welder. As a welder, you’re employed to weld parts together that will become part of a spacecraft.

As a welder, you might give your best and do your best. Or you might not. If your attention drifts, and you do a weld that’s only 80% of your best, you might let it go.

Nothing may come of this. Or it’s possible that your half-assed weld fails when the spacecraft reenters the atmosphere, causing it to disintegrate. One seemingly insignificant thing led to a big thing.

The butterfly effect in and of itself isn’t negative. It can utterly be positive. Let’s say, for example, you hold the door open for a person struggling to get through it. They say “Thank you”, you say “You’re welcome. Have a good day” and think nothing further of it.

What you didn’t know was, prior to your action, that person had given up on the human race. They were seriously considering suicide. Your random act of holding the door and wishing them a good day restored their faith in humanity. They continue on, and months later help someone else in the same way.

Or maybe they do something utterly significant and make a difference in the world that impacts millions positively.

Does this seem far-fetched? It’s not. And sometimes you make a difference in the world by simply making someone else’s day better.

What you do matters – you matter

Returning to Col. Hadfield’s minus one, zero, plus one concept – what you do, no matter how big or small, matters to the world at large.

When you work to do your best and be your best, that doesn’t mean you’re superbly excellent. Maybe you are – but that’s not important. What’s important is that you are not half-assing your way through life, actively making choices and decisions, and striving. It means you’re being a competent, conscientious human, being.

Everything you do matters. It might matter only to and for you – but it still matters. You are worthy and deserving of making a difference in the world – even if it’s not big, not obvious, or only impacts you directly.

Too many people striving to make a plus-one impact on people and the world are actually a minus one. That’s why being a zero is utterly worthwhile.

One of my daily affirmations (yes, ugh, affirmations. Cheesy – but frankly, effective) is this:

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

What that means is that I can’t worry about the impression that I make on anyone else – or what I might cause them to think or feel, so long as I’m doing and giving my best. If that makes me a zero or a plus one – that’s fantastic. I strive to not be a minus one.

Thank you for letting me share this with you. And thank you, Col. Hadfield, for striving to be a zero – because you have been a plus-one in and to my life.

In what ways do you strive to make a difference in the world?

This is the six-hundred and thirteenth (613) 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 Do You Need to Do Impressive Things to Make a Difference in the World? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What if Suffering is More of an Honest Thing than a Bad Thing?

You keep using that word. Maybe it doesn’t mean what you think it means.Photo by Rafay Ansari on Unsplash

In our fear-based society, probably the thing we fear the most is suffering.

Realistically, more often than not, the fear of suffering is far worse than any suffering is or will be.

Allow me to prove this to you. Have you ever had a boss or a loved one say, “We need to talk,” with no context? Did you then start to become concerned about what the nature of the conversation might be, if you were about to get bad news or told something awful? Then, did you start to build it up to be this horrible thing in your head that you were certain would be the cause of tremendous pain, discomfort, and suffering?

If it was not a bad thing, then all that fear of suffering was for naught. But if it was a bad thing – more likely than not, it wasn’t nearly as unpleasant, painful, or the cause of the amount of suffering you feared it would be.

We build up suffering to be the worst. It doesn’t matter if suffering will be literal or figurative, physical or mental/emotional/spiritual, or some bizarre combination therein. People go to great lengths to avoid the possibility of suffering – sometimes even against better judgment, logic, reason, or what-have-you. Ironically, that often leads to more suffering or more fear of suffering.

But what if we take another look at suffering and cast it into a very different – and far less horrific – light?

Lost in translation

The first of the Buddhist Four Noble Truths is that life (existence) is dukkha – a word in Sanskrit or Pali that is usually translated to “suffering”. Hence, the notion that “Life is Suffering” is a huge part of Buddhist philosophy. But the idea by no means belongs to Buddhism alone. Most monotheist religions also relate things to suffering as a huge part of our Earthly-bound lives in one way or another.

But what if “suffering” isn’t what was meant? At least, not in the sense of unease and pain. What if, instead, it mostly just means difficulty?

Recently, I had a new idea on this notion. What if the word “suffering” is kind of a misnomer? Maybe a better interpretation of the Buddhist concept might be that life is experiencing.

Let’s face it – life is difficult. Sure, from time to time, it’s easy. But more often than not – it’s difficult. There are challenges to be overcome, obstacles, new ideas to be learned, people to meet, and all sorts of factors that ramp up various and sundry difficulties.

Of course, sometimes this causes suffering. But that’s almost always wholly dependent on how you choose to frame it. Given the imperfect translation of the word “dukkha”, perceiving suffering and all the bad that could go with it might also – arguably – be a mistranslation.

Good, bad, amazing, awful, joyful, sorrowful — you’re experiencing it all. And so long as you draw breath and are alive, you ARE a human, being. What if life isn’t suffering but just experiencing difficulties?

This is not downplaying suffering

I’d like to make it clear that I’m not saying suffering is nonexistent. Because it does happen. People are oppressed, abused, disenfranchised, treated like garbage, and on all sorts of general and specific levels experience suffering.

Trauma happens. Injuries occur. Suffering we experience resulting from these is real and legit. Horrible, awful things that caused you to suffer are not what I’m exploring here.

What I’m on about is the massively generalized, sometimes weaponized notions of suffering. Especially the fear of suffering that’s the basis of much of our fear-based society.

You always have a choice for your approach to life. You can choose to see it as suffering, pain, and awfulness to be avoided. Or you can see it instead as an experience with difficulties that challenge you to grow, learn, and gain new insights.

It doesn’t always feel like this is the truth. But it is. If you’re reading this, I’d say it probably applies to you.

This is not disregarding suffering you’ve experienced or might be experiencing. I’m also not suggesting this idea can alleviate, remove, or disregard that shit happens, and you will experience bad from time to time. Welcome to the human condition.

This is about exploring choice.

Photo by Kinga Howard on UnsplashThere’s always a choice

Sometimes your choices suck. There are definitely times when it feels like any choices that you can make are barely worth bothering with. Truly, sometimes the only choices available to you are entirely intangible and/or between bad or worse.

So long as you live, and are a human, being – you have choices.

One of the biggest but most overlooked is approach. You get to choose every day if your approach to life is one of negativity or positivity.

This is not that cut and dried. Sometimes there is positivity in the seemingly negative and negativity in the seemingly positive. What’s more, the positive today can be the negative tomorrow – and vice versa.

Still, you get to choose – you always get to choose – if you approach life as being full of potential, possibility, and some difficulty and challenges to be overcome.

– Or –

You can approach life as being lacking in potential due to fatalism, impossibilities, and suffering you can only dodge or do things to lessen.

You might flip-flop between these from time to time due to circumstances, random chance, happenstance, and other matters you have no control over. But you always get to choose.

The fear of suffering is a choice. When you look at it more closely, it can appear terrifying. But look closer still, and it might appear instead not to be so scary – just unknown.

If we didn’t explore the unknown – how limited would we be? This is true for you, me, and everyone.

The fear of suffering can be the fear of the unknown. Maybe it will suck. But maybe instead it will rock. How you choose to approach it is wholly your decision to make. And it’s very seldom a one-and-done decision.

Thus, how you view suffering is a choice.

Altering your approach toward suffering isn’t hard

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

When you recognize that most suffering is not about the suffering as much as it is the fear of suffering – you open yourself to recognizing and choosing how to handle it. Knowing that you can reframe suffering from a probably negative to a maybe positive, you can more easily choose and decide what to do in the face of it.

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

Taking an approach to positivity and 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 second (502) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.

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

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