M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 5

Why Do I Keep Doing This?

Is there a reason for me to keep doing this?Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash

For my first-ever New Year’s Action, back in 2011/2012, I decided to embrace my desire to be a more prolific writer. My New Year’s Action was this: I would write a blog entry, once a week, every Wednesday.

That was 707 weeks ago – 13.6 years. Every. Single. Wednesday. For more than 13 years.

When I started exploring this idea for choosing my own way in life – Pathwalking – I had no clue where it would take me. Nor did I know how it and the concepts I explore would evolve.

What have I learned? I’ve confirmed that consciousness creates reality, mindfulness empowers, change is the one and only constant in the Universe, and being a storyteller and sharing what I learn makes me feel good.

Yet, after 707 weeks of sharing these ideas, I still find I ask myself – Why do I keep doing this? Is there a reason for me to keep doing this?

Initially, this was an exercise in writing regularly, with a deadline, to keep myself honest. Then, I realized my path and my exploration of it might help other people. In time, when I started cross-posting to Medium, I thought I might gain a broader audience and make some money from this.

It has been almost 7 years since I joined Medium, and while I made a little money, overall, it didn’t become what I hoped it might. Disappointed in the current iteration of Medium, I don’t intend to renew my Partner Program membership when it comes up.

Why do I keep doing this?

My life over the past 13.6 years has changed in absolutely amazing ways. When all is said and done, I’ve gained a greater sense of purpose, made active, conscious choices and decisions for myself via mindfulness, got married to the most incredible partner I could imagine, moved to a place that feels more like home than any before, and improved my health mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

There are days I suck at Pathwalking. Distractions spark my depression, anger and upset me, and make me question everything. Yet, overall, I’m incredibly fortunate and am living a good life.

Most of all, I’m living my authentic self. Who I am here is who I am. Not the whole picture, of course, because no matter how much I share, you can’t get the whole picture. But the mostly positive, thoughtful, kind, compassionate, and empathetic person I present here is who I am.

Why do I keep doing this? Because if I can get to this place, so can you. By sharing what I’ve learned and experienced, I might be able to inspire you to seek, find, and walk your own path and find your empowerment.

I won’t lie to you. There are no quick fixes. This is not a One Size Fits All notion. But everyone, everywhere, can use active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to make choices and decisions for themselves.

I also keep doing this because I believe that more kindness, compassion, and empathy equals more empowerment for all. When you see horrid examples of our so-called leaders decrying kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring about others, any counter to that is a beacon of hope. Hope is good for everyone.

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on UnsplashNo hooky-spooky bullshit

No offense to anyone’s beliefs, but turning to anything outside of yourself – be it God, Trump, the Dalai Lama, anyone or anything else – to make your life better is unnecessarily incapacitating. That’s because you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, and you alone can make choices and decisions for who, what, where, how, and why you are.

Yes, circumstances outside your control will place you in situations you might not have otherwise chosen. Once there, however, you have choices and decisions available to change things. So long as you are alive, you are capable of being present in the here and now, mindful, and making choices and decisions for yourself.

Making your own mindful choices and decisions isn’t easy. However, it’s worthwhile if you desire to take control of your life’s paths. Sure, you can live subconsciously by rote, routine, and habit. Hell, sometimes you just need to in order to cope. Yet eventually this will leave you dissatisfied, and you’ll feel as if something’s off, or missing, or incomplete.

My life, since I started Pathwalking, working on mindfulness and conscious reality creation, continues to be interesting. There are always new things to learn, experiences to have, people to meet, places to go, and more. Yes, I have bad days, but more often than not, I feel empowered. And that is why I keep doing this. Because if I can get here, and I can show you some of what it took for me to do that, you can do this, too.

Why does that matter? Because when more people are empowered, the frequency of the collective consciousness is raised. When that happens, the horrid, selfish, greedy, and other bad actors can do less harm.

Is there a reason for me to keep doing this?

Yes. Because I believe that, deep down, people are genuinely good. The more we normalize how empowering kindness, compassion, and empathy are, the more we shift this fear-based society towards a more reason-based ideal.

I can only be an example others can choose to look to or look away from. I believe that the reason for me to keep doing this is that I’m a good example, and a helpful, empowering, maybe even inspiring person. Despite my imperfections, the fuckups I’ve made along the way, and all my other human failings, I desire to help people be the best they can be.

The process is ongoing. I’m always learning new things. But I, for one, love the vast potential and possibilities that even the assholes trying to burn the world down can’t stop or remove. I keep doing this because I hope I can help you see what I see. When more of us see hope, fewer of us see hopelessness. That does everyone good.

That’s why I keep doing this.

What do you learn when you ask why you do anything that you do?

This is the seventh-hundred-seventh (707) 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 Do I Keep Doing This? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Only You Know Where Your Lines Are

That’s good – knowing your lines empowers you.Photo by Erin Larson on Unsplash

Everyone has limits of their own making. Lines in the sand that they cannot or will not cross.

Some of these are utterly conscious and handpicked. Others are subconscious and not necessarily desirable. Yet, either way, only you know where your lines are.

There are many things in your life that you can apply lines to. Often, people cede many of them because they worry about the impression drawing lines will make on friends, loved ones, and even complete strangers. Yet, no matter who you are, you know where your lines are.

When you don’t set them, when you allow others to cross them or ignore them, you rob yourself not just of your empowerment. Worse, you lessen your peace of mind, contentment, and even your personal sovereignty.

This might beg an important question:

How can you know where your lines are?

This is a matter of active conscious awareness. Mindfulness, of course. When you are striving to be present, awake, and aware here and now, you know your lines and where they are.

Or, if you find that you don’t know where they are, now you’ve opened yourself to choose them, make them, set them, draw them, or some combination therein.

This is a matter of being present, here and now, and aware of who, what, where, how, and why you are. That begins by exploring and learning what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, if your approach is positive or negative, and what you are or aren’t doing.

You, and only you, can choose your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. Nobody else can choose or decide what they are for you. Even when you are not using active conscious awareness to be mindful of choices and decisions, or ceding them to others, you are the one doing it.

Nobody but you is in your head, heart, and soul. Ergo, you’re the only one who can think, feel, act, etc. And this only works in the present, here and now.

The past has come and gone and can’t be changed. The future can and will be impacted by variables you can’t predict or control until they occur.

But, all that said, ultimately, you can choose where and what your lines are.

Boundaries and other examples

Some of the lines you set are not just for you, but for people you interact with. Others, however, might be purely for you.

For example, boundaries. When it comes to who you allow in your personal space, what that looks look, touch or no touch, and so on – that’s a line you set. Any lines in this realm are yours to create, though whether they’ll be respected by those you share them with or ask to respect is another matter.

That’s because you don’t control anyone else.

You can also set lines for boundaries for yourself. For example, how much time you allow yourself to surf social media, when you eat or drink things, self-imposed curfews, deadlines, restrictions, and so on.

Right now, because of the madness in the world regarding politics and the utter cruelty of many so-called leaders, I’ve moved my lines regarding how much time I spend on social media. Too much time there tends to make me angry, distressed, and negative. That, in turn, makes it harder for me to work, to improve, to help others, and not just walk away/ give up.

So, I draw new lines for myself. And when I cross them, I recognize, acknowledge, then let it go – or – I redraw the lines as necessary. Yes, sometimes I get irked with myself, but since that doesn’t help me in any way, I strive not to default to that.

Photo by Duncan Kyhl on UnsplashNobody can tell you who, what, where, how, or why you are

I recognize that some people come from far more difficult circumstances than others. Also, I have a degree of privilege that makes my life experience different from lots of other people in the world.

There are multiple groups in the world today who will tell you who, what, where, how, and why you should be. Yet, no matter who you are, the truth is the same. Only you can determine these things about yourself.

Also, some of those people will be forceful, violent, and distressing on many levels. That doesn’t give them the right to force you into being someone you’re not. Ultimately, you are you, and you choose what lines you draw on the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical levels. You decide what’s best for your health, wellness, and wellbeing.

This is increasingly difficult in a world where you’re discouraged from being awake and aware, or “woke”, and where empathy, kindness, compassion, and caring for others are dismissed as “weak” or otherwise undesirable. Yet it remains true.

Your lines are yours to make, set, and change. And that’s one of your superpowers. Don’t hesitate to make the most of it.

Recognizing your lines and where they are 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 you can choose what, where, how, and why your lines in life are, you can use that to alter your mood, your approach, and find more balance in life. Knowing that this is something you can totally control for yourself, you can make use of this to decide what and who impacts you, and change/alter/redraw the lines you make and set.

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-fifth (595) 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 Only You Know Where Your Lines Are appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

The Best Way to Handle Fear is to Face It

The uncomfortable truth.Photo by Zachary Kadolph on Unsplash

When people are scared, what they fear can become so overwhelming to the senses and emotions that they release all reason. Fear overrides logic, overcomes sensibility, and the next thing you know, you’ve allowed someone to manipulate you.

All you need to do is look at the current American political situation to see the truth of this. The fear of suffering has been weaponized horrifically. Many people have been convinced that they will suffer horribly when the liberals, the woke, LGBTQA+ people, immigrants, and other scapegoats take what they are entitled to. The sad irony is that the people telling them this are the ones who will cause them to suffer.

Weaponized fear and suffering are distractions. However, you can’t ignore them completely because of their prevalence. If you are even a little empathic, you can feel it in the air. The fear, the uncertainty, the hopelessness. It’s incredibly disconcerting.

I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting 1 fear that manifested itself in 2 places. Those two places have been fear of failure and fear of success. But the underlying fear, ultimately, has been fear of abandonment.

Hence, I’m afraid that if I fail or if I succeed, the people I care about will throw me off the island, leave me on my own, and abandon me.

Not a pleasant fear to have. Yet, over the years, I’ve seen that there is only 1 effective method to deal with it. I need to face it.

The elephant in the room can’t be ignored

Elephants are huge. Everything about them is big, from their legs to their ears to their shit. When it comes to your home, your place of work, places that you spend time with people you care about, an elephant in a room would be difficult to ignore.

You and I live in a fear-based society. Fear is used and abused to sway, influence, and control people. It’s even been given a cutesy notion to normalize it in FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). We accept it like we accept that we all need air to breathe, up is the opposite of down, and water is wet.

Because of the prevalence of fear and the way it’s presented, we’re given to ignore it. The problem, however, is that ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. The elephant is in the damned room.

Here’s the thing. Big, overarching, nameless, faceless fear is more like the sky. How do you face it down when it’s right there, overarching all, literally?

Start with your fear.

Photo by JM Lova on UnsplashThe best way to handle fear is to face it

For a long time, I saw my fear of failure and my fear of success as clear as day. I did and didn’t do things, consciously and subconsciously, out of fear that success or failure would equally upset the people I care about. I spent most of my 20s moving between jobs, relationships, homes, and avoiding anything stabilizing because of my fear.

When I realized that my true, underlying fear was abandonment, I started to better understand. My various acts of self-sabotage were my ego keeping me in my “comfort zone” so that I’d avoid getting abandoned.

This was not how I wanted to live my life. So, I sought therapy, got a prescription for antidepressants, and took better care of my mental, emotional, and spiritual health overall.

However, only I can take action to do something about my fears. Even though your fear might be different from mine, these steps still apply.

Recognize the fear. What is it? You can go deeper and analyze the why and how, but that’s a personal choice. Identifying what it is will be highly informative.Acknowledge the fear. The elephant in the room doesn’t walk out when you ignore it. Recognition is the start, but acknowledgement is how you face it.Examine the fear. Is the fear that you recognize and acknowledge what the true issue is, or is it a mask for something deeper? How does your fear impact your life?Face the fear. What can you do to overcome this? Are there things that help center and balance you and banish the fear?

These steps are how you can interact with and work with fear. However, there is one small matter to consider that makes a difference in how you face your fear.

How much suffering will you experience?

More often than not, in my experience, it’s not the fear itself, it’s the perceived suffering that the fear will cause that’s most damaging. The pain – be it mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical – the discomfort, the uncertainty, and all the “what if?” scenarios for how you’ll suffer tend to be the real issue at hand.

The truth is that usually the suffering you fear is far worse than how you will actually suffer. As Paulo Coelho summed up so brilliantly in The Alchemist,

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

Nobody wants to suffer. The main reason that people accept less for themselves, allow others to manipulate them, and accept bullshit is because of the suffering they fear they’ll experience. What if they step out of their comfort zone, do something different, or the like, and it goes horribly wrong?

Our fear-based society abuses us by playing up fear and potential suffering. I’m not discounting that people do suffer injustice, neglect, and worse. But if you don’t face your fear, you are disempowering yourself and ceding control.

This might require you to get help, to seek counsel, and to get uncomfortable. But I’ve seen for myself that when you face fear, you become empowered. Being empowered opens you to choices and decisions. That’s how you can control your life experience. Facing fear lets you do something about it. When more of us find reason, logic, and balance over fear, we can start to shift the narrative.

So, that written, are you willing and able to face your fear?

This is the seventh-hundred-sixth (706) 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 The Best Way to Handle Fear is to Face It appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Okay or Not Okay is Okay

Nobody can tell you how to be.Photo by Raphael Renter | @raphi_rawr on Unsplash

Life in 2025 can be thoroughly exhausting.

Spend any time at all reading or watching the news, talking to people about current events, and the ongoing assault on basic human decency, and it hits you. The dread, the uncertainty, the disquiet, the unease, and the fear are mind-numbing.

For some people, all of this is a distant, far-off abstract. It’s so far enough removed from you and your life that little of what’s happening and being done directly impacts you on a day-to-day basis. For some people, this is closer to their reality, as they’re only a few steps removed from seeing people being impacted by this madness. Then, of course, some people are being hurt by what’s going on, stripped of rights, wrongfully imprisoned, and worse.

When you’re part of the first category, far removed, it’s easy to feel something and not give a shit at the same time. Unfortunately, surreal messages are being broadcast to tell people that caring, kindness, compassion, and empathy make people weak. That has lots of people not giving a shit. At least, not until they find themselves in the second or third circumstance. For those who do care, even at a far-removed distance, the limitations of what you can do can be frustrating, infuriating, and/or terrifying.

When all is said and done, you can only look out for your own mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical being. This is not a selfish thing; it’s reality. An important aspect of this is recognizing it’s okay to not be okay. But it’s also okay to be okay.

You alone know yourself

Over the past few decades, I’ve watched the narrative take some very weird turns. Not so long ago, the collective consciousness was a lot more hopeful. Then, between runaway consumerism, a focus on corporate welfare over human welfare, and the media caring only about what turns their parent company a profit, we’re in a very different place today.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the hype, the utterly bullshit fear of missing out (FOMO), undue power of so-called influencers, and various other messages of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. When that happens, you find yourself lost and unaware of yourself.

I know people who barely know their own minds. They’re so caught up in what others think about them, the impression they’re making, and what they do and don’t have that they lose sight of themselves.

Nobody else can be in your head, heart, or soul. Ergo, nobody but you can think your thoughts, feel your feelings, know what your intentions are, choose if your approach is positive or negative, and what you do or don’t do. I can’t tell you what makes you content, what brings you joy, or anything else because I’m not you.

You alone know yourself. But you’re discouraged from looking too closely at that. Why? Because when you do, you become empowered. When you’re empowered, you need “them” less or not at all. And by them, I mean politicians, influencers, so-called gurus, demagogues, and so on.

One way to begin to take back self-knowledge is by gauging your thoughts and feelings.

Photo by Ian Taylor on UnsplashAm I okay or not okay?

Okay is an incredibly neutral term when you get right down to it. It can fall directly between well and unwell, good and bad, happy and sad, and so on. It’s a word that can also be sarcastic, understated, or a cop-out.

Since contentment is a much more realistic place for people to be than happiness, okay is a working analog for this idea. I’m not bad, I’m not great, but I am okay. What the definition of okay is will be a personal matter of context.

It can also be an excellent place of balance and centering to start from when you’re inundated by uncertainty, discontent, fear, anger, and the stressful madness of the times.

How do you determine if you’re okay or not okay? Active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness.

The best starting point for this is your thoughts and feelings. To know what they are, right here and now, all you need to do is put your attention in this moment, be completely present here and now, and ask,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?

All of these can only be genuinely answered at this moment. When you get the answer, you can decide if you like it or not, and then take action to change the answer.

If you’re thinking about terrible things, feeling lost and miserable, it’s not a logical, reasonable, or easy jump to get to the opposites of these. Instead, it’s much more realistic to get to okay or not okay.

There’s no right or wrong answer

You’re the only one who is in your head, heart, and soul. You alone know your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. When all is said and done, you can work to be okay, but you might find that you’re not okay. And that is also okay.

Given the draining nature of far too much of the world today, it’s okay for you to not be okay. But it’s also okay to be okay. Either way, you can employ active conscious awareness to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.

Just remember that you aren’t an island unto yourself. The entire human race is interconnected, even when we disagree. But no matter how direct or indirect the impact of world affairs might be on you, when you choose to recognize if you’re okay or not okay, you empower yourself. That empowerment is a first step in being able to be a beacon of light and hope to others. Every little bit – no matter how seemingly insignificant – counts.

Okay or not okay is okay.

Recognizing that okay or not okay is okay 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 you alone can know and control your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions, you become empowered to find balance and be okay or not okay. Knowing that it’s okay to not be okay or okay, you can make active, consciously aware choices and decisions to work with yourself and the world around you, no matter what your circumstances might currently be.

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-fourth (594) 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 Okay or Not Okay is Okay appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How Do You Engage Active Conscious Awareness?

Practicing mindfulness is equally easy and challenging.Photo by Paul Levesley on Unsplash

Let’s get factual, shall we? Every single human being on Planet Earth is of three minds. Each of these has a job to do as part of your holistic, overall being. No one can function without the other.

The first is the unconscious mind. This is where your brain controls the pumping of your heart, the working of your lungs, digestion, synapses firing, and all the necessary things that allow you to live. Apart from breathing and practices to raise and lower your heart rate (which requires the use of the conscious mind), this is wholly automatic.

The second, and arguably most dominant, is the subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is, to all intents and purposes, the home of your self-existence. In the subconscious mind, your beliefs, values, and habits live. Alongside them, you also have all your memories (which kind of turns this into more of a self-storage space). Because memory and habit live here, this is where you reside when you do things via rote, routine, and autopilot.

There are many things that are best handled subconsciously. This becomes a problem when you allow yourself to be manipulated and controlled by other people, places, and things. More about that later.

The third is the conscious mind. The conscious mind is where you actively engage with the world around you. It’s the conscious mind where you engage your six senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, extrasensory) and your inner awareness (thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, approach). What the conscious mind connects to is always there, but it’s not always active since most people live in their subconscious mind.

To find, create, or act on change for your life, it’s necessary to practice active conscious awareness. That’s mindfulness.

But how do you do that?

There’s no One True Way

Over the years, I’ve been studying mindfulness. I can’t tell you how many podcasts and audiobooks I’ve listened to, books and blogs I’ve read, and the like. This has included academic sources like scientists, educators, and psychologists. Then there were the mystical aspects, including philosophers, gurus, and other hooky-spooky practitioners, students, and masters. My studies have also included people who have, like me, sought out numerous sources and taken bits and pieces to gain understanding, and then shared it.

Some have then capitalized on this and created systems, brands, and products to share their way. There’s nothing wrong with that, with the exception of those who don’t actually walk their talk or knowingly deceive to make a buck.

The true students of this idea know that their way might not be your way. That’s because there is no One True Way. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa.

When I share what I’ve learned, I’m aiming to present the bare bones to you. That’s why I’m often vague about certain practices. Because my practice might not be yours.

Take meditation. I meditate 10-20 minutes a day. However, I know full well that meditation isn’t for everyone. This is where my 2-minute deep breathing idea presents an alternative way to get yourself to the void/no-mind place that meditation takes me to.

So, that written, please allow me to share my process.

How do I engage active conscious awareness?

First, it’s important that you know this is not a one-and-done process. You can’t engage active conscious awareness and ALWAYS be mindful. That’s because people have tens of thousands of thoughts per day, and your mind cannot actively process all of them.

Hence, this is an ongoing process. Any time that I desire to engage active conscious awareness, that starts by pausing and taking in, via my senses, my surroundings. What do I see, smell, and hear? What’s that taste in my mouth? How does my shirt feel against my skin and the keys beneath my fingers as I type? Is there an active, passive, or currently null sense of dread in the collective consciousness of the world?

That puts me in touch with what’s without. Now, I must address what’s within. This comes down to questions that can only be asked and answered right here and now, in the present. These engage active conscious awareness and include,

What am I thinking?What am I feeling?How am I feeling?What are my intentions?Is my approach currently leaning positive or negative?What am I doing (or not doing)?

Asking and answering these questions, coupled with recognizing the space I occupy, here and now, activates my conscious awareness.

Engaging with it is another matter.

Photo by Natalie Sierra on UnsplashUtilizing active conscious awareness

When you’re actively, consciously aware, you have clarity. That clarity, however, is a product strictly of the present.

It’s all too easy to start recrimination for past misdeeds you might have done by rote, routine, and habit subconsciously, or during a past moment of mindfulness. The trouble is, the past has come and gone, and you cannot do jack shit about it. All you can do is examine it, see what lessons it has taught you, and take that with you now as you move forward.

Once you become actively consciously aware, the way you utilize that is by making active choices and decisions. That is what mindfulness is. It’s thinking, feeling, examining who, what, where, how, and why you are, then choosing and deciding how that impacts you.

When you allow your subconscious mind to do the driving, and you largely live by rote, routine, and habit, you still make choices and decisions. However, they’re not entirely conscious. Before you know it, you are smoking that cigarette, visiting with that person you’re not fond of, giving up your time and peace of mind, or voting for someone who will hurt you and others you care about.

Which takes me to an important digression.

Everyone needs to spend time living subconsciously

Nobody, and I mean nobody, can live actively, consciously aware all the time. That’s because you have too many different thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the like happening all the time to be consciously aware of them all.

Remember, people have an average of 40,000 – 70,000 thoughts PER DAY. The human mind is incapable of actively examining every one of these. Similarly, there are 8 billion people on Planet Earth. On average, people can only remember maybe 5000 faces, total. Most of that goes into your subconscious mind.

Like the many repetitive thoughts among those tens of thousands you have per day, certain activities are best handled by rote, routine, and habit. In other words, subconsciously.

Take making your bed, pulling on clothes, and brushing your teeth. Do these require active, conscious awareness to be done? No.

Also, when you experience something earth-shattering, to process it, you might need to relegate certain things to subconscious rote, routine, and habit. This can apply to both good things and bad things. Because the human mind can only handle and process so much actively, subconscious, automated things allow you to live.

Thus, everyone needs to spend time living subconsciously. However, this becomes a problem when you spend too much time subconsciously.

Employing your limited but not insignificant control

Another truth we need to recognize is that shit happens. Random happenstance, freak accidents, and all sorts of things occur that you have ZERO control over. And I mean none.

You can do nothing about the weather, the actions of other people, natural disasters, space debris falling to Earth, your kids talking back to you, and more. Anything having to do with people, places, and things outside of you, yourself, you cannot control.

Yet, some people try to control others and things they can’t. Look at the state of the world right now, and you’ll see all sorts of examples of this.

The fine line between a leader and a dictator is guidance versus force. A leader offers guidance for you to traverse your own path. A dictator tells you it’s their way or you can go fuck yourself. A leader empowers while a dictator disempowers.

When all is said and done, you can only control what you do with the input you receive from your six senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, extrasensory) and what you do with your inner awareness (thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, approach).

This is where mindfulness, engaging your active conscious awareness, begins. If you are discontent with the results from the input you have consciously sought to recognize, you can do things to change it.

Don’t like what you’re thinking? Choose to focus on something new. Not a fan of the smell of your office? Clean it, buy an air freshener, or both. That’s how you engage active conscious awareness.

The more you employ mindfulness to control the few things you can, the more you find ways to foment change. The more you engage your active conscious awareness, the more you’re empowered. Empowered people empower others.

Active conscious awareness is not a weakness

Anyone who tells you that being “woke” is bad has fallen for a terrible lie. “Wokeness” isn’t some messed-up, liberal notion of fairness and equality. No, what it is is kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring about other people, places, and things, and their wellness and wellbeing.

There is a dangerous, ongoing campaign of disempowerment and disenfranchisement on the part of a vocal minority seeking to manipulate people to allow them control over short-term elements of reality. These include money, “power”, and influence. Resist them, and they call you out for standing up for yourself.

The only way to change the collective consciousness is one person at a time. And since the only person you can control in any way, shape, or form is you, that means you can change only yourself. If you seek to be empowered and to live your life the best way you can, engaging active conscious awareness is how you empower yourself to that end.

This is done via the choices and decisions you make when you’re present, here and now, and mindful. And it truly is that easy (while also that challenging).

It’s an ongoing practice. You won’t always get it right. But you, and only you, can employ mindfulness for your life experience. You alone can make choices and decisions actively, consciously, and mindfully.

Will you use your limited control to change yourself and be a source for changing the collective consciousness for the better?

This is the seventh-hundred-fifth (705) 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 Engage Active Conscious Awareness? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Are You Alive and Breathing Right Now?

So long as you’re alive and breathing, you can do something.Photo by Eli DeFaria on Unsplash

Just when you think the world can’t get any crazier, it does. Before you know it, you read about the latest utterly surreal move on the part of that businessperson, those politicians, that shitgibbon, and so on. It’s distressing, disheartening, upsetting, maddening, and scary.

Life is always in flux because change is the one and only constant in the Universe. Yet, most people can only handle so much change without becoming overwhelmed. And today, change is nearly always too much for most people.

Here’s the thing: right now, it sure as hell feels like everything is coming apart at the seams. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you feel the same as I do about much of this. Not exactly the same, because no two people ever think, feel, or are the same. But similar enough that this topic resonates with you.

My point here is that, right now, if you’re anything like me, you’re scared. Distressed. Uncertain. And also frustrated because there’s not a damned thing you can do about this. But it sure as hell feels like you should do something.

You’re right. But that something is going to feel disingenuous and wrong. Yet, here it is:

Live your life for you

This is not a call to be uncaring, unkind, unempathetic, uncompassionate, selfish, or otherwise despicable. Live your life for you is a call to keep on keeping on. Do the things you need and desire to do that allow you to live the best life that you can.

Take the nap. Eat the cookie. Go for a walk. Enjoy time in nature. Write that chapter for your novel. Sculpt that clay. Cook that amazing dish you wanted to try for a year. Watch that show. Cuddle your cat. Sing to the radio. Do the things that make you feel good, provide connection, and lighten your head, heart, and soul.

You get one shot at this life. With luck, that’s about 80 years or so to experience living. Because there’s only so much that you can do about the politics, public policy, terrible business practices, and the like, take the time to do for you. Live your life.

Are you alive and breathing right now? Then isn’t now the time to do the things you most desire to do? Like it or not, tomorrow is never guaranteed. There’s no telling what will happen, and no matter who you are, life will end in death. Harsh? Maybe. But also deeply, deeply freeing.

This is something that connects every single one of us. No matter where you call home, who you are, what you do, life will have a beginning, middle, and end. This concept unifies all of us and shows the need for kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring. Why? Because everyone desires this in their life.

Trump is a miserable, unkind, uncompassionate, unempathetic, uncaring nightmare. Read even a little of the nonsense he posts, and it’s clear he’s desperate to receive kindness, compassion, and empathy. Crazy, right?

Photo by Kamil Pietrzak on UnsplashAre you alive and breathing right now?

Since to read this, you must be, consider that right now, this moment, you have choices and decisions available to you. Everything within your control that isn’t making you content or balanced, you are empowered to change because you’re alive and breathing, right here, right now.

What you control are two basic things. The first is your 6 senses:

SightSoundTasteTouchSmellExtrasensory (instinct, understanding body language, connection, etc.).

All of these come from external matters. Other people, places, and things. You alone, however, receive, observe, and experience them in whatever form they present themselves to you.

The second is your inner being, the elements that determine, ultimately, who, what, where, how, and why you are:

ThoughtsFeelingsIntentApproach (positive or negative)Action (what you do or don’t do)

All of these come from internal matters. What you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, the positive or negative approach you take, and the actions you take or don’t. You alone can experience these and accept them, reject them, and/or change them.

So long as you’re alive and breathing, you can change your life experience.

Don’t get caught in the outside hype

You and I are bombarded every day by messages hyping this, that, or the other thing. These distractions are meant to keep us from being mindful and consciously aware.

People who are living subconsciously are on autopilot. Thus, they can be somewhat easily redirected, misdirected, and convinced to accept all sorts of things that, if they were practicing active conscious awareness, they likely wouldn’t. Why the hell else would anyone at all view “woke” and “wokeness” as anything other than beneficial and empowering?

So long as you’re alive and breathing, you’re empowered. Even if, up til now, you’ve not worked with mindfulness to take the wheel, you can change that. Right now. When you do, and it’s genuinely about your empowerment, it’s not selfish or harmful to the world at large. In fact, by being empowered, you become another beacon that “they” dislike because you show that “they” aren’t as necessary as they want us all to think they are.

If you’re alive and breathing, you have a lot of potential and possibilities to work with.

When you’re alive and breathing, applying mindfulness 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 what you are bringing in via your 6 senses, coupled with employing active conscious awareness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions, you can make choices and decisions to shape your life. Knowing that it’s not selfish in the face of a world going mad to choose for yourself things that make you content and enabled, you can act with kindness, compassion, and empathy within and then without.

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-third (593) 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 Alive and Breathing Right Now? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What Are You Doing and Why Are You Doing It?

Not an easy question to answer.Photo by Elena Rabkina on Unsplash

Everyone faces expectations when it comes to doing things in life. Things tend to be done in one of three categories.

Things you’re doing for yourself.The things you’re doing for others.Things you’re doing for the world.

By and large, people tend to focus on doing for others and the world. And by the world, I mean that nameless faceless entity that encompasses world affairs, politics, environmentalism, and so on.

While the narrative in the collective consciousness tends to imply (or sometimes state outright) that you should put others (and the world as others) first, this causes a problem. The problem? When you don’t do for yourself, you disempower and deplete yourself. Which means you have very little to give for doing for others.

Frequently, what you are doing and why you are doing it becomes tied to external matters, such as people, institutions, and so on. Because this is the expectation of the collective consciousness, it’s too easy to lose sight of the importance and empowerment of doing for yourself.

Why is doing for yourself so important?

Everything is an inside job. Whatever you do always begins in you.

The only person in your head, heart, and soul is you. You alone know what’s going on inside of you. Only you know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, the positivity or negativity of your approach, and what you do or don’t do. Ergo, only you know what you need/want/desire for you to be at your best.

Yet most of us put ourselves last. This is due to false narratives about the ideas and practice of selflessness.

I am not in any way against being selfless. Quite the contrary, selflessness is an active practice of kindness, compassion, and empathy. The problem that arises comes from working with an empty vessel.

If you desire time, energy, and funds to help anyone or anything else, you must have time, energy, and funds to start. When you haven’t got them, you can’t give them. Yet because of the false narratives telling people to put themselves last, often the giving is done from a place of emptiness.

The things you are doing for others or the world become exponentially harder to do when you’ve not filled your own vessel first. This is the reason why doing for yourself is so important.

Photo by Annie Spratt on UnsplashWhat are you doing and why are you doing it?

Many people believe that they have a lot more limitations than they actually have. And there are, again, plenty of false narratives to reinforce this idea. Class, race, gender, identity, religion, nationality, and all sorts of other artifices put you in a box. Then, they tell you that you can only work in that box and leaving it makes you either untrustworthy, questionable, or suspect.

That’s a complete load of bullshit. Everyone is capable of growth, change, and evolution. What’s more, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, grows, changes, and evolves. Change is the only constant in the universe, and it comes whether you seek it, embrace it, hide from it, or whatever.

Putting all the focus on the things you’re doing to the outside bits – what you’re doing for others and the world – distracts, disempowers, and lessens you. How many people with good intentions are frequently lost and uncertain because they give and give? But they have no idea what they’re doing or why, save that it’s what a nameless/faceless someone or something expects?

You can’t truly give anything if you have nothing. I don’t mean literally nothing, I mean nothing in the sense of not knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This is where being actively, consciously aware and mindful enters the picture.

The nameless/faceless “they” prefer you and me to live subconsciously. Be a good worker, don’t ask too many questions, and allow rote, routine, and habit to drive you. The minute you begin questioning anything at all, you awaken conscious awareness and take control rather than cede it. This is where you start to know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Mindfulness of purpose

Societal institutions make it super easy to live subconsciously. Rote and routine drive you with nearly no active thought. Before you know it, you sink into the habits of this. Until one day you wake up and ask, “What am I doing and why am I doing it?”

The answer you come up with will lead you where you go next. For example, if the answer is “the same thing I always do”, you can shrug your shoulders, decide to keep on keeping on, and return to that. Or, you can pause, reflect, and say, “Wait, I’d like to do something else here,” or similar. Rather than subconsciously return to the same thing you always do, you consciously choose anew.

Welcome to mindfulness of purpose. This is the choice to actively recognize and decide on what you are doing and why you’re doing it. Then, from there, you actively, consciously choose what you’re doing for you. This empowers you and provides more than adequate fuel to do for others and the world.

Now, please allow me to address the elephant in the room.

What you are doing and why you’re doing it for yourself isn’t selfish

Part of the false narrative in society today – which, for the record, comes from a place of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency – is that doing for yourself is selfish.

Putting yourself first, “they” claim, is selfish. That’s not true. Why? Because the definition of selfishness is far narrower.

True selfishness involves malice of forethought and taking more than your fair share, knowing that it will cause hurt or harm to another. Every single company owner who makes millions and billions while their employees barely earn a living wage is selfish. That “friend” who takes 3 cookies when there are only enough for everyone to have 1 cookie – and everyone would like to have a cookie – is selfish.

Ending a toxic relationship, even knowing you’ll be blasted for hurting the other party, is NOT selfish. Neither is recognizing and choosing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it for yourself.

Doing for yourself in and of itself isn’t selfish. Your car will go nowhere on an empty tank of gas. Likewise, you go nowhere on empty.

Knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it – for yourself – is active conscious awareness. That empowers you. When you’re empowered, you’re energized. That opens you to being more capable of doing for others and the world.

Life is meant to be experienced. When you can answer “what are you doing and why are you doing it?” about your life, you’re taking control and stepping on the path to choose and decide from a place of abundance, potential, and possibilities.

So – What are you doing and why are you doing it?

This is the seventh-hundred-fourth (704) 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 Are You Doing and Why Are You Doing It? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You Can Only Balance Yourself and Your Life

Trying to balance other people’s lives will drive you mad.Photo by Leonardo Iheme on Unsplash

I’m going to make a statement that you might not like to read, but it’s a true statement. The quest for happiness is seldom the true life quest that anyone undertakes.

What does that mean? It means that happiness, in and of itself, is not an end-all be-all matter. Happiness comes and goes, ebbs and flows. Often, something that makes you happy might have an instantaneous impact on you, but then it quickly fades. Not because it’s taken away by something, but because that’s the nature of happiness.

I’m not as cynical about happiness as some. There’s a classic Denis Leary  comedy routine where his take on happiness is this:

“Happiness comes in small doses folks. It’s a cigarette butt, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm.”

Leary concludes by telling you that the above is it, then it’s back to the grind. While I agree that all of the above are things that bring happiness, I think there is a lot more to happiness than such quick, finite snapshots.

More than that, though, I think there is a better, more achievable metric to strive for above and beyond happiness. That would be contentment and balance.

Content versus discontent

Spend any time at all online, and you will be bombarded by discontent.

People love to share their discontent on a broad scale. Sometimes it’s good to get people to see the problem with governments, unfair working conditions and expectations, terrible policies, and so on. The trouble comes when the discontent utterly dominates the conversation.

It can be even more problematic when people are sharing their discontent on a more personal level. Jobs, loved ones, friends, coworkers, children, you name it. Again, this can be good for asking for help or ideas, but troubling when it becomes your default life experience.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, experiences discontent in life. From the biggest to the smallest, so-called highest to the lowest, things happen that ruin contentment. That’s because so many things in life are utterly outside of your control.

Other people, the environment, random happenstance, the weather, traffic – and numerous other shit that happens is utterly out of your control. To be fair, that won’t always lead to things that make you discontent, or worse. But recognizing and acknowledging them is important to your overall mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health, wellness, and wellbeing.

Finding things that make you feel content is a lot easier than you might realize. That’s because content is found within, not without. Sure, there are outside things that certainly help you feel content. But nothing outside of yourself makes you experience contentment. That comes from inside of you.

The car, the house, the job, the money – none of these will make you feel content. That’s not to say that they don’t help, but they are not what brings contentment. You draw it from within yourself.

How? By finding balance.

Finding balance in a world of imbalance

Balance is not the ability to stand on one foot. This is the ability to recognize and acknowledge the discontent, unhappiness, and other negatives while seeking/finding/creating things that make you feel and experience contentment.

Being content isn’t just a matter of feeling. It’s a choice to seek things that make you feel calm, collected, unhurried, and balanced.

This is where toxic positivity tends to rear its ugly head. Toxic positivity tells you to ignore, disregard, and deny the negative. But you can’t, because both are part of the fabric of the universe. You cannot have one without the other. They are the yin and yang, the black and white, short and tall, opposite ends of a given spectrum.

Remember, most of us exist between any and all given extremes. That’s part of why finding balance is so important.

You, and only you, know what makes you feel good. Only you know what makes you feel content. Hence, only you can find and balance your life, for you. If you don’t do it, nobody else can.

So, if you are more discontent than content, you alone have the power to find balance and change that. How? Two things.

First – become aware of your 6 senses. Screen time doesn’t engage the senses apart from sight and sound. So, take a moment to engage your other senses, too. That’s the first step to find and/or create balance.

Secondly – become aware of your active, conscious awareness. This is done by you recognizing and acknowledging what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, if your approach is positive or negative, what your intentions are, and what actions you do or don’t take.

This is something you, and only you, can do for yourself. And you can only do it for you.

Photo by Dimmis Vart on UnsplashYou can only balance yourself and your life

No matter who it is, or how close you might be, you cannot make anyone else find balance or contentment in their life.

This is important to remember because it will save you a lot of time and frustration. In a world where people are doing incredibly unkind, selfish, careless, and unempathetic things, you will be exposed to discontent, imbalance, and worse. This can lead to feeling lost, sad, frustrated, afraid, uncertain, and hopeless.

You can’t balance anyone else outside of you. But you can seek and find balance for yourself. When you do that, you open yourself up to a lot of potential, possibility, and contentment for yourself.

Contentment allows you to find greater balance for yourself. When you have more balance, that can help other people find balance in their lives. That’s because balanced people are beacons for others.

Sure, some people see that beacon, that light, as a bug-zapper or oncoming train. You can’t do anything to impact them until they choose to see a beacon as a source of comfort, kindness, compassion, and hope. But for anyone else, you can be an example of balance and contentment that they might seek to emulate. In that way alone, you can help others and help the world at large.

Finding and/or creating balance for yourself 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 you’re the only one inside of your head, heart, and soul, you become capable of finding and/or creating things that make you experience contentment and balance. Knowing that your contentment and balance can be a beacon for others, you can work on your active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to expand on this for more kindness, compassion, and empathy within and without.

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-second (592) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

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

The post You Can Only Balance Yourself and Your Life appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You Can Only Open Your Mind

The minds of others are outside your power.Photo by Sourav Satpati on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but one thing that drives me batty is closed-mindedness. It’s especially frustrating and infuriating when you see someone holding onto something illogical, unreasonable, hurtful, and harmful out of fear, ignorance, distrust, uncertainty, or some combination therein.

Then, to add insult to injury, it doesn’t help that political parties, business leaders, religious leaders, would-be demagogues, and others weaponize that fear, ignorance, distrust, uncertainty, or combination therein. The divide and conquer approach is too pervasive, and it’s creating wider and wider, unnecessary gaps in society and how we interact with one another.

I would love to do something, anything, to change this narrative. What can I do to wake people up, show them that kindness/compassion/empathy aren’t weaknesses? How can I help people open their hearts, souls, and minds to abundance?

I can’t. Plain and simple, I cannot open anyone else’s mind.

What can I do? Keep my mind open and share what I get from working with that.

Nobody is one thing only

Every single person on Planet Earth, all 8 billion of us, is unique. What’s more, not a single one of us can be one thing only. We’re all blends of good and evil, rich and poor, short and tall, wise and idiotic, and so on.

The smartest people on the planet sometimes do incredibly stupid things. The most foolish, idiotic people on the planet can have moments of brilliant, genius insights. Wisdom and intelligence are different stats and hit in different ways, at different times, in variable situations.

No matter how set in stone and unchangeable a mindset might appear, it can, will, and does change. How many politicians have switched parties because they found the machinations of one easier to navigate than the other to gain power or freedom?

Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. Everyone, everything changes. It’s inevitable, unavoidable, and why nobody is one thing only. Change, coupled with environment, circumstance, influence, and a multitude of other factors internal and external, is why we’re all a blend of good and evil, rich and poor, short and tall, wise and idiotic, and so on.

Closed minds are a combination of beliefs and values rooted in the subconscious – tied to habits/rote/routine – and inactive or willful conscious awareness.

The choice to be open-minded – or not – is a conscious one.

Photo by Mike L on UnsplashYou can only open your mind via conscious awareness

There is an unfathomable resistance to open-mindedness today. The notion of “wokeness” being dirty, somehow impure, and countercultural makes no sense. Why? Because the opposite is being asleep at the switch.

Granted, many of those “in power” love this idea. That’s because it keeps people living subconsciously, which makes them easier to sway. That’s why they push the notion of “woke” as bad. They know full well that open minds will resist them and choose against them.

The problem here is that you can do nothing whatsoever to show people who believe this nonsense why and how it’s counterintuitive. Or, more specifically, you can’t wake them up and open their minds.

What you can do, the only thing you can do, is to open your mind. Keep, maintain, and open your mind every day.

This is never a one-and-done proposition. Shit happens that will close your mind. Sometimes that’s to protect you from pain, suffering, hurt, and fear. Reacting to closed-mindedness can actually close our minds, too. Things look incredibly black and white, and us versus them in these situations.

You choose and decide to open your mind via conscious awareness. Rather than allowing your subconscious mind to do the driving, you work with your inner being, your thoughts-feelings-intent-approach-actions, in combination with your 6 senses, here and now.

You leave yourself open, awake and aware, not just of the world without but the world within. Which is necessary, because any change that you choose always begins from within.

Influencers come in many forms

People have found ways to make money as “influencers” online. They have millions of followers who hang onto their words, believe in their ways, buy the products they promote, and so on.

Politicians can be amazing, terrifying influencers who convince whole swaths of people to follow and vote for them, even when doing so is against their best interests.

You can be an influencer. How? By keeping an open mind, expressing your open-mindedness, and showing how it empowers you.

Like attracts like. The Law of Attraction, at its pure core, is a law of nature like Gravity and Thermodynamics. When you are empowered and share that with the world via mindfulness, conscious awareness, and open-mindedness, it shows. It draws people to you.

By working on keeping an open mind, you can display how that empowers you. In truth, everyone desires to be empowered, but nobody teaches us how that happens. What’s more, we’re frequently directed to look for empowerment without. And that’s bullshit, because the truth is that empowerment comes from within.

You don’t need a platform like TikTok or Instagram to be an influencer. With an open mind, you gain an open heart and an open soul. That turns you into a beacon. Beacons draw people to them. And though you can’t open the minds of others, your open mind can show them potential and possibilities. That’s worthwhile, especially today.

What do you do to find, maintain, and keep an open mind for yourself?

This is the seventh-hundred-third (703) 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 Can Only Open Your Mind appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Not Explore JOMO?

Reveling in the Joy Of Missing OutPhoto by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

Currently, I’m reading a book called Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change by April Rinne. Since I’m a firm believer in the truth that change is the one and only constant in the universe, a book about the nature of change (or, as the book addresses it, flux) speaks to me. Also, employing it to thrive is very much in line with my values and beliefs.

As I was reading this fascinating book, I was introduced to a term I had never seen before. And it thoroughly speaks to me.

JOMO – the Joy Of Missing Out.

Unless you’ve lived under a rock or have been otherwise disconnected, you’re probably familiar with FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out). This phrase, popularized by Patrick J. McGinnis in 2004, has become the unfortunate, go-to summary of how many, many people live their lives.

When you are in fear of missing out, you rush around, take shortcuts, accept ideas and ways from people you might not normally accept, and generally close yourself off to a wide range of potential and possibilities. FOMO snatches away your attention, intention, and frequently distracts you.

While it seems innocuous, that it’s called FEAR of missing out creates the first problem. It’s fear-based. In a fear-based society, the last thing you need is anything else to be afraid of.

Fear is not necessarily countered by bravery or courage. It tends to be more complicated than that. That’s why it can be countered by joy.

What does the fear of missing out amount to?

Society is overflowing with expectations. People expect you to do, be, and have certain things. Some of those people are close, like friends and relatives. Many are one step removed, like teachers, coworkers, bosses, and less-close friends. Most, however, might be stated or implied – like influencers, celebrities, and politicians – but, in truth, haven’t the foggiest idea of who you are.

And, for that matter, they don’t give a fuck about you, either. They don’t know you, so how could they?

That’s not to say that you can’t care for people you don’t know. But there’s a huge difference between caring for people and their overall wellbeing – you know, like supporting marginalized people and their struggles – and caring about the specifics of people (what they drive, who they worship, what brands they wear, and so on). The former is a matter of kindness, compassion, and empathy. The latter is an impression with little to no basis in reality.

Fear is a device of lack. Fear of missing out plays into the idea that if you don’t participate in “X”, have experience “Y”, or buy product “Z”, you’ll suffer by missing out.

Any suffering you experience from most variants of missing out is going to be less than you fear it will be. As Paulo Coelho states so brilliantly in The Alchemist,

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

That summarizes why FOMO is not good for your health, wellness, or wellbeing. It’s a narrow viewpoint that creates lack and limitation where none truly exists.

This is why joy is an excellent way to combat this.

Photo by Daphne Fecheyr on UnsplashJOMO – the joy of missing out

Did your parents ever use this line on you?

“If your friends said they were going to jump off a bridge, would you?”

I think a great deal of FOMO is akin to this. With influencers and their seemingly amazing, perfect lives on instant, constant display, as well as the wealthy, athletes, and celebrities held up as the end-all-be-all, it’s easy to fall into this trap.

So, here’s a potentially uncomfortable truth. What you need and desire for your life is wholly up to you. The things that light you up, turn you on, and get you excited are unique to you. And there is nobody who can make it happen. They can be the impetus for you to act in ways to activate that, but they do not do it for you.

This is because you’re the only one inside your head, heart, and soul. Hence, nobody else can think, feel, intend, or act for you. You, and only you, know what brings you joy.

Often, the thing it’s implied you’ll suffer for missing out on will, in truth, cause you no suffering at all. Frequently, it’s just another element of the nonstop, go-go-go, work harder and harder world we live in.

It can feel like the mysterious “they” of the collective consciousness prefer you stressed, on edge, and constantly worried about what you lack and will not receive. That’s more or less the very definition of consumerism, really.

When you make your own choices and decisions, however, you’ll find that the fear of missing out isn’t a real fear. What’s more, missing out, choosing your own path, and being in charge of your own thoughts, feelings, approach, intent, and actions, can be an incredible source of joy.

And that empowers you.

Fear disempowers

The fear of missing out, FOMO, disempowers you. It takes away your ability to make reasoned, cogent choices. What’s more, it’s an absolutely horrible abuse of fear.

Fear of things that can kill you – animals capable of eating you, walking too close to a cliff’s edge, swimming in a fast current – that’s healthy fear that allows survival. Fear of the intangibles – failure, success, missing out – is an artifice that doesn’t advance you or your life experience at all.

Intangible fear takes away your agency, your sovereignty, and your power. It disempowers you. That’s why FOMO is a tool of disempowerment. Thus, choosing joy and JOMO rather than fear, and taking joy in assuming control of your life experience while missing out on often pointless things, makes you stronger, healthier, and empowered overall.

JOMO – the joy of missing out – is a tool of empowerment you can employ to choose greater balance, seek more contentment, and take charge of your life experience. JOMO is an amazing idea that could shift the narrative away from lack and scarcity to more abundance and empowered people making more reasoned – and frankly sane – choices.

Exploring JOMO – the Joy Of Missing Out – 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 FOMO is a lack-based, crippling tool of disempowerment, scarcity, and insufficiency, you can see how it doesn’t serve you in any way. Knowing that you can choose and decide to believe if you’re truly missing out on a thing or not, you can choose and decide for yourself if there is greater joy and positivity to be found in JOMO and letting it go and willingly missing out. Especially if it’s not something that truly matters to 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 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-first (591) 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.

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