M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 3

Why Be For Rather Than Against Things?

Because conscious reality creation is a neutral force in and of itself.Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

You’re bombarded every day with messages that tell you to take a stand against this, in opposition to that, and so on. It’s as if there’s an endless loop of things to take a stand against.

While on the surface this seems like a good way to resist awful things happening in the world, its depths tell a very different story. That’s because consciousness creates reality.

This is not some hooky-spooky, new-agey idealism. This is a law of nature. The Law of Attraction, where like attracts like, has been shown time and again to be a functional Law of the Universe.

You’ve experienced it without knowing that’s what it was. When you went to do a thing with a heavy heart, expecting it to suck, anticipating it being a miserable experience, and then it was? That’s the Law of Attraction in action.

Carl Jung offers a psychological observation that’s more grounded but says the same thing:

“What you resist, persists.”

When you stand against something, you are telling the neutral Universal forces of conscious reality creation that’s what you desire to create more of.

Before you dismiss this as some bullshit flight of fancy, please allow me to elaborate on why being for rather than against things is a channel for greater self-sovereignty and empowerment.

Controlling what you can control

When you look at the big picture world around you, it’s easy to feel uncertain, lost, scared, confused, and generally out of control. And that’s because, truthfully, you have no control. There is nothing you or I can do about Trump and his sycophantic supporters in Congress, the Israel/Palestine madness, Russia’s war in Ukraine, or anything of that nature.

Yes, you can vote, boycott, attend protests, write scathing emails and blogs, and discuss it with everyone you meet. But that’s about it. You control nothing on that level.

What you do control is yourself. Ultimately, this is about your inner being, your mindset/headspace/psyche self. That comes down to being actively, consciously aware of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, positivity or negativity of approach, and actions. Apart from choosing and deciding who, what, where, how, and why you are, that’s where your control exists.

This is not so limiting as it might appear. You are empowered to choose to be for things that can improve your life. Improving your life can be a beacon that others might use to improve their life.

This is where being for rather than against things becomes important.

Photo by Pete Pedroza on UnsplashWhy be for rather than against?

When you feel negative, whatever form that takes, it’s incredibly easy to find and/or create more negativity. Depression, for example, is often a mix of sadness, fear, uncertainty, anger, concern, disillusionment, and more. All of which are negative thoughts and feelings.

Conscious reality creation is not necessarily creation of the tangible. This is often applied to the intangible. Hence, if you are against something, you might find yourself getting more and more things to be against.

Standing against something can be cathartic. But there’s a problem inherent in it. That problem is what to replace it with.

A perfect example of this is the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Those who stand against it have never offered a replacement for it. They simply take a stand against it without offering anything in its place. They are for nothing.

When you stand for, rather than against, you are creating. Be for peace instead of against war. You can be for reason over being against fear. Be for kindness rather than against cruelty.

Enter conscious reality creation. Being for something is a creative force. Standing against something is destructive. Creating empowers while destroying disempowers.

It might feel like an insignificant idea, but nothing big started big. It all begins with small ideas.

Be for to empower yourself

Too many of those outside forces in the big picture want you and me disempowered. That way, they believe, they can control and manipulate us.

It works, too. Many people, beaten down enough times or bombarded by rhetoric without analysis, give in. They allow themselves to be manipulated, often because nobody, from teachers to parents to other authority figures, teaches anyone active conscious awareness.

You have more power than you would believe. It starts by being mindful – actively, consciously aware – and making choices and decisions for yourself. Even minor, seemingly unimportant choices like pausing to make your bed and eating breakfast rather than skipping it can impact you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

Every act of mindfulness is empowering. Choosing and deciding to be for, rather than against, is a flexing of that muscle. In an increasingly fear-based society, we need every empowered individual we can get to be for reason and kindness rather than against unreason/fear and cruelty.

Nobody can do this for you. Empowerment comes from within. You activate it via active, conscious, mindful choices and decisions. When you choose to be for things rather than against them, you’re choosing a creative tool and empowerment.

In this way, you choose the reality you consciously desire to create.

Can you see that being for rather than against helps conscious reality creation build greater resources for empowerment for everyone?

This is the seventh-hundred-seventeenth (717) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

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

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

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

The post Why Be For Rather Than Against Things? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Are You Being Manipulated by Fear More Than You Realize?

Unless you’re being actively mindful, the answer is probably yes.Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

The world is not the giant, insurmountable ball of negativity you read about in the news.

Before you disregard that statement, pause a moment the next time you’re in a grocery store, public park, or anywhere else with lots of people. What do you see? Is everyone being terrible to everyone around them? Is it a war zone of people taking, pushing, shoving, and doing naught but harm? Or is it people doing fairly mundane things together or keeping to themselves?

Sure, there might be exceptions, of course. But I suspect the majority are either neutral or positive. They are just like you, living life and doing things.

Again, I’m not saying bad things aren’t happening out there. Of course they are. What I am saying is that how they’re being presented to you, and more specifically to your subconscious mind, is the real issue.

Weaponized fear

As standards and ethics in reporting have been eroded to make way for greater corporate profit, the presentation of news has gotten increasingly misleading.

In some cases, you get outright propaganda and “entertainment” over legit news. In other instances, it’s a question of slant and angle. Let’s present everything as worst-case scenarios to get more people to pay attention.

In other words, feed the fear.

Fear is a powerful device that, in the distant past, served humankind and kept our ancestors alive. When fear was tangible and helped you avoid predators and other things that would kill you, it was helpful.

Now, more intangible than tangible, fear has become easily manipulated and weaponized. Do you really think someone like Trump could have the so-called power that he does if he and his handlers weren’t experts at fear manipulation?

Because ours is an increasingly fear-based society, the subtle manipulation is incredibly easy to miss. Almost all advertising, for example, plays off fears. Buy this, use that service, or else you will be less attractive/happy/acceptable to your neighbors than him, her, them, etc.

As we rely more on technology and interact less in person, manipulation by fear increases exponentially. I can’t play a “free” game on my phone without being interrupted by advertising. Unless I consciously, mindfully ignore it, my subconscious receives an unfiltered message that might be manipulating me.

The good news is, there’s a way to resist the manipulation.

Mindfulness: Active conscious awareness

When you allow yourself to run on rote, routine, and habit, via your subconscious mind, you’re like a sponge. You absorb information without any checks or balances to interpret or understand it.

Hence, you might find yourself feeling lost, uncertain, angry, scared, confused, and otherwise afraid. It’s often incredibly subtle and presents itself as underlying dread. You probably can’t explain it because it’s in your subconscious and you haven’t consciously paused to reflect on it.

This is how you find yourself manipulated. Before you know it, you and I have created values, beliefs, morals, and judgments about things. Often, it’s about things so far removed from you and your everyday life that you lose sight of the mundane, nearby things.

[image error]Photo by Ignacio Brosa on Unsplash

Again, let’s go back to the park, the store, the airport. When you pause and look around, for the most part, you’ll see people simply living, being, and doing. Some will look sad; most will be unreadable. Some might even be joyful.

Couples holding hands. Families sharing a laugh. That person on the bench alone, laughing out loud at a video on their phone. When you stop living subconsciously and apply active conscious awareness – mindfulness – you start to see that the “world” might suck, but in this place and this moment, it’s okay.

When fear is weaponized as it is today, manipulating people is easy. Unless you choose to be more mindful and resist the forces that are manipulating you. But there’s a very important caveat we must consider here:

Your fear is the only fear you can control

One of the most infuriating things to accept is that you can’t fix anyone else’s fear. I can’t make them see that what they’re afraid of is a phantom that can’t and won’t actually harm them.

You can only be mindful and actively consciously aware of and for yourself. When all is said and done, you can only control how you avoid being manipulated by fear by news media, politicians, religious leaders, business moguls, friends, family, and so on.

However, when you apply reason via mindfulness and resist being manipulated by fear, that can present to those around you an example they can also apply. In many ways, reason has become bravery, which most people associate with the opposite of fear. When you employ this for yourself and your life experience, it turns you into a beacon that can guide others to do the same.

Just remember, please, that you can only help yourself. It’s not selfish to practice self-care, resist being manipulated by fear, and choose and decide things from there. When you’re empowered, you become more capable of helping others find empowerment, too.

Resisting being manipulated by fear isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that fear is being frequently weaponized to manipulate you, you can practice active conscious awareness to resist it. Knowing that mindfulness, via choices and decisions, puts you in control, you can take back the wheel from your subconscious and genuinely resist weaponized fear.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-fourth (604) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post Are You Being Manipulated by Fear More Than You Realize? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Can’t You Undo or Redo It?

The past has come and gone, and change is the only constant.Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

One of the central tenets of the current American administration – if they have any genuine tenets to speak of – is to undo decades of progress.

Environmental protections to ensure people have access to clean air and water? Fuck that, it cuts into corporate profits and economic growth. Equal rights for women, LGBTQA+, and people of color? Fuck that, the white men need their shining mediocrity to feel powerful. Affordable health care, vaccine access, and science-based policy? Fuck that shit, let’s just burn it to the ground for no reason anyone can fathom.

It’s infuriating, it’s scary, and it’s utterly senseless. How did we get here? Because a whole swath of people refuse to accept that you can’t undo or redo the past. Progress is a natural part of the flow of the Universe. Everything grows, changes, evolves, and advances, whether it’s animal, vegetable, or mineral.

This can’t be addressed in the collective consciousness of any given community, nation, or the world. It can only be addressed by you and me for ourselves.

That begins by recognizing an important, ineffable, universal truth.

Change is the only constant in the Universe

Like it or not, shit changes. All the time. Hell, you’ve changed. Maybe only a little, maybe more physically than mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. But you have. And you still will going forward.

Everyone and everything changes. We live in a world today where a ton of diseases were eradicated by vaccines less than a hundred years ago. Yet a small number of loud, opinionated assholes have convinced people that vaccines cause more harm than good. That’s simply not true. And yet, here we are, and this shit has only begun its flight to the given fans it’ll hit.

Whatever the subject, change is the one and only constant in the Universe. No matter what it is, it has, can, does, and will keep changing. Every single human being changes from an infant to a toddler to an adolescent to a teen to an adult to a geriatric, unless death intervenes along the way. The sun rises and sets daily. Seasons turn. Change is everywhere in everything.

Some people find change impossible to cope with. They do everything in their power to wield any control whatsoever that they can find – real or imagined – to arrest, combat, and turn back change. Then, because mental health is treated like an unimportant, second-hand matter, nobody bothers to teach anyone how to work with and handle change.

That leads to where we are now. Frightened, uncertain, lost people seeking to undo or redo it.

You can’t undo or redo it

The past has come and gone. It’s literally passed you by. Now that it’s happened, you can’t undo it or redo it.

This is because it’s done. Over. Finished. What’s happened has happened, and that’s the end of it. Would I have preferred not to have been hit by a car crossing the street? Yes. Can I undo or redo it? No. Why? Because that happened in November of 1999, it’s now 2025, and I can’t undo or redo what happened nearly 26 years ago.

Nobody can undo or redo it. Another reason is because you can only control yourself, and only right here, right now. The past has passed, so any control you had has passed. The future is full of unknowns, so you can’t control what will be because you can’t and don’t know it.

What you can control is incredibly limited, but also incredibly empowering. That’s because all your control is in yourself.

You alone control what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and your actions. On the surface, that might not look like much. But in truth, it’s everything about you that makes you, you.

Your physical body doesn’t get angry, joyful, contemplative, or any other emotion, approach, or sense. That’s all based on your mental, emotional, and spiritual self. Your physical body is only 25 percent of who, what, where, how, and why you are. The spiritual, mental, and emotional make up the other 75 percent, and you alone have complete, total, and utter control of these.

More active, conscious awareness of yourself is how you can have any impact on anyone or anything else in the Universe.

Photo by Hadija on UnsplashMindfulness for the win

Mindfulness is just as simple as it is complicated. It’s simple because it’s entirely in your control. However, it’s complicated because it can only be accessed in the now.

When it comes to the past, we love to work on ideas to undo or redo it. But that’s not possible. Then we look to the future, often trying to guide it to look like the past. That also doesn’t work because change means the past has been passed.

When you stop looking back and looking ahead, you can bring your attention to the here and now. That opens the way for you to be present, actively consciously aware, and thus apply mindfulness.

With applied mindfulness, you can see clearly, right here and now, your thoughts, feelings, approach, intentions, and actions. With that insight, if you don’t like what you find, you can change it.

You can’t undo or redo it, no matter what “it” is. Change has made that so. You can make active, conscious choices and decisions, right here and now. Those decisions, for yourself, empower you.

Empowerment is the only real, true power. It’s not given to you by God, politicians, religious leaders, gurus, or business moguls. It’s already yours. Mindfulness lets you see the truth of this.

Don’t waste your time and energy trying to undo or redo it

While it’s important to know what’s happening in the world around you, you also need to recognize and acknowledge that you can’t do jack shit about it.

Sorry, you have no control over anyone or anything out there. You, however, have 100 percent control over you and your life experience.

What you do with that is on you. Yes, you can spend time and energy attempting to undo or redo this, that, or the other thing. However, the truth is that you’ll get nowhere fast. Change has made it impossible to undo or redo it.

This, FYI, is the only place where true impossibility exists. Even if you undo or redo something, it won’t be the same as what it was. That’s because what it was has come and gone. It, you, this, that, and the other thing, the whole Universe, has succumbed to change in one way or another.

Be here now. Open yourself to being more mindful. With that, you become empowered. When I’m empowered, I share elements of my philosophy with the world to do what I can to help others find their empowerment. This is my coping mechanism, but also my way of striving to make a positive and useful difference in the world.

Recognize and acknowledge the ineffability of change. Then, recognize and acknowledge that you can’t undo or redo it. From the present moment that brings you to, use your active conscious awareness to make choices and decisions for your life experience.

The power of choice and actions is yours. Make use of it to be the best you that you can be.

Do you see why you can’t undo or redo it, whatever “it” may be?

This is the seventh-hundred-sixteenth (716) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

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

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

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

The post Why Can’t You Undo or Redo It? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Did You Make a Poor Choice?

Guess what? You can make a new one now.Photo by Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra on Unsplash

Everybody makes mistakes. There isn’t a single person on Planet Earth who doesn’t err, make a poor choice, or fuck up. Not. A. One.

You have made a poor choice in your life. I know that because you’re only human, and humans can, will, and do make poor choices. Guess what? You are not alone. So, so very not alone. Everyone. Every. Single. Person. Chooses badly from time to time.

Yes, some mistakes are so minor that they can be laughed off, disregarded, and glossed over. Some, however, are so epic, they can feel all-encompassing, utterly embarrassing, and upsetting in many different ways. Somewhere between these extremes, you’ll find general poor choices and mistakes, as well as small, medium, and large fuck ups.

When you make a poor choice, unless it kills you, you can make a new one.

Admittedly, there can be complications, challenges, obstacles, and all sorts of issues both within and utterly outside your control when it comes to making a new choice. That does not, however, take away the truth. Still here? You can make a new choice.

However, there’s a really important step that’s too easy to ignore that you can’t.

Take responsibility and/or be accountable

Everywhere you look, someone is blaming someone or something. Almost every politician, no matter which side they’re on, will cast blame long before taking any responsibility for anything.

These examples, right in front of us every day, create a false equivalency: If they can blame, I can blame. But that doesn’t work when all is said and done. If you don’t think the harmful practices of the Trump administration and its endless blame won’t come back to haunt them, you’ve not paid attention to world history. They might do a metric fuck-ton of damage and harm before it’s over, but ultimately, they will be held accountable.

In your personal life, you always have a choice. When you choose to take responsibility and be accountable for your actions, yes, you might suffer for a while. When you fuck up, make a poor choice, or do something stupid, it’s going to probably hurt. But, ultimately, by taking responsibility and being accountable, you open the way to make a new choice and do better.

One of the biggest problems with blame is its utter uselessness. Blame presents no way to fix a given issue, fans the flames, and passes the buck. But otherwise, blame does nothing to address or fix anything.

While you can’t do jack shit about the big picture matters, you can choose to take responsibility and be accountable in your life. That step is important because the recognition and acknowledgement it represents empowers you. That empowerment is how you can make a new and potentially better choice.

Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on UnsplashEveryone makes a poor choice from time to time

I’ve made my share of poor choices. Relationships I shouldn’t have entered. Jobs I should have pursued that I didn’t. Allowing that person to be blamed for the thing even after I knew they hadn’t done it. Supporting that person who proved to be awful. Giving up when I should have pushed on and pushing on when I should have given up.

Then, rather than take responsibility or be accountable, I blamed. Often, I blamed myself, which is just as disempowering and damaging as blaming someone else. Again, that’s because blame is utterly useless.

Since I began actively working with conscious reality creation, mindfulness, and nontoxic positivity, I’ve practiced taking responsibility and being accountable for my actions. Hence, after I went ahead and made a poor choice, I recognized it, acknowledged it, sat with it for a time, and then made a new one.

Granted, this is imperfect. My next choice might have been a poor choice, too. It happens. Know why? Because nobody can predict with 100% accuracy the outcome of anything. Also, being human, you can, will, and do make poor choices along the way.

Big or small, insignificant or horrifying, you’ll make a poor choice. Or many poor choices. Sometimes what looked like a good idea proves otherwise. Hence why I never compare most extremes as opposite ends of coins, but rather flexible cylinders. This allows for lots more wiggle room, which is the reality of the nature of the universe, after all.

When you make a poor choice, recognize it, acknowledge it, take responsibility, and be accountable for it. Yet before you make the next choice, you might need to add another step.

Forgive yourself

You have fucked up before. No matter what you do, you will fuck up again. Maybe you picked the wrong job when you chose between two options. Perhaps you voted for someone awful who played on your worst fear (or didn’t vote at all for some reason). Maybe you slept with that person you knew you shouldn’t have, and regret it. Congrats, you’re human.

Recognizing and acknowledging that you made a poor choice is one step. Taking responsibility and being accountable is another. But then, if you find that these still leave you feeling cold, empty, or otherwise disconnected, you might need to add one more stop: Forgive yourself.

Nobody is perfect. Everyone makes poor choices in their lives. Know why? Because life is all about balance and imbalance, growth and opportunity. If you always got it right, do you think that might stagnate your potential to grow? I do.

So when you make a poor choice and recognize you did so, you might need to forgive yourself. No, that doesn’t mean others will forgive you, especially if your poor choice caused them harm (looking at you, Trump voters). Doesn’t matter because the person who must always live with you is yourself. That’s why you can’t fix a poor choice until you recognize, acknowledge, take responsibility, and be accountable for it.

Did you make a poor choice? Would you care to make a better one to rectify it? The ball is in your court.

Making a new choice after making a poor choice isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that you made a poor choice, you first need to take responsibility and be accountable for it to make a new one. Knowing that you still might not be in the right headspace to choose anew, you then might need to first forgive yourself before you make a new choice. What matters is mindfully making a consciously aware choice in the first place.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-fourth (604) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post Did You Make a Poor Choice? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Is How You Handle Change Yours to Control?

Yes, because nobody else is in your head, heart, or soul.Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

People spend endless amounts of time and money to understand things. Often, finding answers leads to stagnation because of one simple universal truth: Change is the one and only constant in the universe.

Nothing, and I mean nothing at all, is static. Everything changes. Sometimes change occurs so quickly that you blink and it’s done. Other times, change is so glacially slow that no matter how hard you look at it, you can’t see it. Yet it is, change happens, and it’s inevitable.

Person, place, or thing, it will change. That is the truest truth of the universe. That means that the answers change. And that can be infuriating.

When I was a kid, I was taught that this solar system had 9 planets. Now, Pluto is no longer deemed to be a planet. Why? Because science changed, new things about the function of our solar system were discovered, and the classification of planets shifted with it.

This is a big, impersonal example. Yet I can tell you now that who you were at age 5 is not who you are now. That’s because you’ve changed on every possible front, both tangible and intangible. Who you are mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically is always in flux.

It’s hard for us to accept change both within ourselves and in the world without, for a lot of reasons. Yet change can, will, and does occur.

Knowing what you know and knowing you know nothing

For everything I’ve learned during my lifetime, the number of things I don’t know could be staggering. Admittedly, many of the things I don’t know I neither need nor care to. Then, to add insult to injury, even among the things I know, there will be change.

When it comes to yourself, you change. Like it or not, tangibly and intangibly, you can, will, and do change. That’s the nature of life. It’s about growth, evolution, and constant motion. When you don’t grow and change, you shrink and stagnate. Certainly not in an either/or instantaneous sense, but that’s the inevitable outcome. When you don’t roll with change and growth, you accept shrinkage and stagnation.

Change can be scary because it’s the unknown. How you approach that is a choice. Fear and trepidation or excitement and anticipation? Loathing and upset or admiration and serenity? It might not seem like you have a choice, but you do.

It’s never black and white, and every situation will have variables you can’t account for. Knowing what you know, it’s important to recognize and acknowledge that you also know nothing. That’s because what you do and can know, does and will change.

The point of this is that you, in every way, also change. This can be scary and feel unwanted, but that’s a choice you get to make.

Change in and of itself is neutral

Often, people think change is bad. Then, they’re led to believe that change will ruin or destroy this, that, or the other thing. Look at how politicians and business leaders, in particular, love to weaponize fear of change to attempt to control people.

In truth, change in and of itself just is. It’s impartial, neutral, and not in any way, shape, or form out to get you. Yet, when you find comfort in any given thing, change can negatively impact that, which in turn can make you feel like it’s against you.

The truth is that change simply is. Once again, it’s the one and only constant in the entire universe.

Once you recognize, acknowledge, and work with this, change becomes something that you can work with more easily, even if you can’t control it. Because what you can and do control is in you.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on UnsplashWorking with rather than against change

Applying this is a matter of assuming control over what you can control. In short, that’s you. More specifically, it’s your inner being. That comes down to your thoughts, feelings, intentions, positivity or negativity of approach, and actions.

That might not seem like much, but it’s everything. To gain this control means being here, now, in the present. When present, you apply active conscious awareness to see your inner thoughts, feelings, etc. Then, with mindfulness, you can take action and change anything therein that’s not to your liking.

You might not be able to change from one thing to another instantly. It may be necessary to change incrementally and use stepping stones from point A to point B. Yet when you apply mindfulness to this, you open the door to working with rather than against change.

So many elements of so-called conservative politicians are all about working against change. That creates unhealthy resistance. Why? Because you can’t undo what’s changed.

Note – not all resistance is unhealthy. When you take a stand against those who are fighting progress, diversity, inclusivity, and frankly reality, that’s not unhealthy. Unhealthy resistance tends to have little to nothing to do with you and your life, even when it feels like it does. Because let’s face it – people who are not you, striving, like you, to live their best possible life, aren’t actively working to mess you up or harm you in the process.

It all comes down to the choices and decisions that you make. Or not. When all is said and done, though you can’t control change, how you handle it is yours to control. But only for you and your life experience.

This is about empowerment

In the end, working with rather than against change comes down to empowerment. You don’t get that from any outside forces. Empowerment is within you.

Empowerment is a choice you get to make. When you choose to be mindful and actively consciously aware, you can control how you handle change for yourself. That might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not. When you’re empowered, that can do a lot for those around you. Because empowered people, genuinely empowered people, make other people feel empowered, too.

What you do to take control of what you can when change comes is a choice you get to make. And even if you choose wrong, unless that choice kills you, another choice will present itself. That, too, is part of the inevitability of change, but that’s potentially beneficial. If you choose for it to be such.

How do you approach change when it happens?

This is the seventh-hundred-fifteenth (715) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

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

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

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

The post Is How You Handle Change Yours to Control? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Do I Keep Promoting Nontoxic Positivity?

Because the world doesn’t need more negativity in it.Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash

Let’s be honest. We’re living in maddening, frightening, crazy times. The degree of uncertainty we face daily is surreal, to put it mildly.

A lot of the progress made toward greater equality, equity, diversity, inclusivity, and the like, is being destroyed by hateful, greedy, spiteful people. Unfortunately, their example is rubbing off on scared, uncertain, disempowered people.

There isn’t anything you or I can do about that big picture. We can’t change the narrative and the underlying current impression within the collective consciousness. You cannot control me, and I can’t control you.  From that truth, it can feel like you and I control less and less, down to having almost nothing we can get a hold of.

Yet when all is said and done, you control yourself. The control is developed from choices and decisions you make via active conscious awareness. And part of that requires choosing a positive approach.

What do you control?

Ultimately, you control your thoughts, feelings, intentions, whether your approach is positive or negative, and your actions. That might not seem like much, but in truth, it’s everything.

At your core, your inner being, your mind, is broken into unconscious, subconscious, and conscious aspects. The unconscious mind is your heart beating, your lungs taking in air, neurons firing, and all the other things that drive you every day.

The subconscious mind is where your beliefs, values, habits, and memories live. It is in your subconscious that you form your opinion, worth, and ego. The subconscious is a sponge that absorbs and holds onto all sorts of ideas, concepts, emotions, sensations, and more. Unchecked, it will drive you off a cliff and leave you wondering how the hell that happened.

The conscious mind is where you assert control. This is your mindset/headspace/psyche inner self, right here and now. Only in the present can you assert control via making choices and decisions about what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and your actions.

Ultimately, being consciously aware (mindful), in your conscious mind, in the now, puts you in control. This allows you to choose who, what, where, how, and why you are, literally and figuratively.

How you approach that, however, impacts the experience.

Photo by Masjid MABA on UnsplashThe power of nontoxic positivity

If you approach a situation without giving it any energy, that neutral alignment means you open yourself to being easily swayed by both internal and external influences. Internal influences are beliefs and values that you might not have checked in with for some time, that don’t serve you now. External influences are people, places, things, random happenstance, and circumstances.

When you approach a situation expecting it to be crap, unpleasant, and negative, you’re inviting that in. Consciousness creates reality. When you expect things to go wrong, odds are they will. It’s not always going to go that way, but it’s a lot more likely to when that’s the energy you put out into the universe.

If you approach a situation expecting it to have potential and possibility, to open doors, you’re inviting that in. This isn’t a denial that shit might happen, but it’s choosing to approach something from a generative place of good and positivity versus an unproductive place of bad and negativity.

Negativity tends to be the product of a lack, scarcity, and an insufficiency mindset. There’s not enough this, that, or the other thing to go around; it’s all in a limited supply, and notions that “they” are taking it from you all tie into this.

Positivity is attached to an abundance mindset. Not in a blind, one-true-way hyperfocus, but in a potential, possibility, and inviting expectation.

However, this is where nontoxic positivity is imperative.

The universe is in balance

With a few exceptions, nothing is all bad or all good. There’s nuance between all the extremes. A lot of distance and things lie between good and evil, happy and sad, up and down, black and white, positivity and negativity, and so on.

Positivity is frequently made toxic with an approach that ignores, disregards, or shuns the negative. But putting on blinders or rose-colored glasses hides the truth. The truth is that bad, negative, and unwanted things can, will, and do occur and exist.

Choosing to face them fatalistically or with resistance is up to you. That’s why your approach, be it positive, negative, or neutral, is important. Positivity – especially nontoxic positivity – is open and ready to find potential and possibility. Negativity is closed and expecting bad or the worst. Neutrality leaves you open to internal and external influence and uncertainty.

I keep promoting nontoxic positivity because it’s a great tool to combat the fucked up world you and I are living in. When all we see is the bad, we start to accept that this is how it is. That’s not true, however. Applying nontoxic positivity to ourselves and our life experiences, the only thing we genuinely can control, is the ultimate resistance to the madness. I, for one, prefer to have the potential and possibility of that over the false inevitability of collapse.

Your mileage may vary, but the choices and decisions ARE yours to make.

Finding and applying nontoxic positivity for your own benefit isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that you can only control yourself, and your thoughts, feelings, intent, approach, and actions, you’ll see that nontoxic positivity opens you to potential, possibility, and more. Knowing that negativity closes you off and neutrality leaves you twisting in the winds of influence, you can choose for yourself nontoxic positivity to resist the madness of the world at large and improve your life experiences.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-third (603) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post Why Do I Keep Promoting Nontoxic Positivity? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Today is Another Day Here, and That’s Good

Each day you have is a new opportunity if you see it that way.Photo by Wesley Eland on Unsplash

Today is not yesterday. No matter what yesterday looked like or how it played out, today is a completely different and unique day.

Maybe it’s just another day. That, however, is a matter of perspective. Whatever approach you choose to the day, whether you make conscious choices or live via rote and routine subconsciously, today is another day here.

Like it or not, you will reach a last day here. That’s the nature of life. It ends in death. Yet every single day that you’re here, you are faced with choices, options, challenges, opportunities, and everything in between.

A lot is going on in the world at large that you and I have ZERO control over. We can’t make them stop being uncaring, unkind, harmful assholes, no matter how hard we try. You and I have no control there.

Where you do have control is with you, yourself, and your life experience. Even if it’s full of challenges and difficulties, so long as you’re here, you have choices and options. Thus, you can see that today is another day here, and that’s good.

Why is that good?

Maybe yesterday was amazing. And maybe it sucked. Perhaps you had something really pleasant happen, or maybe something unpleasant came to pass. It’s also entirely possible it was an utterly uninteresting day, or some wild combination of good, bad, amazing, horrific, and more.

The most important thing about this is that yesterday has come and gone. Today is a wholly new and unique day. Sure, you might have necessary routines to attend to. But while it might be similar to other days, today is another day entirely. And you’re here to experience it. That’s what’s so good.

I know you might be going through some shit. Life might be handing you an endless sack of garbage. I hope you can find ways to work with that and handle whatever is happening. But because you’re still here, it’s still good.

I recently injured myself. It’s a rather infuriating injury, because while I’m not presently in pain, I might need surgery to repair the damage. That will have quite the impact on my life over several months. I’m pretty sure it will suck mightily if it comes to that.

Still, I’m here. I have opportunities, potential, and possibilities, even if I have to get this issue surgically repaired. I still see it as good that I’m here for another day.

Photo by Elisabeth Arnold on UnsplashAnother day here is another day

The truth of being human is that you get a finite time on this planet in that body. Whatever you might believe about the immortality of the soul or your base in energy, as you are now, in this form, you will reach an end one day.

I know acknowledging this can be frightening. But it can also be liberating. Every day you are here is good. That’s because every day that you’re here is another opportunity, another chance to have a new experience, and more time to live your life how you would choose to live it.

We often focus on the big things. Marriage, buying a house, making a million dollars, producing children, and so on. Yet every day is another day to experience smaller, still amazing things. Like observing an amazing crescent moon in the sky, tasting a fresh cup of coffee, smelling cookies baking, laughing at a funny meme, and more.

Every day is different, even when there are similarities. That’s because change is the one and only constant in the universe. Every day, you get to decide when to be mindful and live via conscious awareness; and when to go with rote, routine, and habit, and live subconsciously.

How you view and approach your day is wholly yours to choose. Being grateful for the good of being here another day can impact how your day unfolds and plays out.

Moments in motion

I’ve had purely amazing, almost totally perfect (to my mind) days. Conversely, I’ve had horrific, awful, almost totally deficient days. Mostly, however, my days are a blend of good and bad, happy and sad, elated and annoyed, joyful and irked, and on and on.

This is why nontoxic positivity is so important. Almost nothing is all bad or all good, because that’s not the nature of the universe. It’s all about the yin and yang, scales to be balanced over time, and the like. Moments are in constant motion because change is in constant motion.

Some people find this frustrating, but I prefer to see it for potential and possibilities. As Yoda said,

“Always in motion is the future.”

That’s a reflection of the constancy of change. And it can be empowering if you choose to see it as such.

That’s why I say that today is another day here, and that’s good. Because even if I must face something unpleasant, I’m here, now. The bad will pass, and more good can and will be made or found. That leads me to ask: What choices shall I make and what will I do with that?

Can you see why today being another day, and you being here is good, maybe even amazing?

This is the seventh-hundred-fourteenth (714) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

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

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

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

The post Today is Another Day Here, and That’s Good appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

The Unknown is Only Scary If You Choose to Be Afraid of It

The unknown is not positive or negative; it just is.Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

One reason, possibly the main reason, so many people fall for the lies of people like Trump is fear of the unknown. The world is moving so fast that people feel left behind, disregarded, and like they have zero control over any of it. Thus, the so-called powerful prey upon them and their fears to enrich themselves while fucking everyone else over.

This is easy to see when you take a step back and look at the Twentieth Century. In a hundred years, we went from the end of the Industrial Revolution and a world that had changed only slowly for centuries to the Information Age and a world instantly interconnected. In 1900, you were lucky if you could find out what was happening on the other side of the country in just a few days. By 1999, you could find out what was happening on the other side of the globe instantly.

The world has changed at unprecedented speed, and that speed has accelerated. In just 50 years, we’ve seen dramatic shifts from small pockets of information you could spend days seeking to global knowledge in the palm of your hand or on your wrist.

This has impacted everyone. While some see it as positive and progress, others see it as negative and fraught with the unknown. That’s been abused by many “in power” to expand their power via fear of the unknown. Yet the truth is, the unknown is only scary and negative if you choose to be afraid of it.

Fear is the default setting

You and I live in a fear-based society. Don’t believe me? Almost every message in politics directs you to fear this group, that organization, or those ideals. From there, you’re directed to blame those people, places, or things for all your ills and woes.

The whole message of Trump’s first campaign was that the country had fallen, and it needed to be resurrected to its former greatness. Then he and the GOP steered this to both subtly and blatantly claim that progress ruined us, and embracing the unknown made us weak.

The DNC is doing this now in certain elections where the established and status quo candidates are losing to newer progressive ones. Politics on both sides love to use fear of the unknown to unnerve us.

Fear this, fear that. If you don’t buy “X,” you will be lesser and disrespected. When you don’t use service “Y,” you’ll show yourself to be weak and unworthy. Vote this way or disappoint your faith, your family, and on and on. Fear, weaponized.

Fear of what? Suffering. When you get right down to it, it’s never the thing they’re telling you to be afraid of that’s the thing you fear. It’s the suffering you’ll experience if you allow this thing or that to occur.

All of it plays on the unknown and its potential to be scary and cause suffering.

Photo by Rabih Shasha on UnsplashThe unknown is only scary if you choose to be afraid of it

Those who came to North America from Europe had no idea what was west of this mountain range, that river, those lakes. They feared the unknown. Until someone overcame their fear and crossed the mountain, the river, or those lakes to the other side.

On a personal level, the unknown is part of growing up. As a child, your life as a teenager is unknown. When you’re a teen, your adult life is unknown. Once you reach adulthood, unknowns range from job security to relationships to conflicts both in and out of your control.

The unknown can be scary. What if you do “X” and that leads to suffering? Maybe doing “Y” will cause you pain on an emotional, mental, or spiritual level. These and more “What ifs” can be incredibly unnerving.

It’s easy to see how you might suffer due to this, that, or the other thing. However, that’s ultimately a choice.

The unknown can be approached as something to be feared or as something full of potential and possibilities. Yes, there might be snakes and scorpions on the other side of that hill. There might also be a breathtaking vista and a pile of gold over that hill. And you won’t know until you cross it.

Despite all the messages to the contrary, fear is a choice. Hence, you choose if the known is something to fear and avoid or reason with and explore.

Empowerment is power

Keeping people disempowered is how too many of those in power hold power. It’s all a bunch of bullshit, really, because when you’re empowered, you actively make more choices and decisions for yourself.

Why else do they gut the education system, target the “other” as the group to fear, and tell you “they” intend to take your guns, freedoms, and hard-earned whatever from you? Why do they attack being “woke” and giving a shit about other people, the environment, and things? It’s all about disempowerment.

The moment you choose to think and feel for yourself, you open yourself to empowerment. That’s power. Empowerment is how you can see through the bullshit and approach the unknown not with fear and trepidation, but curiosity and purposefulness.

The unknown is only scary if you choose to be afraid of it. When you look within yourself and apply active conscious awareness, you can see this more clearly. Then, with that clarity, choose for yourself how you approach the unknown. Then, the more you make active, mindful choices and decisions, the more you can show others that the unknown isn’t to be feared.

That’s how we might shift from a fear-based to a reason-based society. But it can only start with you and me.

Recognizing that the unknown is only scary if you choose to be afraid of it isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that there always have been and always will be unknowns, and that the unknown itself isn’t scary, you can apply a mindful approach to it. Knowing that the unknown is always on the other side of growth and evolution, you can take control of your approach via active conscious awareness and not let fear of it overwhelm, unnerve, or distract you.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-second (602) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post The Unknown is Only Scary If You Choose to Be Afraid of It appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How Do I Balance My Need to Help with What I Can Actually Do?

I need to recognize and accept what I do, don’t, and can’t control.Photo by Inspa Makers on Unsplash

I’m trying to wrap my head around my own thoughts. Between what’s in my head and the information I take in from the world without, there’s a lot there to process.

Lately, I’ve been feeling an increasing sense of disconnect. It’s like I’m present, doing my thing, but also drifting. Why? Because the state of the collective consciousness is so scattered and so uncertain, it’s hard to ignore when it’s practically screaming.

No matter how much I limit my intake of the various news from the world without, it’s still there. And I know there’s not a fucking thing I can do about it.

All I can do is strive to live my own life to the best of my ability. I know that I’m incredibly fortunate on multiple levels and work hard not to take that for granted. That, unfortunately, comes with a degree of guilt and shame.

Why? Because my struggles are entirely intangible and in my head. I know that they’re no less valid than those who have physical and tangible struggles. But I still feel bad when I see others I care about enduring more concrete challenges.

I’m a natural helper

In the medieval reenactment society that is my hobby (and much of my social life), I’ve been awarded for doing service. It’s in my nature to help people, teach people, open people to potential, possibilities, and the like. I strive not to lead, but to guide.

As a child, after my parents’ divorce, I started therapy. One thing I learned was that the best therapists didn’t tell me things but instead asked the right questions to get me to ask and seek answers to those things on my own. I’ve always found the best therapists are guides like that.

In my everyday life, I regularly hold doors, allow people with fewer items than I have in front of me in check-out lines, and give directions to strangers. I’m a natural helper.

When I see people struggling with things, I deeply desire to help if I can. Yet, faced with a fear-based and increasingly unreasonable collective consciousness, I’m finding myself more and more at a loss for what I can do.

Which leads to today’s question. How do I balance my need to help with what I can actually do?

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on UnsplashThe balance is within me

It is very, very hard to watch what’s going on in the world and, as a natural helper, not desire to do something about it. Yet, the truth is, there’s not a damned thing I can do in the present.

I can’t make anyone who wants to stick it to the liberals understand how that also hurts them. There’s nothing I can do to make people understand that being “woke” is far better than being asleep and under the control of someone else. And it’s infuriating because it’s beyond logic, reason, and not-so-common sense.

Recognizing this, however, opens me to choices and decisions for what I can do. And that comes down to being my most genuine self. What I can do is keep offering to help people I come in contact with, as I’m naturally inclined to do.

I must also accept that I can’t do jack shit about the Big Picture bullshit. I can’t make our so-called leaders stop harming people, can’t wake anyone up who isn’t willing to wake up, and can’t show people who believe the lies that they are lies.

Also, I won’t run away or stop resisting what I can resist in any generative, useful way. But I need to recognize, acknowledge, and work with what I can actually do rather than lament what I can’t. That’s where the balance is to be found.

Balance is a mindful choice

Nobody but me is in my head, heart, or soul. Ergo, only I can choose how to find and make the balance between my need to help and what I can do.

It’s up to me to choose to stop letting what I can’t control get to me. Only I can recognize and acknowledge it, then balance where I go from there.

That doesn’t make this any less infuriating and frustrating. But it opens me to employ greater active conscious awareness – mindfulness – in the face of this mad, mad, mad world.

This is not a choice for ignorance. Knowledge is power, and more than that, knowledge is empowerment. But the balance between awareness and overwhelm is a blurry line I often need to squint to recognize. Yet doing so is how I can maintain my calm, balance my need to help with what I can actually do, and allow me to find and/or create new opportunities.

I need to recognize and accept what I do, don’t, and can’t control. That starts by being aware of my own thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. That isn’t selfish, it’s self-awareness. Being self-aware is how I can make choices and decisions that can do me good while also being helpful and good for others.

So that’s where I’m at. Thanks for reading my rambling thoughts. How do you balance what you desire to do with what you can do?

This is the seventh-hundred-thirteenth (713) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

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

Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.

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

The post How Do I Balance My Need to Help with What I Can Actually Do? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What Do You/Can You Truly Control in Life?

The illusion of control can be broken by mindfulness.Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Our collective consciousness is full to overflowing with false notions of control. From the fictional, where powerful sorcerers can control the masses with magic, to reality, where politicians strive to control the masses with fear, the notion of control is incredibly convoluted.

The idea that someone can control someone else is the main issue. That’s because, in truth, nobody can control anybody else. You have zero control over anyone else at all.

Beyond people, we have even more limits on what we can and do control. The weather? Traffic? The stock market? War? We control none of this. Not even a little bit.

Unfortunately, the collective consciousness is one of fear. That fear is not the healthy, useful fear our ancestors needed to survive. It’s fear of intangibles and things that might potentially hurt or harm us. More often than not, the truest fear is the fear of suffering when “X” comes to pass, or “Y” happens.

The amazing technology that interconnects us instantly across the globe also distracts and disconnects us. Rather than build bridges and expand knowledge, it’s too often used to divide, conquer, and create echo chambers of disinformation. Much of this is where the illusion of control is most abused.

How do we break this cycle? By becoming more aware of our inner beings.

The power of active conscious awareness

All human beings exist in three states. Unconscious, which is how your vital systems functions work. This includes your circulation, nervous system, and all the other automated elements of you that your brain controls.

The subconscious is where you create rote, routine, and habit. It’s how you automate the minor, repetitive elements of life. Your subconscious mind is also where your beliefs, values, and memories live.

For the most part, your subconscious just is and stays buried beneath the surface unless you choose to access it.

This is where your conscious self comes into play. Your conscious mind is here, now, paying attention to the world around you. But it’s also accessing your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self. This is your awareness inside and out, in the moment.

Active conscious awareness is when you are being present, in the moment, and looking within while observing without. This, in turn, shows you what you can and do truly control.

While the answer might seem to be very little, it’s actually everything that matters.

Photo by Darius Bashar on UnsplashWhat do you/can you truly control?

The short answer is you, yourself. You can control who, what, where, how, and why you are. At least, at your core, inner being. Other factors outside of yourself – such as family, environment, community, and the like – are matters of happenstance and circumstance that you might need to overcome limits of to assert control.

However, your inner being, and what makes you, you, is utterly under your control. To gain this requires you to employ active conscious awareness. Mindfulness is not some hooky-spooky BS. It’s self-awareness. With it, you can control your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions.

This begins with questions that include,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?Is my approach to this positive, negative, or unset?What are my actions?

All of these can only be answered here and now, in the present moment. Whatever the answers you come up with are, they’re not written in stone. This is your inner dialogue, your ultimate isness. Ergo, you can change it to suit yourself better.

You alone control your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. Yes, others can influence you and suggest, cajole, and push you. But in the end, you ultimately choose and decide.

It might not seem like much control, but it’s everything.

Change begins with you

Do you know why there’s an anti-woke movement? Because a group of people who want to have control over everyone else want people to be asleep and unaware. People who are not actively consciously aware are easier to influence, sway, and take direction.

Those people would be removed from power if reason, logic, and mindfulness were used more regularly to overcome fear. The opposite of fear isn’t courage, it’s reason. Reason is how you know that the thing you fear will overwhelm you – and cause horrible suffering -might be scarier than the actual suffering you could endure.

You can’t make anyone else be awake and aware. You can, however, lead by example. Face fear with reason and share that. Be mindful and let people see how that keeps you focused and in control. Make an effort not to spread the fear, uncertainty, and pain. Speak truth to power.

You alone can choose and decide for yourself. Change begins with you, and that’s what you can control for yourself. It might not seem like much, but it truly is amazing and empowering.

Recognizing what you can and do control isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that you can only exert control over yourself and your life, you can employ active conscious awareness to do that. Knowing control is something you can choose via active conscious awareness – mindfulness – of your choices and decisions in life, you can use this to control your inner being. That allows you to live more fully and in control of what you can and do control.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-first (601) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post What Do You/Can You Truly Control in Life? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.