M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 27

Knowing You Will Die, Why Won’t You Choose to Live?

Death is inevitable. Why would you neglect to choose to live while you are here?Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

There is a major difference between simply existing and living.

Existing is easy and can be done by rote and routine. You go about your days following the same patterns and behaviors, taking little to no joy in life and putting things off for tomorrow, after you lose 50 pounds, after your kids go to college, retirement, or some other forthcoming marker.

A marker that you might or might not reach, FYI.

No matter who you are, where you come from, or any other factors that might define you – your life will end in death.

Nobody knows what that means, of course. This conscious awareness occupying this body ends. But given energy can neither be created nor destroyed – and you and I are energy at our core – we transmute to a new form.

Given the certainty of your end – what are you waiting for? Do you make choices and decisions to choose to live – or just subsist and exist?

Nobody can choose to live in every situation

To clarify – there will be times when you’re more passive and not actively making choices to live as fully as possible.

There are going to be times when you need to just go with it and let the routine carry you along. Things happen that derail you, throw roadblocks along your path, and otherwise occur that are upsetting, scary, uncertain, and generally unhelpful.

In some situations, all you can do is wait for others or specific happenings. There are times when – to protect your mental health – you’re best just going with the flow and not doing too much active effort.

But when that is your default – and you seldom strive to live and make choices for your life – this becomes meaningless. It gets in the way of you making choices and/or decisions to do, have, and be more with this life you’re living.

It’s easy to fall into the traps of rote and routine in the name of acceptance, society, expectation, and the like. Look at how people expect you to be – what they expect you to do – and how they react to outside-the-box notions.

You have the power to choose to live or choose to just exist at all times. If you’re not content with life as you live it now – what not choose to live anew?

First, let’s address the elephant in the room.

Making choices for yourself isn’t selfish

Let’s start this by redefining selfishness. Often, selfishness gets applied to any act of the self that doesn’t take others into account.

That, however, is too broad. Many, many things you do can and will have unintended consequences where other people might wind up feeling hurt. They will accuse you of being selfish.

When that encompasses the likes of setting boundaries, saying no rather than yes to things you’d rather not do, or ending relationships – hurt can and will occur. That’s because when you choose to live for yourself, someone not you will feel that you are disregarding them and their feelings.

And maybe you are. But you cannot control the thoughts or feelings of anyone else. You only can be, have, and do, for you.

Hence, redefining selfishness to its purest form.

Selfish = taking more than your fair share with intent (malice of forethought), knowing full well that you will cause lack, scarcity, hurt, and/or harm. For example, it’s having 8 pieces of pie and 8 people, and you taking 2-3 pieces for yourself knowing that you deprive 1-2 people of pie.

Self-care and all acts that are for you, to improve your mental health and overall wellness and wellbeing, are not selfish. Someone might feel hurt and accuse you of selfishness for cutting them out – but this is not a true definition of selfishness.

This is very important to clarify, because believing the broader definition of selfishness often keeps people in rote, routine, and just merely existing rather than choosing to live.

Photo by Anubhav Saxena on UnsplashChoose to live for you

You are the only one in your head, heart, and soul. You, and you alone, know what lights you up, turns you on, grabs your attention, and ultimately makes you content, happy, and even joyful.

Nobody else can tell you what that is. No matter who they are or how they are part of your life – they can’t choose to live for you. Only you can live for you.

Someone I know has lived their whole life in fear. They have never addressed this and are months from their death due to cancer. Their fear is causing them not to spend these precious days they have remaining choosing to live – but instead, fearing even more.

There’s nothing to be done for this person because they won’t choose to live for themselves. Despite those who care for them pleading with them to experience, make memories with those who will miss them when they are gone, and live as best they can – their fear is overcoming their reason.

They’ve never chosen to live for themselves. I know that’s harsh to say – but the truth is the truth.

You get one shot in your body, with your conscious awareness, the reality you perceive, and your head, heart, and soul. You’ve had moments that amazed, delighted, and made you feel alive before. If you are not having them now – when will you choose to live again?

Don’t be deceived

There are numerous false messages of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency bombarding you all the time.

News media, social media, politicians, religious leaders, business leaders, and various other demagogues and celebrities love to divide and conquer for their own empowerment. They create all these fake problems, overblown issues, and tell you who to blame for them.

The reality is that, when all is said and done, most people simply would choose to live. Does anyone not want to be financially stable, healthy, and content? Of course not.

What’s more, apart from professional sports – most competition isn’t real. You and I are not in competition for most material goods, and none of the immaterial.

It’s easy to buy into the deception. Why? Because fear is powerful. The unknown and uncertainty are scary. Anything outside your comfort zone is uncomfortable.

When you look closely at these messages placing blame, justifying unsupportable opinions, and shaming one group or another, you can see they’re not legitimate. They’re about creating and/or expanding false control over others.

Don’t be deceived. While there is bad out there – blame is bullshit. Almost everyone desires to live the best they can. The choice is available to all – but not all seem willing to make it. Or they don’t believe they’re worth and deserving of it.

But they are. And you are. It won’t be all the time, there will be challenges, but you always can find and/or create the opportunity to choose to live.

Will you choose life when you can do so?

This is the five hundred and ninety-seventh exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using 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.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list. Fill in the info then click the sign-up button to the right and receive your free eBook. Thank you!

The post Knowing You Will Die, Why Won’t You Choose to Live? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Do You Take/Make Time to Do What/Be With Who You Love?

Life is too short not to do what/be with who you love.Photo by Kimson Doan on Unsplash

Not to be morbid – but you never know how long you have here.

Life in the meatsuits we each occupy is finite. These bodies have – ideally – about 80 years of active life.

That is, unfortunately, the ideal. The reality is that we might – for numerous reasons outside our control – have far less time.

In the past 6 months, I’ve lost 2 friends to cancer, know at least 2 others currently battling cancer and a relative we know we will lose to cancer soon.

This sucks on every level.

That’s one outside-your-control factor. You could also be hit by a car crossing a street, get sick with another illness, or be in the wrong place at the wrong time during a mass shooting, I don’t know the odds – but I do know that you can’t know when you will cease to be in this body and related consciousness.

I’m sorry if that’s depressing – that’s not my point. My point is this – knowing time is finite and limited, are you doing what you love? Are you spending time with those you love?

If not now – why not now? Why are we all so hell-bent on unimportant minutia over living here and now, and doing what we love/being with who we love?

Time is an illusion – but fleeting nonetheless

I recently read something that explained two notions of the function of time. Newtonian (based on the science of Sir Isaac Newton) and Einsteinian (based on the science of Albert Einstein). The former is linear – the latter is non-linear and fluid.

But the part that struck me most was the definition of Newtonian time as linear, independent of the observer – while Einsteinian is relative and dependent on the observer. Mechanical versus quantum.

Either way – time as we perceive it comes with limits. How much you get in this conscious awareness and current life experience is wickedly variable.

But no matter how you examine this – what you do with your time is wholly on you. You get to choose to spend time on things that matter – or things that don’t matter. It’s up to you to decide if what you do and who you do it with is worthwhile.

Nobody but you can determine how, where, or why to spend time doing things, being with people, etc.

For example – you can spend hours texting your friends and having a one-dimensional conversation. Perhaps you can Zoom or get on a group call and have a two-dimensional conversion. Or you can spend time in three-dimensional conversation together around a fire, at a restaurant, or in some other format – in person.

How much time each takes is variable and circumstantial. Each has its place. But how you spend your time is your decision to make. If it’s one/with whom/what you love is also a choice wholly up to you.

And that’s why it’s important and good for your health, wellness, and wellbeing to find and/or create the time to do what you love and be with who you love.

What you love/who you love isn’t about romance

The word love is too often romanticized.

Love is too easily relegated to family and romantic partners. But love is so, so, so much more than that.

For example – I have some amazing friends I thoroughly enjoy spending time with. I love getting to hang out with them and enjoy their company. Thus, yes, I love them.

When it comes to what I do – I love telling stories. Writing and podcasting let me tell many stories I believe others might enjoy. And I love that I get to share that. Love, joy, and contentment all blended together.

I recently spent a weekend doing something I love – fencing. Three days of medieval fencing. One of those was an endurance tournament – 2 hours, outside in the glorious sunlight, with a 10-minute break in the middle (and pausing for water when needed). I love that I can do this, that it brings me intense joy to fight with swords and to spend time with people I love spending time with.

Sure, some obligations are not what you love or with who you love. But you have a choice to let those dominate your life – or to prioritize your time to make the most of it.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on UnsplashMindfulness for the win

When you are actively consciously aware – mindful – you empower yourself. This is how you take control of the one thing you have absolute control over. What you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you intend, and actions you do or don’t take.

Rote, routine, and distractions are sold to you as the One True Way on many levels. But the reality is – there IS no One True Way. What works for me might not work for you. And vice versa.

When you’re mindful, you’re breaking out of the habit, rote, and routine. You gain awareness of being distracted (specifically by things like email, social media, games, Netflix, and such). That opens the way for you to choose your attitude and life approach.

On the flexible cylinder between negativity and positivity, conscious awareness is how you choose which approach to take – which end of the extremes to face. When you desire to make/find more time for what you love and who you love, that’s positivity. That’s a choice to seek what makes you feel the most alive.

Please note – you will not always be in the ideal places you desire. Shit happens, circumstances and random happenstance occur, and you’ll be thrown curve balls.

When you practice being aware – mindful in the here and now – you can make choices to actively work to be with the people you love and do what you love. No, it won’t be all the time – there are obligations and necessary things you must do to earn money and care for others. But positivity versus negativity – and focus on being with who/doing what you love – is a choice you get to make.

Life is too short not to do what/be with who you love. Consider this when you find that you are unhappy or discontented.

Finding/marking time to do/be with who you love 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 a finite time in this conscious existence in your body, you can choose to do what/be with who you love more frequently. Knowing that love is not the romanticized/limited notion for intimate or family relationships, you can work to spend more of your life doing things you love and being with people you love spending time with. More love, joy, and contentment all blended together.

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 matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, 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.

Lastly, 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 also open those around you to their empowerment.

To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the four hundred-and-eighty-sixth 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.

Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter. Fill in the info and click the submit button to the right and receive a free eBook.

The post Do You Take/Make Time to Do What/Be With Who You Love? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Does Resolving BS from the Past In the Present Help Your Future?

To be here now, in the present, and work towards the future, sometimes resolving your past is a must.Photo by Quharrison Terry on Unsplash

Everyone has a past.

Checkered, sordid, amazing, awful – all the above. Nobody who lives today is without a past (save newborns).

Lots of people dwell on the past. Many have a deep desire to return to it. Or rather, to return to a past that never truly existed, save in their unique memory of it. That’s where nostalgia comes in. You remember times that were – save that they never were how you desire to remember them.

What’s more, times that were good for some in the past were terrible for others. Ask anyone from any marginalized group about if the past was somehow better, and I’m fairly certain they’ll tell you all the ways that it most definitely wasn’t.

The biggest problem with the past is that it has passed. It’s done. You can’t go back, return to it, or relive it in any way. Additionally, you can’t undo it, redo it, or otherwise do it over.

Many outright don’t accept this.

It is, however, the truth. The past is behind you, come and gone, and can’t be reclaimed. All you can do with the past is learn from it to move forward.

And to do that, you need to be here, now.

The only truly real time that exists is the now. This moment, right now, is the most real portion of time there is and ever will be.

The past and future connect to the now in different ways. That can be helpful when creating and/or setting goals for yourself for the future.

Sometimes the past impacts the present and subsequently the future – and must be addressed.

The trouble with recognizing and acknowledging feelings from the past

The past can be extremely messy. What’s more, it is seldom – if ever – perfectly remembered.

For example – you might recall a past experience that was deeply upsetting. It may even have caused you trauma. While you remember various elements of that – some, possibly with too much clarity – the emotions of that time will not be remembered.

That it was upsetting, you can recall. How you reacted, you might also recall. But the actual feelings of that time? No, you can’t recall them.

Why? Because how and what you feel can only be known in the now. Only in the present are they truly clear.

How and what you felt, in the past, leaves an impression behind. You can see and even get a sense of the feeling they impressed on you. But you can’t know how or what they felt like – because that was then, and this is now.

Don’t believe me? Try to think back to a past incident you remember well. While examining the memory, get past your head and see if you can get to the feeling, exactly how and what it was, then.

You’ll find an impression. But the exact what and how of the feeling are in the past and can’t be recalled.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t look at bullshit of and from your past in the present to find and/or create goals for the future.

The bullshit of the past is strong with this one

When my parents divorced, I was 5 years old. As a highly sensitive child, that hurt a lot. Rather than deal with the hurt, I intellectualized matters – and shunted my feelings away, like a Vulcan from Star Trek. For nearly 3 decades, I could barely feel genuine feelings – save in extreme situations and circumstances.

Once I started to reconnect to my feelings – and being able in the here and now to feel the what and how of them – my life changed considerably. I stopped trying to be someone I wasn’t, started to find and be my more authentic self, and like/love who I am. That led me to open up to mindfulness and all that can be.

Being more present, and actively mindful, here and now, has been enlightening in numerous ways. Overall, I’m more content, living with more intention, and seeking to find and/or create a life of my choosing.

However, I’ve discovered that some of the bullshit from my past is impacting me, still. Unresolved issues stemming from things that have happened over the years that left an emotional impression on me.

That impression is one of shame, guilt, resentment, anger, and worthlessness all rolled together. At least, that was my first impression.

A deeper analysis showed me that it was mostly shame, resentment, and worthlessness reaching up like zombie hands from a grave to drag me into the dirt.

The intellectual analysis leads to a new problem. You can’t resolve in your head a matter of the heart. So I need to sit with the feeling impressions left behind by the past emotions and feel them out now to work on resolving them.

Photo by Troy Adam on UnsplashThen, now, and the future

As my therapist suggested – I need to treat that past feeling impression like a garden. I can only uproot the weeds after they pop up. But they must be allowed to pop up to be removed.

Lots of big-brained scientists, writers, and other smart people have told us that time and reality are just illusions. As Einstein said,

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

In other words – reality is how you perceive it for you – and you alone. It’s colored by your experiences, biases, education, environment, and many other factors.

Time is just as much an illusion as reality. In the words of author Douglas Adams,

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

The past, the present, and the future are all intertwined. They are, in the words of The Doctor from Doctor Who, a “big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.”

Let’s unpack that. The only time that is true and wholly real is right now. This moment is the only moment that can be entirely real.

Why? Because the past is colored by your experiences, biases, education, environment, and many other factors. The future is unwritten and will be impacted by random happenstance, circumstances, and tons of factors over which you have zero control.

Right here, right now, however, you are. In the now, you can know who, what, where, how, and why you are. This moment of time is the most real time, the only time you can do jack shit to control. Now. The present.

The future is made up of decisions you make in the present combined with lessons learned from the past. And that’s achieved via mindfulness.

Mindfulness and active conscious awareness

You, me, and everyone are comprised of three minds – unconscious, subconscious, and conscious.

The unconscious mind handles the works of you. It’s how you breathe, circulate blood, digest food, and so on. It’s always there, always on in the background like the OS of a smartphone.

The subconscious mind is where your values, beliefs, and habits live. This is like an app on a smartphone you must remember that you even have to be accessed (or maybe it’s more like an in-app extra you can only get when you pay for it).

The conscious mind is your mindset/headspace/psyche self, in the present. Think of it as the actual phone function of your smartphone when you talk or text with someone.

The unconscious is never accessed, save when you breathe deeply or exercise to impact cardio health. The subconscious is only accessed through the conscious mind. And that is done via mindfulness.

Mindfulness is active conscious awareness. It comes by exploring your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.

To act in the now in a way to impact a future goal, you start via mindfulness. You use your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to set action in motion.

The past factors in when you first explore elements of your subconscious mind to see what you learned from them, and if you must make changes to your beliefs, values, and/or habits.

But to do anything that will impact your future and find and/or create goals, you must work here and now via mindful conscious awareness. That may or may not involve recognizing lessons from the past.

And sometimes you must resolve your bullshit from the past, first.

Be here now to address the past for the future

When you’re consciously aware, you can see beliefs, values, habits, and all else embedded in your subconscious. That includes all of your past.

Some are buried in such a way that you can’t access them without extreme work. That’s not always a bad thing – you might have memories involving specifics of trauma you simply do not need to recall. For me, that would be getting hit by a car crossing a street, for example. No recollection – and I’m very, very happy to leave that buried and forgotten.

But the impression of shame, resentment, and worthlessness that I’ve uncovered needs to be explored. I’ve intellectualized that and analyzed it in my head. Now, I need to sit with it and feel it out.

I also must accept that the what and how of the feelings that left these impressions cannot be recalled. But that tells me what I do have to work with now.

Resolving the BS from my past is the equivalent of uprooting a weed. Doing that now will free me of some useless beliefs and values from my past that no longer serve me.

Thus freed, here and now I can take wholly new roads to find and/or create goals for the future.

Convoluted? Yes. But that’s life, my friends. And while that can be annoying and infuriating, there is another way to look at this. It can be enlightening and full to overflowing of potential and possibilities.

That’s how I prefer to approach these matters. And that’s why I’m bothering to resolve bullshit from my past, in the present, to better my future self.

Do you work in the now to learn from the past and plan set goals for the future?

This is the five hundred and ninety-sixth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using 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.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list. Fill in the info then click the sign-up button to the right and receive your free eBook. Thank you!

The post Does Resolving BS from the Past In the Present Help Your Future? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Does Genuine Positivity Help with Overcoming Overwhelm?

A positive approach can help you overcome overwhelm on many levels.Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

You and I live in a world that’s frequently overwhelming.

I stopped watching the news and reading news websites in depth because it made me feel awful. So many terrible things happening out there. And worst of all – the vast majority of them I can do little to nothing about.

What about the things I do and the people I spend time with? Also tricky, because there are various and sundry personality conflicts, friends who have changed in ways that have lessened or even ended friendships, and other elements of change. And it doesn’t help that the overarching leadership of the reenactment group many of us are a part of seems hell-bent on doing increasingly idiotic things.

Is my family less overwhelming? Hell no. Let’s just say things are chaotic and difficult on many levels, and that can be particularly overwhelming.

You might be in a different boat in these matters. But chances are, if you’re not currently dealing with matters of overwhelm, you have in the past – and likely will in the future.

What’s more, the tools of connectivity intended to bring us closer to one another are mostly distractions. They overwhelm us with data and information, and before you know it that takes its toll more personally – and overwhelm dominates your life.

If overwhelm is inevitable, can you do anything about it? Absolutely.

Start with recognition and acknowledgment

True statement – overwhelm is overwhelming. But because of this truth, it’s often difficult to recognize when you are overwhelmed because – by the time you realize it – you’re already overwhelmed.

What that means is different for everyone. But for me, overwhelm feels like I’m underwater or at the bottom of an hourglass with the sand falling on my head and simultaneously rising to drown me. It feels scary and deeply uncomfortable.

How you experience overwhelm might be the same – or not. But odds are that you don’t know it until you’re in the thick of it. Thus, it feels like recognizing and acknowledging it is pointless.

But it’s not. The first way to combat overwhelm is to recognize and acknowledge it. Why does that matter? Imagine that you’re stuck in traffic, running late to an appointment, and running low on gas. Then, a terrible song you can’t stand comes on the radio. What can you control in this situation? The music. But you must recognize and acknowledge it before you can change the music or turn it off.

Without recognition and acknowledgment, overwhelm overwhelms you. When there are aspects you have ZERO control over like in the above situation, recognizing that is the first step in dealing with it.

But until you recognize and acknowledge the factors overwhelming you – they’ll continue to overwhelm you.

Control and overwhelm

In the scenario of being stuck in traffic, running late to an appointment, running low on gas, and a song you can’t stand coming on the radio, do you see how that can be a state of overwhelm? So many things inundate you, all at once. You can feel like you have zero control.

This is why recognition and acknowledgment are important. Because when you recognize and acknowledge that you’re overwhelmed, you gain insight into why and how. That insight can show you what control you have as such.

One of the first factors in dealing with overwhelm is finding what you can take control over. In the above example, you can’t do jack shit about traffic, running late, or the fuel situation in that moment. But you can remove the annoying music.

That might seem small – but it’s actually huge. Taking control of what you can control is empowering. And that empowerment can lead you to work out what to do with the rest of the situation.

Music changed or turned off, you’ve taken the thing you can control out of the overwhelming equation. That can open the way to allow you to prioritize the rest. Getting fuel will remove that stress, and during that time you can call to let them know traffic is making you run late.

Getting out of overwhelm can be overwhelming – but you are empowered to do so. That’s because you are the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Hence, you’re the only one who can experience your overwhelm. But you’re empowered to get out of that state.

One way to help make this happen is via genuine positivity.

Photo by Sajjad Ahmadi on UnsplashNon-toxic, genuine positivity

Positivity, in this context, is a matter of attitude.

As I’ve suggested before – positive and negative are opposites not on a coin, but a long, flexible cylinder. You and I exist between these extremes somewhere.

Thus, you have a choice. Face towards positivity or towards negativity. That’s a matter of attitude.

You choose to seek and find a way involving positivity rather than negativity. When it comes to dealing with overwhelm, this is a matter of taking control of the elements you can control to work your way out of being overwhelmed.

It’s easy for overwhelm to lead to negativity. Overall, feeling overwhelmed is a negative feeling. An attitude of genuine, non-toxic positivity is an excellent approach to combat negativity.

Just a reminder – non-toxic positivity recognizes and works with negativity, rather than put blinders on to the bad or deny its existence. Genuine positivity is a choice of attitude and takes active conscious awareness – here and now – to function. That’s a product of mindfulness.

Everyone experiences overwhelm from time to time. Given instant connectivity around the globe with simultaneous distraction, is it any surprise? But you have the power to overcome it. Adopting a positive approach arms you to fight the good fight and get out of overwhelm.

And remember – you are worthy and deserving of not being overwhelmed.

Using genuine positivity to overcome overwhelm 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 the aspects of overwhelm you’re experiencing, you can see what parts of an overwhelming experience you can and can’t control. Knowing that you can control an aspect of this, you can use an approach of genuine positivity to find your way out of overwhelm and take control over that which you can in this situation.

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 matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, 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.

Lastly, 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 also open those around you to their empowerment.

To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the four hundred-and-eighty-fifth 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.

Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter. Fill in the info and click the submit button to the right and receive a free eBook.

The post Does Genuine Positivity Help with Overcoming Overwhelm? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Self-Care in Action – A Note from Present Me to Future Me

Sharing some mindful self-care by writing a note to my future self.Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Who you are now is a product of your past thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.

Things that you did along the way made you who you are now.

This can be hard to fathom. Aren’t you who you are now, now? The answer is yes – but only when you’re actively being mindful and consciously aware.

The only time that’s really, truly, real is right now. This moment, this fleeting moment in time, is whole and complete. All else is colored by subconscious beliefs, values, and habits looking forward or backward.

In the present, however, when consciously aware – you are. From that point, you can make active choices to impact your future self.

This can get super convoluted. Wrapping your head around the idea that who you are now is a product of who you were seems contradictory and crazy. But that’s part of how elements of who you are that you don’t like – or would like to change – exist. Because they were created in the past and have ceased to serve you.

Thus, if the life you have now was created in the past, everything you think, feel, intend, and act on now will go into the creation of your life for your future self.

While it’s helpful to know where you came from, it’s equally helpful to know where you’re going. As part of self-care, one way to do this is by writing a note from your present self to your future self.

Why write this note?

Part of mindfulness is active, conscious awareness. While you can get that by asking questions to yourself, here and now, about what you’re thinking, feeling, intending, and doing – writing a note from your present self to your future self codifies and cements a moment in time.        

You and I are frequently distracted by things. Those distractions take you out of the here and now and take away your mindfulness.

Distractions can be big, like politics, injustices, awful people; or small, like interpersonal relationships, random happenings, job and coworker matters, and so on. Most are harmless on the surface but can be hugely detrimental to self-care. These include TV, games, and social media.

Distractions of all sorts pull you out of conscious awareness and away from the here and now. Then, before you know it, you lose track of both where you are and where you would like to be going.

One way to alleviate this is via a self-check-in. There are many ways to do this. But one of the best ways to see where you are now – versus where you desire to be – is to write a note to yourself.

This can be a totally private matter you put in a journal. Or you can type it out and save the file or print and store it away. Some have even gone uber-public and shared video and audio variations of this on Tik Tok, Facebook, YouTube, on a podcast, or a blog.

This is self-care because it causes you to look at who, what, where, how, and why you are now. Then, you can choose a future time to write a letter to yourself to.

Practicing self-care and accountability

In a world of many distractions and overzealous messages of selfishness, self-care matters a lot.

If you are anything like me, you say things to yourself that are not very caring sometimes. You might also more often put others and their needs before your own – without putting fuel in your own tank first.

Self-care is so very important. Why? Because there is only one you, and you have just the one body to live in. While others are going to be part of your life – they can’t care for you and your overall health, wellness, or wellbeing. That’s because only you are in your head, heart, and soul. Nobody else is there with you.

Because you are alone in your head, heart, and soul, when it comes to self-care, it’s challenging to have nobody else to be accountable to. An accountability partner can help you to stay on track, keep focused on your goals, and provide encouragement along the way.

Though paths are solitary – as you are the only one who can choose and walk yours – you aren’t alone. The people you care about, and love, are along for the ride.

To that end, in practicing what I write (I don’t preach, thank you) I am creating a note from my present self to my future self, here. This is a matter of self-care, and I’m sharing it with you for accountability.

This note is from present me to future me 1 year from now.

Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on UnsplashA note from my present self to my future self – 2023

Dear Me,

How’s May 2024 going? So far, 2023 has been a shit year in many ways. Not for me, per se – my life is in a decent place and my health is relatively good. But so far there has been too much death, and it’s been emotionally challenging and draining in a lot of ways.

My marriage is great. The cats are doing well (Thalia is sitting on the desk to the left of the keyboard purring as I write this) and the apartment complex is still a great place to live. The weather is turning warmer, and you know how much I love summer.

Right now, I’m doing a lot of work to make some positive changes that will be in effect by the time you are reading this. I’m doing work on my physical health, to get into better shape, put less pressure on my joints, and make more healthy dietary choices. Additionally, I’m working on daily meditation at least 5 days a week to make that more habitual.

I’m working on being more honest with myself. Setting goals and stepping stones to reach them.  Once again, I’m journaling daily to collect my thoughts, and am back in therapy to resolve some unresolved past bullshit in the now so that I’m in a far better place when I’m you.

Finally, in the now, I’m working on being less stressed, less uncertain, and more centered. The goal is to be more in the now and focused, less distracted, and better able to get to you how I desire to see you.

That should look like the following:

A note from my present self to my future self – 2024

In May 2024, I’m still working on overcoming obstacles and various challenges. But I’ve gotten lots better, and the good has been better and more frequent than the bad.

Chrissie and I moved in the fall as planned. I love our new place. We have home offices even better than what we had before. Chrissie has the sunlight she needed to plant her garden and grow a lot of veggies and herbs that we both love.

We’ve both gotten into better dietary habits. I’m in much better physical shape, with less stress on my joints – which are a lot less sore. I love what this does for my fencing.

Work wise, Nova keeps me busy – but the companies are flourishing. Additionally, my blog is paying me real money, and book sales are far more impressive. More books are coming, and I have no problem paying editors and cover artists to get them completed.

The cars and credit cards are all paid off.

One of the best things about my present life, here in May 2024, is that I feel more confident, have gotten better at my self-care, and I can hardly wait to see what comes next. I have some amazing travel and career plans for the next year. I should write a new letter from 2024 me to 2025 me.

Anyhow – thanks for checking in. Glad we’ve gotten here from there.

Love,

Murray

My self-care is different from yours

This might appear a bit selfish and self-serving. But if it does, why? All I’m doing is looking from where I am now to where I desire to be a year from now. That’s setting goals – none of which are unreasonable or take anything away from anyone else. Hence – not selfish.

Much of what I am seeing for myself a year from now is vague. But that leaves room for some imaginative possibilities. We’re not even starting to look for a new place to live for several months – so I have no idea what exactly that’ll look like. But knowing what I have now – and making a comparison to what might be in the future – gives me an idea of what we will be looking for.

When you do something self-care related like this, you are creating goals to look forward to. That can help you to seek and find means to your desired ends. And you keep them somewhat vague to leave room for them to be even better than you imagine them to be.

No, you can’t know what the future will bring. But when you leave it wholly to chance – and don’t have goals or desires for what it should look like – what are you doing now, and why?

I prefer my present thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions will not just be good for me here and now. They should have some focus on the future and all that my life can be. Why not make requests and put out there what you desire to see?

This is just one of many forms of self-care. I hope that by sharing mine, you have notions for your self-care.

Have you ever written a letter from your present self to your future self?

This is the five hundred and ninety-fifth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using 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.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list. Fill in the info then click the sign-up button to the right and receive your free eBook. Thank you!

The post Self-Care in Action – A Note from Present Me to Future Me appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What if Positivity is a Choice of Attitude – Not A Cure-All?

Toxic positivity ruins positivity’s true power to better your life.Photo by iStrfry , Marcus on Unsplash

Positivity, in its truest, most genuine form, is a good and healthy attitude. It sparks productivity, creativity, and can be part of an overall sense of wellbeing.

In and of itself, positivity is a constructive, good force for living without fear and combating artificial lack, scarcity, and the like.

Unfortunately, genuine positivity is not the only form. Many have emphasized toxic positivity over the genuine article.

Toxic positivity has been built off the idea of the power of positive thinking. It takes a healthy, constructive notion to an extreme. This is done by suggesting that you be only positive in how you think and feel – to the exclusion of all negatives. Toxic positivity puts on blinders to negativity and all bad things in the world around you.

This is utterly and completely unrealistic. Life is a paradox. There will always be opposite extremes. You can’t avoid, deny, neglect, or wear blinders to the negatives of the world.

Genuine positivity, in fact, is often created reactively or proactively regarding a negative event or happening.

Negativity can be the impetus

Let’s face it – shit happens. Life is going to present you with bad things, pain and suffering, bad days, and all kinds of crap utterly outside of your control.

I know nobody who has had an always positive, perfect life. Everyone has been hurt mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and/or physically. Nobody avoids getting rejected, failing at a task, losing people they care about, and all the other bad stuff life will throw your way.

Toxic positivity tells you to pretend that’s not the case. Instead, you only look to and for positives. Put on the blinders and do not acknowledge, recognize, or otherwise attend to negatives.

That’s beyond unrealistic. And it’s the reason why toxic positivity is toxic. Living in denial creates microcosms of reality for so disconnected from life that you become delusional. Your efforts to find connection meet unrealistic expectations and you do yourself more harm than good.

Genuine positivity doesn’t come from ignoring or neglecting negativity – it comes in part from using negativity as an impetus for better. That’s because after you’ve had a negative experience – big or small – you have a choice for what comes next.

You will have little to no control over your initial, visceral reaction to whatever occurs. Shit happens that pisses you off, frightens you, saddens you, confuses you, and the like at the time it happens. But once the initial shock passes – you have a choice. Lament it and soak in negative and awful thoughts and feelings – or – learn from it and seek positivity to move past it.

Thus, negativity is the impetus for positivity.

Genuine positivity is a choice of attitude

Toxic positivity treats positivity as if it were some sort of cure-all. Think positive, feel positive, and it will all fall in line your way. Actively avoid and ignore negativity lest it derail your new way of life.

Positivity is not a way of life. It’s a chosen attitude that is applicable via mindfulness.

Real positive thinking and feeling is a choice you make via conscious awareness of/for how you approach this, that, or the other thing. Life is crazy, unpredictable, and often ineffable. When things get thrown at you outside of your control, you will have a choice. Take a negative attitude or a positive attitude.

For example – you get fired from your job. Initially, you probably feel hurt, distressed, concerned, angry, and any number of negative thoughts and feelings. That’s utterly natural.

But then you have a choice. Let all the thoughts and feelings of the potential bad resulting from getting fired dominate your attitude and life approach – or – choose to find and/or create the positives and good to move forward.

The primary negative is that you lost your job. The positive can be that now you can find a better job, change careers, pursue a dream, go back to school, focus on something you neglected due to that job, and more. It might appear to be a curse that you lost that job – but genuine positivity can help you find that it was actually a blessing.

That’s how positivity in its true form is an attitude, not a cure-all for what ails your life. And it’s created and/or found via mindfulness.

Photo by Catalin Pop on UnsplashMindfulness is just conscious awareness here and now

Like positivity, there are forms of mindfulness that have been presented to the public that come across as toxic. That’s because, like positivity, mindfulness gets treated by some as a cure-all.

Let’s just put this to bed here, shall we? There are no cure-alls. One size never fits all. There is never One True Way. What works for me might not work for you – and vice versa.

However – there are always choices. They might be vague, and maybe imperfect. But they are always there. Because ultimately you – and you alone – live your life. The only person in your head, heart, and soul is you.

Genuine mindfulness is applied conscious awareness. It is a product of the now and only applicable here and now.

To actively practice mindfulness and be consciously aware, you just need to ask questions like,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?Why am I doing or not doing this?

All these questions can only be answered here and now. Once asked and answered – the power to change them is yours.

If you dislike the answers to these questions – you get to choose to change them if you desire to. That’s how mindfulness truly works – and via mindfulness, you can choose an attitude and approach to/of/for positivity.

Toxic positivity ruins positivity’s true power to better your life. Recognizing this, you can apply mindfulness for genuine positivity and use that on a case-by-case basis – here and now – to choose your own adventure. You get to choose a positive or negative approach and attitude.

Doesn’t it feel good and positive to have choices?

Choosing an attitude and approach of genuine positivity isn’t hard

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

When you recognize that neither positivity nor mindfulness are cure-alls, you can make use of them as choices here and now for your attitude and approach to random and not-so-random happenings that occur. Knowing that genuine positivity uses negativity as an impetus for creating change, you can choose to use it for how you approach life via mindfulness and apply it for active conscious awareness.

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 matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, 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.

Lastly, 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 also open those around you to their empowerment.

To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the four hundred-and-eighty-fourth 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.

Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter. Fill in the info and click the submit button to the right and receive a free eBook.

The post What if Positivity is a Choice of Attitude – Not A Cure-All? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How Can You Be Both Alone and Not Alone at the Same Time?

Alone and not alone coexist differently from feeling lonely.Photo by Ismail Hamzah on Unsplash

There are no absolute truths. Even the most well-known, established scientific laws can change.

One of the most amazing things about science is how it recognizes that for everything we know, there’s infinitely more that we don’t know. There are always new questions, new ideas, new perspectives, and things beyond our knowledge to be learned.

One of the most fascinating notions in science, to me, is that of Schrödinger’s cat. If you are not familiar, this is a well-known thought experiment of quantum mechanics. It goes like this: Presented with a sealed box containing an unobserved cat and a poison within it, until the box is opened the cat has an equal chance of being dead and being alive. Until you observe the cat by opening that box, you can suppose that it’s both dead and/or alive until you know.

This paradox illustrates many, many elements of life as we know it. What’s more, there are numerous scientific interpretations of this thought experiment. But the long and short of it is that you can only know what you know based on limited information – until you make a closer, more detailed examination of it.

It is for this reason, in part, that you can be both alone and not alone at the same time.

How is this a paradox?

Lots of people rue loneliness. Being alone sucks, they get frustrated when they haven’t got companionship, and this can be deeply upsetting and distracting on multiple levels.

But then, lots of people crave being alone. Being alone is comforting, they get frustrated when they don’t get alone time, and too little alone time can be deeply upsetting and distracting on multiple levels.

There is also a Goldilocks zone, if you will, between alone and not alone. Some people love having people around them but also cherish alone time. That’s how I work, for example.

Alone, in its purest form, is a feeling. An intangible. And it can work its way past your conscious awareness and into your subconscious mind. There, it can take root – and add misery and other negative feelings with it – especially if it devolves into loneliness. Don’t mistake alone for lonely (more on that later).

That’s how it’s possible to be in a one-on-one relationship – or a crowded room – and feel alone when you’re not alone.

I’ve experienced this for myself. I was once in a relationship that, on the surface, was loving and close. But lying next to my girlfriend in bed at night, trying to sleep, I felt utterly and completely alone.

That’s how this is a paradox. Because you can be alone and not alone at the same time. And this can be true of both tangibles and intangibles.

You are never truly alone

At your core, at your deepest depths, you are comprised of energy. That energy is the same energy in everyone and everything else material and immaterial.

Whether you believe in a soul or not, all energy across the Universe, from the smallest subatomic particle to the largest star, is connected. It takes different forms and serves different purposes.

Hence, when you get right down to it, you are never truly alone. Because you, me, and everyone everywhere are interconnected.

I listened to a recent podcast interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In it, he talked about how life itself is our most precious gift. Scientifically, given how many births there have been – and the astronomically high number of potential total births there could ever be – just being alive beats many, many odds. If people recognized how precious that was, they might be more inclined to respect the lives of other people – and life itself – overall.

I further add to this that because you and I – and everyone – are energetically interconnected, even when you feel alone – you are never truly alone.

Photo by Bekah Russom on UnsplashMindfulness for recognition

To help see how you are not alone – even when you feel alone – you can practice active mindfulness.

Mindfulness is active conscious awareness. Active conscious awareness involves asking questions that can only be answered here and now to become consciously aware. These questions include,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?What am I doing (or not)?Why am I doing it (or not)?

Each above question, by itself, makes you aware of your conscious mind, here and now. Once you become consciously aware, you gain insight and recognition of your mindset/headspace/psyche self.

With conscious awareness, you then can look into your subconscious. And that tends to be where you will find the deepest feelings of being alone take root.

When feeling alone roots into your subconscious mind, it can become part of your beliefs and values. A belief that you are unworthy, unlovable, and deserve to be alone can do ugly, harmful, unpleasant things to you. This can impact your overall health, wellness, and wellbeing on every level, too.

When alone devolves into feeling lonely – and that roots itself into your subconscious – the above is what it looks like.

Don’t mistake alone for lonely.

But gaining recognition of this is the first step in working with or changing it.

Alone and not alone are neither good nor bad

Lonely can feel awful. Suffering due to loneliness takes many forms and is never a pleasant experience. Nobody that I know likes to suffer in any way.

Lonely and alone, however, are not the same. Lonely is a negative, unpleasant feeling. Alone, on the other hand, isn’t a bad thing by its very nature.

I’m a writer. To write my books and blogs, I work alone. Rather than lament my alone time writing – I cherish it.

What’s more – I’m not really alone. When it comes to a blog like this, I feel like I’m with my reader. Thus, I strive to write to and for you. In that way, I get to show you how you’re not alone – even if you’re alone, and I’m alone, too.

When it comes to fiction – I’m both with the characters and their situations in my head, and my readers enjoying the stories I tell. Maybe I’m alone at my computer writing these things – but am I truly alone? Not really.

In and of themselves, alone and not alone are neither good nor bad. They just are. And both have value. But depending on the observer and the observed – you can be both alone and not alone at the same time.

Either way, this is different from being lonely.

Don’t mistake alone for lonely

Lots of people, lamenting being alone, mistake alone for lonely.

Alone is a state of being. You are with another or you’re not. This can be both tangible and intangible. Lonely – on the other hand – is a feeling, an emotion. And an unpleasant one. It’s rooted in your subconscious mind while stabbing at your conscious mind.

To me, lonely is a negative sensation comprised of sadness, fear, suffering, upset, and other emotions related to disconnection.

The reality of the example I gave above – lying beside my girlfriend trying to sleep – was not so much being alone as feeling lonely. On later analysis, I saw that while we were “together” and close – physically – we had an emotional distance between us that made me feel lonely.

Lonely is not alone. And creating a disconnect between lonely and alone can be extremely good for your health, wellness, and wellbeing. Why? Because then you can work on the real issue of being lonely, even if you’re alone or not alone.

Lonely is intangible. Alone is both tangible and intangible. But you can be alone and not alone at the same time – and feel lonely either way.

Addressing loneliness itself – and all the emotions that go into it – can remove it. And that begins with mindful, active conscious awareness of it.

That’s a choice you, and you alone, can make. But you don’t need to work on it by yourself. Friends, confidants, family, and ultimately professionals like therapists can and should be engaged to help you.

Lastly – know that you are worthy and deserving of not feeling lonely and that even when alone, you’re not truly alone.

Can you see how alone and not alone coexist because that’s the nature of the Universe, and they are not necessarily connected to feeling lonely?

This is the five hundred and ninety-fourth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using 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.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my mailing list. Fill in the info then click the sign-up button to the right and receive your free eBook. Thank you!

The post How Can You Be Both Alone and Not Alone at the Same Time? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Trigger Warning: Do You Control Your Triggers or Do They Control You?

What I’m exploring here might upset people with various triggers. But please read on.Photo by Nik on Unsplash

I’m all for warning about content. Some people have sensitivities that should be acknowledged and addressed as such. I think it’s good to be sensitive to this.

Now I’m going to get controversial. Some people will do everything in their power to avoid their triggers. I get that, I really do. I have some triggers, too.

But this becomes problematic because avoiding triggers allows them to continue to trigger you.

Some might argue that triggers simply are and should be respected as such. But I don’t buy that – particularly having dealt with/dealing with my own. Triggers can cease to trigger you – but only when and if you address them.

This is not an easy process. And in some instances, particularly with serious trauma, this should only be done with a trained professional guiding you (i.e., a psychologist, social worker, psychiatrist, or other trained therapist).

Avoiding your triggers will leave them the ability to trigger you. That’s the long and short of it. Hence, addressing, recognizing, and acknowledging what triggers you is key to taking control. With that, you control them rather than your triggers controlling you.

Let’s start by addressing the biggest elephant in the room.

Life is seldom easy or painless

You can’t deny that sometimes life sucks. Shit happens. You get fucked over by this, that, or the other thing. No matter how much you try to avoid or dodge this, you can’t.

You will experience pain. Mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical hurt cannot be avoided – unless you sequester yourself away from the world. And even then, there are no guarantees of safety.

Many of the awful things that happen won’t be your doing or your fault. Random happenstance can’t be predicted because it’s random. Your loving partner can turn abusive. That perfect job can become a nightmare. The amazing workout you love can cause an injury. That religion you practice can become toxic. Someone you love – who you thought loved you – might inflict physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual pain.

It’s not pretty. And just the idea of many of the above triggers people. I understand being sensitive to bad things.

The problem, however, begins when triggers are used to avoid situations. Yes, at first this is natural and can benefit you – particularly immediately after an incident that causes a trigger to come into being.

But after that inciting incident, this is a conscious or subconscious choice. Choosing to avoid pain is logical – to a point. When that avoidance turns you into a constant victim of circumstance you cede your power and relinquish control. That disempowerment can impact every aspect of your life experience.

If you refuse to recognize and address what triggers you – you will always be the victim. And you cede control that would otherwise be yours.

Do you control triggers or do they control you?

I recognize that some might find this whole article to be insensitive. That’s not my intent. My intent is to show that triggers only control you when and if you allow them to.

The power to overcome something that triggers you is wholly, entirely, yours.

But this might appear impossibly difficult, painfully challenging, and utterly unfair. Truth it – it damned well might be.

However – that doesn’t change the fact that you can take control of your triggers rather than allow them to control you.

So long as you avoid things that trigger you – they will always trigger you.

That’s not to say there aren’t times and situations when it is wise to avoid your triggers. There absolutely are times to avoid things that throw you off and make you miserable. The problem comes when your default is to always avoid the things that trigger you, and not address them at all.

There is no one true way to do this. And, again, you might need/want professional help with this process. But the starting point, like many things, is accessible to everyone and a simple matter of…

Accountability and mindfulness

The first aspect of dealing with triggers is being accountable for them.

That is NOT the same as taking blame or ascribing fault for them. What it is, instead, is recognizing and acknowledging them.

I believe a lot of issues with triggers – and letting them control you – come from avoiding them. But they will ALWAYS trigger you if you do not recognize and acknowledge them. And that is a matter of accountability.

Part of that is not just knowing what it is that triggers you. It’s also becoming familiar with how it triggers you, what that feels like, how it impacts your thoughts and feelings, and what impact it has on your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.

Once you’ve accepted and taken accountability for your trigger – now comes mindfulness.

Mindfulness is active, conscious awareness of what triggers you. Specifically, in the here and now. Because only in the now can you do anything to work out your triggers and take control over them.

Why? Because triggers impact your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Mindfulness is conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Thus, if you’re mindful of what you’re thinking, how and what you’re feeling, what you’re intending, and what you’re doing – you gain control to change them.

This can’t be done in the past or future, it can only be done in the present. Active conscious awareness – mindfulness – only exists in the present, in the now.

Mindfulness gives you control. And that is how you take control of your triggers to do the work so that they don’t trigger you.

Photo by Stephane YAICH on UnsplashDo you really have a choice when it comes to this?

Triggers, in and of themselves, are a great big, gigantic negative. They’re tied to trauma, pain, suffering, hurt, and other painful, unpleasant, negative thoughts and feelings.

If you’re triggered by something, it’s a negative reaction to something. And it will control you for as long as you avoid it, deny it, ignore it, and run away from it.

Yes, there are circumstances where this just is, and nothing can or even should be done about it. But if you desire to be in charge of your life experience, you can’t ignore, disregard, and avoid your triggers forever.

When you do the work to address your triggers – and strive to take control over them – you’re empowered. When you’re empowered, you get stronger emotionally, mentally, spiritually – and that can also lead to greater physical strength, too. Your overall health, wellness, and wellbeing improve because that thing causing so much upset and disruption in your life loses its power over you.

Lessons are learned. And I don’t know about you – but anytime I have a chance to learn something new and grow from it – that’s a huge positive.

My point, overall, is that you have a choice. Do you allow your triggers to control you and impact all of your life experiences – or – do you strive to take control of your triggers and deal with them so that you consciously, mindfully drive your life?

Yes, this can be super hard. You might genuinely need professional help to even remotely consider doing it. But wouldn’t you rather have control and be empowered than be controlled and disempowered?

Choosing to take control of your triggers rather than let them control you is a challenge

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

When you have triggers, they are not something to ignore or downplay. But how they impact you, and whether they will always control you is a choice. Knowing that you have the power to be accountable for your triggers, and get to know how they impact you, you can choose to address them rather than avoid them – even if you need professional help to do so.

This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you. Then that can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.

Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, 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 positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

Lastly, 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 also open those around you to their empowerment.

To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the four hundred-and-eighty-third 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.

Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter. Fill in the info and click the submit button to the right and receive a free eBook.

The post Trigger Warning: Do You Control Your Triggers or Do They Control You? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How Do You Release an Emotion You Can’t Identify?

Working with an emotion you can’t give a name to is challenging.Photo by Daniel Gonzalez on Unsplash

As I strive to walk my chosen paths in life, I find that there are times I must confront subconscious matters.

Many of these get tied to old, outdated beliefs and values. Some are tied to habits. All of these exist in the subconscious and can only, thus, be accessed consciously with effort.

Thoughts and feelings are tenets of the present. Hence, they can only be truly known and understood, here and now.

Why? Because old thoughts and feelings, once past, leave impressions that are not the same as they themselves are. Since you can only think and feel in the moment, via conscious awareness, memory is not true thought or feeling.

Likewise, since the future is always in motion, you can’t possibly know in the now how you will think or feel going forward. Too many factors both in and out of your control are going to impact thoughts and feelings to know them now.

Trauma and other mental health matters tied to the past are connected to emotions. That can, in turn, create a sensation or emotion now based on impressions of past thoughts and feelings.

Because thoughts and feelings past can’t be felt as they were now, and only as impressions – connecting them to present emotions can be challenging. This can be especially challenging when you can’t identify the emotion here and now.

It is more than feeling

I’ve begun to formulate a new understanding of emotion versus feeling. Feeling is the product of the here and now, but emotion is what combined feelings and thoughts create. Hence, it’s the combined what and how of feeling with thought as the background.

Emotions of the past can leave behind an impression here and now. That impression resides in your subconscious.

Some of these are benign and just sit there, doing nothing. But some come out and cause difficulties.

This can result in trauma, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and lots of other mental health issues.

This is my new theory on this topic. And while I’m not a doctor nor an expert with a degree, I have a lot of practical experience I work from.

Through working with conscious reality creation, mindfulness, meditation, and therapy, I’ve adopted this new viewpoint.

Having recently started therapy again, I’ve begun to look into my past to figure out elements of my self-sabotaging behaviors, fears, procrastination, and other issues here and now that were formed along the way. Part of that has required looking for past sensations and emotions.

They won’t and can’t be exact. But their impressions can tell me a lot now. And that, in turn, should help me to identify the present background emotion that lurks in my subconscious and negatively impacts me.

And that is where I’ve hit a fascinating snag.

What if you find an emotion you can’t identify?

My therapist recommended a book to me. Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. In it, he provides meditation techniques to help you break habits that are not who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.

His overall argument in this book is that the body and its various memories and traumas can and will override the mind if you let it. The above-mentioned meditations are the process he recommends to reset your habits and mindfully reclaim control of your life (this is a very perfunctory explanation. I recommend this book if you want to learn more.)

A key element of the mediation is recognizing a past emotion you hold onto. Or, in my view, the impression of that past emotion (since you can’t feel a past emotion as it was, here and now). Then, you admit to it, declare to yourself that you desire to release said emotion, and surrender to the Universe that – with these actions – it’s done.

I love everything about this concept. But as I worked to practice it, I discovered a problem.

Even knowing the impression that it made, I can’t identify the specific emotion. And if I can’t identify it, how can I release it?

This led me to some very interesting meditation sessions. And along the way, I was able to name the impressions of multiple emotions, all seemingly in balance.

This included guilt, shame, resentment, and worthlessness.

A Google search for a word or emotion blending these all together didn’t produce for me an emotion I could identify to release. But it did lead me somewhere unexpected – toxic shame.

My therapist agrees that this is an issue for me. The question raised is this – is shame that unidentified emotion?

Photo by Eduardo Flores on UnsplashA concept beyond singular identity

While shame is a component, it doesn’t quite feel like the emotion I’m seeking to release. Toxic shame, the psychological issue, is comprised of all the emotions I identified – guilt, shame, resentment, worthlessness – and more.

Depression also tends to have each of these within it. But I know that’s not the emotion I need to release now (because the emotion underlies depression).

Maybe I need to invent a new emotion? Perhaps I can call it shameresentworthlessness? That’s rather inelegant and convoluted.

The best answer, likely, is to examine each in turn. It’s not like meditation is a one-and-done process. Maybe I need to look at each and choose which has made the deepest impression.

Guilt and shame are similar. And when held up to the light of the impression of the emotion I’m trying to release, shame is more closely aligned with it. Worthlessness, too, ties right to shame directly.

But resentment is an emotion all on its own. What’s more, it goes somewhere I find harder to identify.

Thus, my answer. How do you release an emotion you can’t identify? Look at the impression it made, other emotions tied to it, and choose which you feel will be most beneficial to release.

Why do I identify resentment as the emotion to release?

Since I can’t identify the emotion that made the impression so long ago, when looking at the other elements, I can choose which does me the most harm.

Resentment, like blame, casts your feelings elsewhere. Given that it’s almost literally “you made me feel this way”, it’s quite similar to blame.

Blame lacks accountability and responsibility. All it does is push emotions away, outside of the situation, and serves nobody as such.

Resentment is similar but with one key difference. Blame is a total dismissal and denial of emotion while resentment acknowledges an emotion and the impression it made.

Thus, if I release resentment, I free myself of the other emotional impressions it made. At least, in theory.

What’s more, the action of releasing this emotion via the mediation recommended might show me the emotion I can’t identify. But an emotion – or the impression of an old emotion – isn’t serving me here and now.

Releasing it from my subconscious makes room for new and better. It also ends the process of holding onto something not serving me in the here and now.

Challenging and convoluted? Yup. Worthwhile? Absolutely.

Have you ever tried to release an emotion you couldn’t identify?

This is the five hundred and ninety-third exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.

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

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Must Everyone Celebrate Anniversaries and the Like?

When you celebrate you generate positivity – but this is about you and not anyone else.Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

My father and stepmother got married in 1983. I was 11 years old and remember much of the event.

Despite using their anniversary for a long-lost combination lock – I nearly always forget to wish them a happy anniversary.

My mom and stepdad got married in 1994. I was 21 years old and remember the small ceremony at the synagogue. While I can tell you what month their anniversary falls in – I can’t recall the precise date.

May 1st is my wedding anniversary. To celebrate this, my wife and I tend to – at the very least – go out for a decent dinner.

This year, we’ve opted to take an actual, factual, vacation.

The thing is – I expect nobody else to celebrate with us. Why? Because this is a personal anniversary, and apart from my wife and I – it doesn’t involve anyone else.

Still, thanks to various aspects of how I was raised, it begs the question – should everyone celebrate anniversaries and the like?

We all have special dates in our lives

Everyone has a birthday. Whether you choose to do anything to mark it, however, is a whole other matter.

There are major holidays that get celebrated around the world in various ways. Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, and Rosh Hashana all come to mind.

Other major holidays are state-sponsored. Bastille Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Bank Holidays, and the like fall under this category.

And then we have what I call Hallmark Card holidays. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.

The point is that there are tons of opportunities (and in some instances excuses) to celebrate this, that, or the other thing.

Sometimes celebration is a brilliant idea. Why not do something that brings you joy?

But that touches on an important element. Celebration and joy are individual notions.

This is important to keep in mind. That’s because some people are uncomfortable celebrating certain times and things others celebrate. This is due to how the impression of the given holiday varies from person to person.

Not everyone loves Christmas, for example. Some people aren’t Christian, so they don’t celebrate it. Others have had bad experiences with the holiday, sad memories, or whatnot. And how it’s celebrated is wildly different for everyone.

Hence why celebrating special dates in our lives is a very individual notion.

You don’t need to celebrate my anniversary

Whether or not my wife and I choose to celebrate our anniversary is a matter for us. It’s strictly between her and me.

I feel this way about all anniversaries, frankly. They are utterly, wholly specific to the person(s) for whom they’re a thing.

This is also true of birthdays. Some people celebrate their birthday for the whole of the month it falls in. Others celebrate the day itself and/or the weekend it falls on. And some dislike the reminder of getting older, or other negative associations, and don’t celebrate at all.

There is no right or wrong to this. But the most important thing about that idea is that I don’t expect you to celebrate just because I do.

Some people make a lot out of things like anniversaries. I am all for celebrating your special dates – but they are about you and yours. That doesn’t mean you need to celebrate mine or vice versa.

Similarly, you need not celebrate my birthday, your birthday, any and all holidays, or anything else at all for that matter.

But when it comes to you and yourself – celebrating can be a healthy thing to do.

Photo by Al Elmes on UnsplashGenerating positivity

Celebrating anything you can think of is a personal matter. The reason to celebrate is tied to good things.

Good things can bring us joy. Joy generates positivity.

This isn’t toxic positivity. Joy can always be tinged with sadness (for example, though the overall effect of a holiday might be joy, you could also feel sad for those not there who’ve passed away, and the like). Positivity in this context is about facing the positive end of the spectrum.

Celebrations might not be for everyone. But they are amazing generators of positivity. While that might be wholly personal – that doesn’t lessen it in the slightest.

And it is not selfish to celebrate something on your own or for just you. I have things – like my anniversary – that I want to celebrate that have nothing to do with anyone else (other than my wife). You most likely have things you desire to celebrate with nobody other than yourself or a specifically chosen person(s).

What and why they are doesn’t matter – save to you.

Hence, the answer to the question – should everyone celebrate anniversaries and the like – is: that depends on you and what it means to and for you.

Choosing what you desire to celebrate isn’t hard

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

When you see that celebrations are an individual preference, and not necessarily for everyone, you can choose to celebrate whatever it is – or not. Knowing that it’s not selfish to choose to celebrate something – publicly or privately – you can choose how to celebrate and generate positivity within your given celebration.

This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you. Then that can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.

Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, 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 positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

Lastly, 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 also open those around you to their empowerment.

To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the four hundred-and-eighty-second 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.

Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter. Fill in the info and click the submit button to the right and receive a free eBook.

The post Must Everyone Celebrate Anniversaries and the Like? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.