M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 4

How Do You Step Out of a Comfort Zone?

What does it take to find and do the uncomfortable thing?Photo by Aləx Buchan on Unsplash

The term comfort zone is a misnomer. That’s because what we call a comfort zone is often anything but comfortable. What it is, however, is familiar. Known. Maybe even vaguely understood.

The truth is that a comfort zone is a place that you already know and have familiarity with. It takes shape in both literal and metaphoric terms. Literally, your comfort zone is where and who you are. It’s the state, the home, the job, the relationships, the daily routines that propel you.

Metaphorically, your comfort zone is the feeling of familiarity, knowing, and even stability. It’s not just feeling, however, as it often gets tied to memory, belief, and value. False comfort zones are how politicians convince people to vote against their better interests, for example.

While for some, comfort zones are truly comfortable, for many people, they’re not. Part of growing and changing in life requires you to step out of a comfort zone. But how do you do that?

Become consciously aware

Active, conscious awareness is imperative. You can’t step out of your comfort zone if you don’t know who, what, where, how, and why you are, here and now. This has everything to do with the present. The past has come and gone, the future is in motion, but the present just is.

This is why the negativity heaped on being “woke” makes no sense at all. Being woke means being awake and aware of not just the world around you, but yourself. To make any change in your life, to make active, conscious choices for growth and evolution, this is utterly necessary.

To step out of a comfort zone, you must first recognize it for what it is. Because our society is hell-bent on keeping people disempowered and in fear, it’s challenging to see comfort zones because they’re only recognizable when you’re mindful. Living by rote, routine, and habit, you sink into a comfort zone so deeply that it loses all meaning. Which is often why it becomes uncomfortable.

Active conscious awareness is mindfulness. First and foremost, mindfulness of the self. With that, you can recognize your comfort zone. But that’s just step one. Step two is to acknowledge it.

Acknowledge your comfort zone

Recognizing your comfort zone is important. But acknowledging it is how you step out of it.

I can recognize that a house is on fire. If I don’t acknowledge it and remain within it, I’ll get burned. That might seem super obvious, but is it? How many people recognize something, then completely ignore and don’t acknowledge it? I give you the many crimes, past and present, of Donald Trump, who somehow is still President. But I digress.

The point is that you must both recognize and acknowledge a comfort zone to step out of it. Otherwise, you remain disempowered.

Photo by Elijah Hiett on UnsplashApplied mindfulness

Because the comfort zone is both literal and metaphorical, the latter requires you to be present, here and now, to apply mindfulness to change it. If your mindset/headspace/psyche is still in that familiar place, you can’t leave the relationship, start the business, move across the country, or whatever other literal work is necessary.

Applied mindfulness starts by asking questions that include,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?Is my approach to things positive or negative?What am I doing?

Each of these can only be answered here and now, and by you alone. Once you have the answers, you become capable of making choices and decisions that will open you to potential, possibilities, and places outside of your comfort zone.

But not without action.

Step out of your comfort zone

To leave behind a given comfort zone, literally and metaphorically, requires action. Ask that person out, sign the contract, apply for the job, format the book, whatever. Take action, because without action, you have no motion.

This is, admittedly, easier said than done. Leaving a comfort zone involves stepping away from the known, the familiar, and the stable. Comfort zones are what they are because they feel like a down blanket on a cold winter night. But instead, they’re often that same down blanket stifling you in sweltering mid-summer heat.

I currently need to leave a comfort zone. I know that, for my books to sell more, I need to reach out to new people, act on new tactics, and leave behind the known for several unknowns.

Due to my greater desire to expand my business, this is what I must do, and that means leaving this uncomfortable comfort zone. Writing this out is a step in that direction, an action for me.

What does it take to find and do the uncomfortable thing? Once you recognize and acknowledge your comfort zone, you can apply mindfulness to take the next step and learn what that is for you and your life. I believe that’s utterly worthwhile. Also, if more people did this, I think we’d become more capable of turning this fear-based society into a reason-based one.

Can you see the truth of your comfort zones?

This is the seventh-hundred-twelfth (712) 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 You Step Out of a Comfort Zone? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

The Reality of Positivity

What is the reality of positivity, and how does it work?Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

Positivity is not just a thought or a feeling. It’s also attitude and approach. It’s making a choice, here and now, in this moment, to face the positive end of the spectrum.

Life is always in motion. You’re impacted by your internal thoughts, feelings, approach, and intentions. External stimuli, influencers, social media, news, and more, also impact you. Moment to moment, life is in constant flux.

Positivity is not something you can experience all the time. But then, frankly, nothing can be experienced all the time. Even in the midst of tragedy, something can make you laugh. Likewise, in the midst of comedy, horror can pop up and unnerve you.

The reality of positivity is that it’s a tool you can choose to employ in times, places, and situations as needed.

Before I take a deeper dive into that, however, there is an important distinction to be made here.

Toxic positivity is toxic

A great deal of the idea of positivity is overtaken by toxic positivity.

What is toxic positivity? It’s the idea that positivity must overrule all. Worse, it disregards, ignores, and puts on blinders to negativity.

That’s simply not realistic. Nobody feels any given way all the time, and you can’t have positivity without negativity. Life is imperfect, shit happens, and there are so, so many things you have ZERO control over.

Toxic positivity is unrealistic in every way and dangerous as such. People who accept this instead of genuine positivity are choosing willful ignorance. Harsh? Maybe. But not untrue. You cannot experience positivity without also encountering negativity. Negativity simply is, and you can’t ignore, disregard, or put on blinders to that.

I maintain that most opposites in the world aren’t two sides of a coin, but a flexible cylinder. That’s because a coin is thin between the two sides, whereas a cylinder is far broader. The reason I use this is because what exists between good/bad, happy/sad, fear/reason, and positive/negative is incredibly vast.

On top of that, the cylinder is flexible because what is classified as good/bad, happy/sad, and positive/negative can, will, and does change.

Recognizing this is an important step to seeing and understanding the reality of positivity.

What is the reality of positivity?

Simply put, the reality of positivity is a matter of choice. When you are aware, awake, and present in the here and now, you can choose your life experience. Whatever is happening now, you get to choose positive or negative.

The reality of positivity is that it’s not merely thought or feeling, it’s both. Additionally, it also includes intent and approach. What you intend, here and now, and how you approach the world you live in, all come together inside the reality of positivity.

Because thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach are fluid and constantly changing, subconsciously and consciously, you move in and out of mindfulness. Mindfulness is active conscious awareness. Yes, that means “wokeness”. Again, why is that bad? Do you really prefer to be asleep and not in control? I doubt it.

The reality of positivity is that it’s a choice made in the moment, here and now. Which means you can decide what that means for you.

Photo by Azzedine Rouichi on UnsplashIt takes active conscious awareness

Mindfulness is when you choose active conscious awareness. It comes from within.

Mindfulness includes being aware, in the present, of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, if your approach to this moment is positive, neutral, or negative, and what actions you take.

The reality of positivity is that it’s an active, consciously aware choice in the here and now. That’s how you can find the good in the middle of the bad, take a terrible situation and learn a lesson from it. This is how you can choose to grow and change rather than shrink and stagnate.

The reality of positivity is that it’s never an all-the-time, without negativity notion. It’s a choice. A choice that you can make or not, regularly.

This is all about empowerment and taking control over the very few things that you really, truly, can and do control. Via active conscious awareness, the reality of positivity is that you have a choice in any given situation to live by rote and routine – or make choices and decisions for yourself. The power of this is amazing, and it opens you to all sorts of potential and possibilities.

Understanding the reality of positivity 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 the reality of positivity is that it’s a choice, you can use this to approach any situation however you would prefer to. Knowing positivity is something you can choose via active conscious awareness – mindfulness – you can work with this to decide how your life will look, here and now, in any present moment, for good or ill.

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-hundredth (600) 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 Reality of Positivity appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You’re Allowed Moments of Good Amid This Bad

Life/reality is never only one thing.Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash

This is one of the most convoluted, ridiculous times anyone could have imagined living in. After some 50 years of steady progress with inclusivity, diversity, environmental protections, expanding rights, and other milestones, here we are. In just 6 months, our so-called leaders have done truly surreal harm.

It’s not just here in the United States, of course. Putin and his war in Ukraine, the insanity between Netanyahu’s government and Hamas and the Palestinians, it feels like we are utterly surrounded by bad people and awful things.

Maybe shit’s going down around the world. But that doesn’t mean your life should reflect that.

You have every right to moments of good amid this bad.

The three levels of reality in everyone’s life

Life, and reality as we know it, exists on 3 levels.

Level One: Level one reality is usually the most abstract and distant from you and me. This is where our greater society is. In level one, you get demagogues, gurus, celebrities, and all sorts of influencers that you likely have ZERO actual, factual contact with. Ergo, you have no control over them.

Level Two: Level two reality is the world immediately outside of yourself. This is where your home, family, friends, and all the things in your life, externally, exist. The collective consciousness, where our fear-based society tends to feed, is how the people around you, together, accept certain things. This includes the color of the sky, laws of the land, and such. Here, you have no control, but you might have influence to one degree or another.

Level Three: Level three reality is your reality. This is your perception of life, of reality, from within your head, heart, and soul. Level three reality is where your subconscious and conscious mind collaborate or fight one another. This is where you can apply active conscious awareness — i.e., mindfulness — to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be. This is where you have ALL of the control, since you’re the only one who can think, feel, intend, and act for you.

The only level of reality where you can exert control is Level Three. You. Yourself. That’s it. You have ZERO control of the abstract world around you, and maybe influence, but no control of the world immediately outside of yourself.

Levels one and two of reality are the most in-your-face. However, you can’t do jack shit about them (save voting in elections, attending protests, boycotting awful businesses, and the like).  

Photo by Jon Tyson on UnsplashYou’re allowed moments of good in your personal reality/life

The bad that comes from these will impact you, but how much is yours to choose.

There’s no denying things are insane out there. You might be directly impacted by them if you lost a job, certain benefits, or someone you cared about. People are hurting and being harmed in this insanity.

However, good things also happen. New friendships and relationships are starting. Better jobs are found. New homes are moved into. Pets are adopted. That show you’ve waited a year or more to see airs.

It all counts. But more than that, you’re allowed moments of good even during all this bad. Especially now. Because nobody lives a reality of all bad, all the time. At least, you can choose not to.

Some people see nothing but doom and gloom, terror and horror, and endless bad. That’s probably one reason depression leads people to take their own lives, even if they’re celebrities. However, you need nobody’s permission to have moments of good. It’s not selfish, bad, or wrong.

Your reality, level three, is the only one you can control. Ergo, you can live a good life and have moments of good happen even when shit’s going down on levels one and two of life/reality.

This is where mindfulness helps.

Mindfulness for moments of good

The only person in your head, heart, and soul, is you. Nobody else can be you. There’s nobody else thinking your thoughts, feeling your feelings, intending your intentions, choosing your positive or negative approach, or doing what you do. Only you can control that.

Even in the middle of all this bad, you might be having many moments of good. And that’s okay. Know why? Because when you have moments of good, you are more present and mindful. From there, you’re more empowered. When you’re more empowered, you can influence others to choose/find their empowerment.

The power to change the world is in you. It starts when you make choices and decisions for your life experience. Hence, accepting and relishing in moments of good, even in these bad times, is something you’re worthy and deserving of.

When you choose to be mindful and consciously aware of your personal reality, you become empowered. Use that to accept, find, and/or create moments of good where you can to build more and greater empowerment.

Do you see how moments of good amid the bad are something you have every right to?

This is the seventh-hundred-eleventh (711) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.

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

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

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

The post You’re Allowed Moments of Good Amid This Bad appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Positivity Is Not Pointless

Genuine positivity can still be employed in the face of this crazy reality.Photo by Arafat Khan on Unsplash

Unless you’ve been living in a cave or otherwise off the grid, you probably see the insanity that is the state of “reality” today. Distressing policies and laws being made, undoing environmental protections and civil liberties, increasing stances against science and reason, and other unfathomable matters are bombarding us daily.

It can start to feel like it’s all going to come crashing down. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and so on. Doom and gloom. It makes positivity look completely pointless.

The truth is, however, that positivity is not pointless. Not in the least.

Chunk down reality

Reality as we know it exists on 3 levels.

Level One Reality is usually the most obvious but also the most abstract. This is where society is. The collective consciousness is part of this reality. In level one, you get demagogues, gurus, celebrities, and all sorts of influencers that you likely have ZERO actual, factual contact with.

Level Two Reality is the world immediately outside of yourself. This is where your home, family, friends, and all the things in your life, externally, exist. The collective consciousness is also a part of this. That’s how the people around you, together, accept certain things, including the color of the sky, laws of the land, and such.

Level Three Reality is the most personal. This is you and your internal workings. Level three reality is where your subconscious and conscious mind collaborate or fight one another. This is where you can apply active conscious awareness. You know, mindfulness, to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.

The only level of reality where you can exert control is Level Three. You. Yourself. That’s it. You have ZERO control of the abstract world around you, and maybe influence, but no control of the world immediately outside of yourself.

Because level three is the only place where you have genuine control of any kind, positivity is applicable.

Positivity is not pointless

When you choose to allow yourself to doomscroll and spiral down a dark and dismal path, you’re choosing negativity.

It feels all too easy, I know. But it IS a choice on your part. Allowing the fear, cruelty, and overwhelming negativity to dictate your life experience is a choice on your part.

The thing is, genuine positivity is not pointless. That’s because true positivity is nontoxic.

Toxic positivity tells you to ignore, disregard, and avoid negativity. It tells you to put on blinders and pretend everything is just fine, and the negative is nonexistent. This, however, is unhealthy and unrealistic.

Genuine, nontoxic positivity recognizes AND acknowledges negativity. Because you can’t deny, disregard, ignore, or avoid it. However, you can choose what to do in the face of it.

This is where positivity is not pointless. You can learn from negative happenings to make choices and decisions that will positively impact your life experience. Recognize the bad things but seek out or create positivity to combat and/or counter them.

This can only begin, however, at level three reality, in and for you.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on UnsplashThis is not selfish

It can feel wrong to seek and/or find and/or create positivity during this insanity. This can feel disingenuous and selfish. People are hurting, suffering, and being harmed.

Sadly, that’s never untrue. Right now, however, it’s a lot more blatant and obvious. Yet there are 8 billion people on Planet Earth. Some have been born in abject poverty and must struggle to live, let alone make any choices or decisions to be who, what, where, how, and why they desire to be.

When you have privilege to any degree, I think it’s important to find ways to use that to be the best you that you can be. That’s not selfish, because the best people employ kindness, compassion, and caring all the time. They say please and thank you, tip waitstaff well, strive to give time, energy, and/or money to worthy causes, and care about others they know and don’t know.

Nobody is more worthy or deserving of living their life on their terms and finding and/or creating positive experiences than anyone else. When you utilize nontoxic positivity to grow and change, you’re not hurting or harming anyone else. It’s not selfish unless you intentionally cause hurt and/or harm.

Positivity is a product of abundance. In a world overflowing with false notions of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency, finding/creating positivity is a tool that can help you. When you have that help, you are empowered to help others. That’s why, even in the face of the madness of the world today, positivity is not pointless.

Recognizing that positivity is not pointless 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 are three levels to reality, and you can only control the one that involves your inner being, you can see how nontoxic positivity is not pointless for you to grow and change. Knowing that it’s not selfish to employ nontoxic positivity to make choices and decisions, in abundance, to combat all the artificial lack, scarcity, and insufficiency, you can use what you have to better yourself. From there, you can expand that outward to potentially assist others.

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 five-hundred-and-ninety-ninth (599) 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 Positivity Is Not Pointless appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Staying Aware Of the World Without Becoming Overwhelmed

This is not easy.Photo by SEO Galaxy on Unsplash

I’m simply stunned by how bad Trump’s administration is. They seem hell-bent on undoing decades of progress in health, the environment, human rights, inclusivity, and anything else even remotely “woke” or liberal. We have one damned planet. Sure, go ahead, let’s go back to heavy smog choking our cities, killing our drinking water, and the rest. If it makes someone money, that’s far more important.

I know this based on headlines I’ve read, and it’s sufficient to upset, enrage, terrify, and depress me. If I dig any deeper at all, I have no doubt I’ll start a doom and gloom spiral that will not benefit me or anyone else.

Staying aware without becoming overwhelmed is increasingly challenging. It’s especially hard when you still believe in the general good of the human race. I think people mostly want to experience good things. Yet, thanks to the votes of many and nonvotes of even more, here we are.

That’s just in the USA. The rest of the world? That’s even further out of any remote influence on my part, and in many ways equally frustrating, depressing, and disturbing. Yet, turning a blind eye and neglecting to be aware of the world is not of any good to me or anyone else.

So, how do I stay aware of the world without becoming overwhelmed?

Self-care cannot be neglected

Self-care is not necessarily getting a massage, hanging out by a pool in the sun while sipping Mai Tais, or indulging in some other luxury. It’s action that does your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health, wellness, and wellbeing good.

Self-care, as such, tends to be more about pausing to breathe. Meditating. Getting out into nature. Watching things that make you laugh. Reading good books. Allowing yourself time away from the madness of the world in seclusion or isolation, or simply in a comfy chair.

In the face of an increasingly mad world, this feels overly indulgent and selfish. However, it’s not. Everyone needs to reset and recharge. Self-care, in the form of doing things to care for your mind, body, and spirit, is as necessary to living as oxygen and water.

This is not about rest and sleep as much as about active work to protect and heal yourself. This is not simply physical health, wellness, and wellbeing. It must also include the mental, emotional, and spiritual. That’s because you’re not just a physical being, but also a mental, emotional, and spiritual one.

Practicing self-care in any form is not selfish. Genuine self-care does neither you nor anyone else hurt or harm, which is why it’s not selfish. But it is necessary.

Photo by Kalen Emsley on UnsplashStaying aware while avoiding becoming overwhelmed

I know people who are keeping up with every horrid, unkind, surreal, hateful action Trump and his administration are doing. They share to social media to keep the rest of us informed. But the line between sharing and oversharing is frequently and easily crossed.

Every single day, there’s something new and awful. And, some offense, if you don’t see it, you’re not paying attention. But do we really need the daily reminders that nothing about this is normal and we’re living in crazy, mixed-up times?

The answer is no. Being aware that there’s a problem is one thing. Knowing all the details about it, to every single degree and indignity, is not necessary. It’s enough to be aware that shit is happening. There’s no need to bathe in it or eat shit sandwiches.

This can feel like you’re ignoring what’s happening. But you’re not. What you’re doing is choosing to be aware without becoming overwhelmed. That’s because when you find yourself overwhelmed, you lose the ability to cope.

With that, you also lose your self-sovereignty. That means you find it harder and harder to do things you actually need and desire to do because the madness of the world is overwhelming you.

How do you stay aware without becoming overwhelmed?

Pick and choose what you read, when and how much you surf social media, and what well-meaning friends to avoid.

For example, on a Discord server with my friends, there’s a politics channel. I’ve muted it to stop getting notifications when my well-meaning friends post there. I’m working on spending less and less time on Facebook and Instagram. I’ve not read newspapers or watched TV news in years now.

Yet I still glean information so that I remain aware of what the fuck is going on out there. But I pick and choose what I observe and how I take it in to maintain my sanity. That’s how I stay aware without becoming overwhelmed.

Mostly. Sometimes someone shares something with me that is so upsetting, I feel the overwhelm coming on. So then I need to pause, take a moment, and breathe or meditate or go outside and clear my head.

There’s nothing I can do about this insanity. All I can do is be the best me that I can be. As such, maybe my best self can inspire and help others be their best. Which, in turn, increases people’s empowerment and ability to do more. That, then, might influence others to turn this shitshow around.

It all comes down to the choices and decisions you make.

How do you stay aware of the world without becoming overwhelmed?

This is the seventh-hundred-tenth (710) 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 Staying Aware Of the World Without Becoming Overwhelmed appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How Can You Break Free of the Collective Consciousness?

This is where applied mindfulness and nontoxic positivity come in.Photo by Chris Andrawes on Unsplash

You are the only you that there is. Hence, you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul. Nobody but you can think your thoughts, feel your feelings, determine your intentions, choose if your approach is positive or negative, or take action, but you. These are wholly your choices to make.

Or not. Because, as singular and unique as you are, you are also part of the greater collective isness of the universe. Ergo, we are all one.

When you get down to the deepest, most core parts of everyone and everything in the universe, it all comes down to energy. Everyone and everything in the universe is made of energy. That connects us all.

The collective consciousness is mostly a subconscious idea. It’s where all of our beliefs, values, and ideals meet together and form agreements. Those agreements are how we get our nations, cities, communities, tribes, cliques, and so on. The collective consciousness is very nearly a living being in and of itself.

It is open to being swayed by influencers, demagogues, popularity, opinion, and fear. It can also be swayed by logic, reason, understanding, and love. Yet unless you see it for what it is, you can and will be overwhelmed by it in one form or another.

But you can break free of the collective consciousness.

It starts by recognizing your individuality

One of the reasons that so many things are called out as selfish is to keep control over the masses. The more people who live by rote, routine, and habit, subconsciously, the more that certain powers — such as government, religions, businesses, and the like — assert control.

We are collectively discouraged from recognizing and celebrating the individual, save certain exceptions. Specifically, the exceptional. Star athletes, A-list celebrities, and certain others are held up as extra special and extra worthy. They might be exemplary in some way, sure, but they are not more special, worthy, or deserving than you and me.

Nobody is on this Earth to serve anyone else. Every single human being is here to experience all that life has to offer, good and bad. Nobody is simply here to survive. Every single one of us is here to thrive.

You are worthy and deserving. Recognition of this, of what makes you uniquely you, is the start to breaking free of the collective consciousness and its expectations, traditions, “shoulds”, and so on.

When you recognize and embrace yourself and the importance of your individuality, you can begin to break free from the collective consciousness.

Photo by Levi Jones on UnsplashThe collective consciousness is a subconscious entity

Everyone has three minds. The unconscious mind regulates your heartbeat, breathing, neurons firing, digestion, and so on. The subconscious mind is where your beliefs, values, memories, ideals, and habits exist. The conscious mind is your active, functional awareness of who, what, where, how, and why you are, right here and now.

Distractions of our modern society tend to shunt people toward rote, routine, and habit via their subconscious minds. Before you know it, you’re following this pattern or that path with hardly a thought or feeling. That is, until it hits you.

It stops feeling right, and you question why you are doing or being something or someone. And/or dissatisfaction or distress about who, what, where, how, and why you are hit — singularly or together. That’s the conscious mind asserting itself. That is waking up.

Yes, that’s being woke. And I don’t know how in the hell anyone can think that’s a bad thing. I’d rather be awake and aware than asleep at the switch. How about you? But I digress.

When you start to question your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions, you make yourself consciously aware. Ergo, mindful. And mindfulness is a major key for breaking free of the collective consciousness.

Active conscious awareness pulls you out of the collective consciousness. This can also be boosted and strengthened with nontoxic positivity.

Nontoxic positivity for conscious awareness

Toxic positivity is positivity that wears blinders. It denies, disregards, and ignores negativity and other bad things. Which is bullshit. Bad and negative things can, will, and do occur. You can’t ignore them, deny them, or wish them away.

Nontoxic positivity recognizes and acknowledges the negative. It sees it, then applies it to learn a lesson, gain new perspective, and/or shift a given situation within your control.

It’s all too easy, especially given the current state of the collective consciousness, to go on a doom spiral. The doom and gloom, negativity, uncaring, and cruel are overwhelming. We can’t break them from without, but we can break them from within. Ergo, when you work on yourself and are mindful of all your inner workings, you can make changes to control what is within your control. Then you can break free from the clutches of the collective consciousness.

When you start to break free, and others see that, they are often inspired to follow. And from there? Maybe we can shift this fear-based collective consciousness toward something more reason-based. But recognize and acknowledge that it must begin in and with you. Then you can start to break free from the collective consciousness, with yourself, via mindfulness and nontoxic positivity.

Breaking free from the collective consciousness 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 the collective consciousness is a subconscious entity, separate and apart from you — yet also part of you — you can use mindfulness of yourself and nontoxic positivity to start breaking free. Knowing that it’s not selfish to be mindful and that you are worthy and deserving of choosing who, what, where, how, and why you are, you can be present here and now, seek nontoxic positivity, and make choices and decisions to do just that.

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 five-hundred-and-ninety-eighth (598) 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 How Can You Break Free of the Collective Consciousness? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What If There’s Not Really an Us vs Them?

What if the divides between people are wholly artificial?Photo by Jonathan Harrison on Unsplash

Everywhere you turn, you’re shown an us vs them. We’re constantly bombarded by messages defining who is who, and both blatantly and subtly making one or the other the villain of the piece.

Conservative vs liberal. Black vs white. Male vs female. Old vs young. Christian vs atheist. Palestinian vs Israeli. Native vs immigrant. Have vs have not. Us vs them.

No matter the label you apply to any people, places, things, and so on – it’s all artificial. It’s all bullshit. The truth of the human race is that all of us, at our core, are the same. We’re all one. Yet in a bid to persuade, influence, and even control people, certain individuals create these labels and false conflicts between a false, artificial us and them.

This has become so utterly weaponized that people are acting against their best interests due to the hype and well-crafted lies. They fall for the narrative, see us vs them in faces other than the familiar, and can’t see the truth.

What’s the truth? Us vs them is an artifice designed to disempower the masses.

Distractions and disempowerment

Modern technology is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the connectivity and instant access to information around the globe are incredible. These tools can help us gain a greater understanding of the world around us. On the other hand, the distraction of games and social media and so-called influencers has created a new and deepening disconnect between people. It has also provided a haven for unsupportable opinions and false beliefs.

Politicians and business leaders have come to realize that weaponizing this is easy. They use it to put out messages directly and indirectly to confuse, distract, and misinform the masses.

The more confusion and disinformation they can put out there, the more they disempower. An excellent tool for that is to create ideas of us vs them, then using that to commit atrocities.

By creating artificial divides and setting us against one another, they distract and disempower the people for their own purposes.

There is no us vs them

Every single notion of us vs them is false. All the things that are used to separate and divide us are based on nothing. Whether it’s religion, gender, nationality, sex, skin color, native or immigrant status, it’s all bullshit.

How can I say that? Just look at the people you surround yourself with. Friends, family, coworkers, and so on. Even with all the differences between you, does anyone not desire to be loved? Is there anyone you can point to who doesn’t want to be treated with kindness, compassion, and empathy?

Yes, motivations vary. Beliefs, values, and ethics differ. Yet beneath all of that, humans are driven by not just survival, but a desire to thrive. And no other animal on the planet has the tools we do to be who, what, where, how, and why we desire.

Across any artificial divide, the ultimate desire of us vs them is the same. Live life. Have experiences within the years our bodies get to have. Thrive how you can. Seek and find love, caring, kindness, compassion, and empathy.

There is no us. There is no them. The divides are utterly artificial.

How do we shift away from our fear-based society of us vs them to a reason-based society of greater understanding? You start with yourself.

Photo by Nick Fewings on UnsplashChosen change is about only you

The only person in your head, heart, and soul is you. You alone know your thoughts, feelings, intentions, positive or negative approaches, and actions. There isn’t any way to get into the head, heart, or soul of another person. Even if they allow you some access to them, you can’t be them.

Likewise, they can’t be you. Ergo, you only have control over yourself. Period. Everything else is moved by forces beyond you and me.

That’s why empowerment comes from within, not without. Sure, I can share information and ideas to help you find your empowerment. But I can’t find it for you, nor give it to you. Neither can anyone else, no matter what they’re selling.

Empowerment is smaller than you think. It’s not some grandiose, all-encompassing state of being. It’s a moment-by-moment experience. You choose it at any given time.

This is done in 2 ways. First, by becoming aware of the world immediately around you. This requires engaging your six senses. Second, by becoming aware of your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self. That’s your thoughts, feelings, intentions, positive or negative approaches, and actions.  

Mindfulness, however, can be done only in the present, because the present is the only time that’s real.

Seeing the artifice of us vs them starts by becoming more consciously aware of yourself. Mindfulness is the key to dispelling the myth.

See us vs them for the bullshit it is

To see the lie of us vs them, all you need to do is look at any given us and them. Are they truly different? Is one more right than the other? Does either intend the other harm?

Some of our so-called leaders and demagogues will play on your fears of suffering and tell you that, of course, they intend to harm you. Yet, when you look past that, you’ll see no, they just want to be as free and clear as you desire to be.

The truth is that there is no us or them. We are all one. Yes, we differ in our beliefs, values, thoughts, and feelings. But beneath it all, we’re just humans, being. When you make the choice to empower yourself, this becomes clear. And with that clarity, anything is possible.

Can you see the lie inherent in us vs them?

This is the seventh-hundred-ninth (709) 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 What If There’s Not Really an Us vs Them? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Caring Is Not a Weakness

Kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring empower.Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash

There’s a loud, obnoxious message permeating the collective consciousness these days. That message is that kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring make you weak. That giving a shit about the welfare of anyone other than yourself or your specific group is somehow part of the “woke” agenda. The message is that doing anything for anyone other than you and yours is a sign of weakness.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not in any way a weakness to care about others and their welfare, even others you don’t know personally. The notion of “us” versus “them” is getting way out of hand.

When all is said and done, we are all one. Every single human being on Planet Earth is connected. This has nothing to do with God or some other higher power. This is the subatomic level where the base elements that everyone, everywhere, contains are connected. At our core, we are the same.

Despite the messages to the contrary, it is human nature to care. The interconnectedness of everyone means caring is in our DNA. Not caring, treating kindness, compassion, and empathy as weakness is a choice.

It’s a choice to let fear dominate you.

Fear of suffering is the main fear

Once upon a time, fear was essential to the survival of the species. Fear is what kept our ancient ancestors from getting eaten by predators, running at full speed along precipices, and swimming in obviously fast currents.  

When human beings evolved from hunter/gatherers surviving like the rest of the animals on the planet to what we are now, fear evolved, too. However, it became all about intangibles.

Yet every single fear can be traced to one place. Suffering. It’s not spiders, immigrants, failure, or intimacy that people fear. It’s the suffering that could occur should what the fear comes to pass.

That means it’s suffering from the spider bite, the immigrant taking your sovereignty, how those you care about treat you when you fail, or the pain of heartbreak. The fear of suffering is the underlying fear in the collective consciousness.

Then, to add insult to injury, it’s frequently weaponized. Some is blatant, like Trump and his cruelty. Some is subtle, like most advertising. Yet, at the core of our fear-based society, the fear that overwhelms all reason is the fear of suffering.

More often than not, the fear of suffering is far less than the actual suffering experienced. In the words of Paulo Coelho from The Alchemist,

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”

How do you fight the fear? Kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring.

What’s more, kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring are desired by EVERYONE. I have never met a single person who doesn’t desire all of them. Think Trump would be the narcissist desperate for attention that he is if that wasn’t the case?

The truth is that kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring empower. They are not in any way a sign of weakness.

Photo by Arno Senoner on UnsplashWhy is caring held up as a weakness?

The short answer is because caring leads to empowering. To care, you look inside of yourself, become consciously aware of your thoughts and feelings. Conscious awareness leads to mindfulness. Mindfulness empowers you.

Think those in power want you empowered? Fuck no. No, they want you disempowered. That’s because when you and I are fighting amongst ourselves, they can rape, loot, pillage, and burn it all to the ground with little to no resistance.

Being actively consciously aware empowers you. It does that by waking you up to who, what, where, how, and why you are. Not because anyone is telling you these, but because you’re looking at them from within. That lessens the influence of religious, business, political, and similar so-called leaders.

If you think caring is a weakness, ask yourself this: How does it feel to know you are cared for? Do you desire to feel like people care about you? Are kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring things you desire to receive from others? I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t want to feel cared for in these ways. Even among the most depressed or introverted, they desire to receive kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring.

You know what is a weakness? Allowing fear to rule you. Ignoring logic and reason because they’re “woke”, “liberal”, or otherwise labeled negatively.

Before you doomscroll social media or allow yourself to go down the path to the potential suffering you fear, give kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring where you can. You give them, you get them. You empower others and become empowered in the process. That’s genuine positivity at its best.

Understanding that caring is not a weakness isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring are forces of good and positivity, you can choose to give them more. Knowing that giving kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring brings them back to you, you can choose to use them alongside reason and logic to combat our fear-based society to help bring much-needed positivity into the world.

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 employs an approach and attitude of positivity for 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 five-hundred-and-ninety-seventh (597) 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 Caring Is Not a Weakness appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Getting a Handle On My Shortened Fuse

A quest to create or find more chill, balance, and centering.Photo by Fr0ggy5 on Unsplash

Lately, I go from calm to irked like a high-performance car goes from zero to sixty.

I recognize that there’s something in the collective consciousness eating away at my calm, my balance, my okay. Without a doubt, this is tied to the horribly unkind, uncompassionate, hateful, spiteful “people” in positions of power. When did it become okay to be outright rude, nasty, and disrespectful?

The not-funny thing about this is history repeating itself. All you need to do is look to the Fall of Rome, and the echoes in modern government are clear. Somehow, “they” think it will turn out differently this time. It won’t. But while the coming collapse might be scary, it might also be enlightening.

Nobody knows. And nobody can know. This is a matter that is yet to happen. The shape of it will remain unformed until it comes to pass.

So what do we have? The here and now. All I can do is work with what I have, here and now, to live the best that I can in the midst of this insanity.

This is why I feel the need to get a handle on my shortened fuse.

A history of temper

In my youth, I got super angry, super fast. It took very little to ignite the spark. Once it burned, once I was angry, I shouted, yelled, threw things, broke things, punched holes in walls. My road rage was unpleasant.

I NEVER hurt another person, animal, or the like. My actions were exclusively against the inanimate and inorganic.

Over the years, between therapy, meditation, mindfulness, and active work, I’m a lot better. I usually can recenter and rebalance myself long before the desire to lash out strikes me.

That’s not to say I haven’t flipped a chair, screamed into the void, or really really wanted to break something recently. It’s just an incredibly rare occasion rather than the norm.

While I use active conscious awareness to keep my temper in check, I’m finding that little things irk me quickly, and I become frustrated all too easily. My fuse has been shortened again.

What do I do about that?

Seriously, Korbin??Getting a handle on my shortened fuse

My kitten means well. He’s a love, and he demands my attention. The trouble is, that often means he forces his way onto my desk, up against my keyboard, and knocks shit down along the way.

Snapping at a kitten doesn’t do anyone any good. He’s just being a kitten. Yet, this irks me.

Okay, so likewise, when I read about the latest harmful bill passing through Congress, the President’s unhinged tweet, or anything else distressing, I feel my shortened fuse being lit.

Living in a fear-based society is bad enough. But the increased weaponization of fear from too many of our “leaders” and the hatred being increasingly normalized are making it all seem worse.

So, of course, my fuse is shortened and easily lit. I am a vocal proponent of kindness, compassion, empathy, caring, and generally giving a fuck. When you have a fuse and you’re surrounded by matches being lit constantly, it’s easy to get set off.

What can I do about this? First, recognize it. I see that I have a shortened fuse. That’s based on how easily I go from calm to irked, my anger flares, and my frustration burns. Recognizing this informs me that, yeah, I currently am working with a shortened fuse.

Now I must acknowledge it. Denying it or ignoring it will not fix it. Thus, I must acknowledge what it is. Otherwise, it will continue to be easily lit, because I can’t lengthen my shortened fuse, remove myself from a situation, or do anything to better handle this mad world.

Living with my shortened fuse

Okay, I recognize it and acknowledge it. Now what? Now it’s up to me to do something about this. Or not.

Disliking the quick-tempered, ragey person I was in my youth, I must use active, conscious awareness to take control of my thoughts, feelings, emotions, and the like.

What can I actively do? I can pause more. Stop for a minute or two of deep breathing. Meditate more frequently. Go outside and get on my bicycle or go for a walk. Sit with a cat and disturb them before they disturb me. Watch something that makes me laugh. Reach out to a friend. Share my thoughts with myself in my journal. Write a blog and share this with you so we can help each other through this insanity.

The only things I can control in this life are within me. They include my thoughts, feelings, intentions, positive or negative approach, and actions. My shortened fuse ties to my thoughts, feelings, and approach and is connected to subconscious beliefs, values, habits, and memories.

Via active conscious awareness – mindfulness – I can choose and decide who, what, where, how, and why to be. Ergo, I choose if I let my shortened fuse get lit or not. And once lit, I choose to let it set off the bomb or snuff it out.

More chill, balance, and centering are the best way to live with my shortened fuse, because elongating it appears extra challenging in the foreseeable future. Acting on that is a frequent choice for me to make. The options above are only some of the things I can do for it and myself.

Thanks for letting me share this with you.

If you have a shortened fuse, what are you doing to work with it?

This is the seventh-hundred-eighth (708) 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 Getting a Handle On My Shortened Fuse appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What’s On The Other Side of This Mood?

That depends on the choices I make.Photo by JK on Unsplash

I am not in a good mood at the moment.

There are multiple compounding factors to this. For context, please allow me to lay them out here.

I did not sleep well last night. I was having stress-thoughts (dreams? It’s so seldom that I recall dreams). These were about the insane, infuriating state of the nation, the world, my medieval reenactment society, the health and welfare of numerous of my friends, and a bunch of other things I have absolutely ZERO control over.

Then, sitting down to do my morning reading, the fiction I’ve been struggling to read through keeps disappointing (I am finding none of the characters likeable or sympathetic. Also, the world of the story itself is unpleasant). The nonfiction I’ve been struggling through (but finished) just is not inspiring, enlightening, teaching, or doing much of anything for me.

So, this mood I am in? It’s an unpleasant blend of distressed, sleepy, annoyed, irksome, frustrated, uncomfortable, angry, scared, and generally negative. I’m in a lousy mood, and my headspace is all sorts of discombobulated.

My day is only just beginning. Hence, my question: What’s on the other side of this mood?

That depends on the choices I make from here

There are three primary options in front of me. There are secondary and tertiary options, and probably more than that, but these three are the main ones.

Stay in a bad mood. Doomscroll social media, watch the news, keep slogging through the fiction I’m disliking.Ignore it all. Put my head in the sand. Go back to bed and hide from the world. Set myself on autopilot and just slog through doing strokes in the Egyptian river (you know, de-Nile).Choose alternatives. Take action to alter my headspace. Go for a walk. Meditate. Blog about it. Choose a new book and stop forcing my way through this fiction. Watch something that makes me laugh.

All of these are choices I can make. Or not. This is where nontoxic positivity comes into play. I’m not talking about ignoring the negative or my lousy mood. That does me no good. It does nobody any good. I do have the option, however, to turn from facing the negative end of the flexible cylinder to face toward the positive end.

Remember, it’s not a coin with positivity and negativity on either end. It’s a flexible cylinder, flexible because sometimes what’s positive becomes negative and what’s negative becomes positive. However, you, from your mindset/headspace/psyche self, can make choices and decisions about where you place yourself upon it.

That’s what I get to do now.

Photo by Emiliano Cicero on UnsplashWhat’s on the other side of this mood?

If I don’t desire to stay in this lousy, no-good, negative mood, I need to make choices and decisions to change it.

That starts with active conscious awareness. Mindfulness is placing yourself into the here and now and choosing and deciding anything and everything that you can.

This might appear selfish because it can ONLY be done for you. You cannot choose or decide on anything for anyone else. Hence, if I’m in a lousy mood, I alone can change it.

That starts with awareness of the world outside of myself. I gain that by exploring my senses – sight, sound, taste, touch, hearing, and extrasensory. (Extrasensory is where the idea of the “mood” lives, frankly. That’s because it’s utterly intangible but still impactful.)

From there, I need to look within. Inside are my thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. If I’m allowing my subconscious to do the driving, then I’m not actively, consciously aware of these.

Becoming aware is easy. You just need to ask,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What do I intend?Is my approach positive or negative?What am I doing?

All of these can only truly be answered in the here and now. You, and you alone, can know them because only you are in your head, heart, and soul.

Via your senses and your active conscious awareness, you can choose what’s on the other side of any given mood.

Is it really that easy? Yes. However, it takes time, effort, and desire to change while simultaneously accepting what you can and can’t (do and don’t) control.

Choosing what’s on the other side of this mood isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge your mood, particularly if it’s a negative one, you empower yourself to choose and decide if you want to stay in it, pretend it’s not a thing, or change it. Knowing that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, and that you can use mindfulness here and now to change yourself, you ultimately get to decide and choose what’s on the other side of a given mood.

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 broader 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 employs an approach and attitude of positivity for 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 five-hundred-and-ninety-sixth (596) 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’s On The Other Side of This Mood? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.