M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 6

You Are What You Believe That You Are

It really is that simple.Photo by Hatice Baran on Unsplash

Who are you? That can be an incredibly loaded question. Who you are might not be a simple, singular answer, either.

This might or might not be familiar to you: At work, you put on a specific mask, attitude, and persona. When you’re with family, the face you wear and the person you project is who they expect you to be. With friends, depending on the group, you’re the clown or the voice of reason.

Alone, all by yourself, who are you? And is that the real, most genuine, authentic you?

For too many people, the answer is clearly “I don’t know.” How can I state that? Because, here at the start of Pride Month, people are showing their fear of allowing people to be themselves. And that tends to come from not knowing yourself well at all.

The simplest ideas are often rejected because of their simplicity. It can’t possibly be that easy, right? What if it is? What if the easy notion, the simple solution, is the truth?

This is not about big things and grand ideas. What I’m on about here is getting to the bottom of the question, “Who are you?”

The simple answer is that you are what you believe that you are. This, however, becomes complicated because you might not know what you believe about yourself for real.

Who, what, where, how, and why are you?

These are the big 5 questions everyone wants to know about themselves. While they might have literal and easy answers, they also have less direct, more abstract elements to them.

Who am I? The easy answer is “Me.” But do you consciously, willfully know who you are?

What am I? The externals are easy – I’m a white, cis-gendered male writer. That’s the tip of the iceberg, however, of everything that goes into what I am.

Where am I? In front of the keyboard, tapping away at this. But is my mind entirely present? What about my spirit?

How am I? Feelings involve both a how and what, so while the answer might be a simple “Okay,” chances are the how of me is far more complex.

Why? This is possibly the most loaded and complicated – but equally simple – question. Sometimes the answer truly is, simply, “because.” However, that’s seldom the whole answer.

All of these tie to your subconscious. It’s in your subconscious mind that your values, memories, and habits live. And overtop all of them are your beliefs.

What you believe is a mix of internal and external factors. When you allow your subconscious to absorb without analysis, this can become especially tricky.

You are what you believe that you are

What you believe is a mix of things internal and external, material and immaterial, and all sorts of other multifaceted elements. All of them are reflected in who, what, where, how, and why you are.

This often gets bulldozed by the expectations of others, the ongoing agita of the collective consciousness, random happenstance, and many other factors wholly outside of your control. They can distract, overwhelm, and overtake you. That, in turn, can cause you to believe what you believe that you are, even when you don’t desire or want to hold that belief.

If you believe that you’re a sinner who is on a one-way track to hell, then you are what you believe. Likewise, if you believe that you’re righteous, never wrong, and better than everyone around you, you are what you believe that you are. This is also true if you believe that you’re a constantly evolving, growing, learning person open to new ideas, potential, and possibility. Once again, you are what you believe that you are.

Even if you dislike what you believe that you are, that’s not a bad thing. Why? Because what you believe about yourself is utterly changeable.

However, this is only applicable to you, yourself.

Photo by Inès d’Anselme on UnsplashUniversal truisms and scientific facts versus beliefs

The anti-intellectualism pervading the United States in particular is disheartening. How can so many people buy into so many provably, demonstrably untrue ideas and concepts, both tangible and intangible?

For example, how is it that, in 2025, people legitimately believe the Earth is flat? Or that vaccines contain microchips? Or that person “X” with nothing but opinion and belief knows more than Scientist “Y” with peer-reviewed, scientifically documentable fact?

When personal ideas like faith and belief are used to make laws, dictate policy, and hurt or harm others, we feed a machine of distraction. These ideas get weaponized to empower a small few and keep the masses lined up so they can try to control them. All the while, these people are increasingly drawn out of active conscious awareness and mindfulness. How the hell else can you explain the negative connotation made of “woke” and “wokeness?” Keeping the masses asleep and falsely empowered via disempowerment.

While YOU are what you believe that you are, that’s only applicable to you. Your beliefs can’t be directly applied to anyone or anything else.

Hence, why and how you are what you believe that you are.

How can you change what you believe?

This is where waking up comes in. Being awake, or “woke”, is your birthright. This is active conscious awareness – i.e., Mindfulness.

Most people equate mindfulness with social justice and knowing the world without. But true mindfulness is self-awareness. Your world within you. To gain it, all you need to do is be present, here and now, and consider,

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

These can only be answered here and now. Memory of past answers is imperfect and inaccurate, and the future is still unfolding.

When you practice active conscious awareness – mindfulness – you open yourself to get control of your inner being, look at your subconscious and what you believe, and go with it or change it.

How you go about changing it is up to you. Maybe you read a book about the particular element of what you believe that you desire to change, find a teacher or guru, get into therapy, something else, or some combination of each of these. The how is for you to choose and decide upon.

You are what you believe that you are, but it’s not written in stone. You can change yourself to be the best version of yourself that’s possible.

Can you see why this is both simple and complex at the same time, but utterly worthwhile?

This is the seventh-hundred-second (702) 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 Are What You Believe That You Are appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

Pause, reflect, and consider before you try again.Photo by Benjamin Wedemeyer on Unsplash

Probably my all-time favorite quote is from Yoda:

“Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

What this means is not that you shouldn’t try something, but rather that the energy you give to that something must be whole-hearted. If you approach the thing you plan to “try” with resignation, defeat, and no expectation of making it happen, why bother? But if, instead, you approach the thing you plan to “do” with tenacity, optimism, and potential for making it happen, do it. That’s the meaning of Yoda’s (in)famous quote.

There is, however, another important quote to consider here. Misattributed to Albert Einstein, the relevance of Rita Mae Brown’s quote is still important:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Doing something once and then giving up is often defeatist and denies room for change, improvement, or alternatives. Few things just work on the first pass, so trying more than once can be important.

However, the question is that of variables. Which is what the quote alluded to in the title of this article addresses:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Trying again is good, but not without alterations to the action.

Pause, reflect, and consider before you try again

No matter what you are working on doing, and whether it will result in anything tangible or intangible, the goal of any action is to succeed at what you are doing.

When you make a first attempt, or a first “try”, if it doesn’t succeed, don’t just give up or try again. Instead, pause and reflect.

Pause, so that you can analyze what you did. How and why didn’t it work?

Then, reflect. What went into my effort? How did I approach it? What things can I do that I didn’t do last time? Are they big or small? How many variables are there?

Then consider. Is this goal still something I desire? Am I willing to give it more energy and DO IT again (try again)?

Pause, reflect, and consider. If you’re still good to go, make the necessary adjustments and try again.

What does it mean to you to succeed?

How do you define success? This is a deeply personal question because success is utterly personal. For some people, success is only found in the big, inspiring, ginormous accomplishments. For others, success is getting out of bed in the morning, remembering to take their pills, and the like. Both are completely right and true.

Success is as subjective and in the eye of the beholder as beauty and perfection. One person’s definition of success is another’s definition of failure. There is no right or wrong, it’s a personal perspective that belongs to only you.

This is why, if at first you don’t succeed, you alone know if you should try again or move on. Whatever it is you are working to “succeed” at is all about you. Hence, you’re the only one who knows what it is, what it means to you, how that makes you feel, and so on.

Also, because of the many variations and degrees of things that go into success, you can achieve a partial success that begs the question of stopping or trying again.

Photo by Justin Veenema on UnsplashIf you achieve partial success…

Partial success is utterly a matter of perspective. If the success is partial, what’s missing? Again, pause, reflect, and consider. Does it matter that you reach whatever the completion should be? Try again to get to 100%, or move on from where you are to the next thing?

This is why both having goals and paying attention to the journey matter. Having goals gives you the target to aim for, the achievement to reach. But on the journey to the goal, you might find that your target changes and that the achievement you’re seeking to reach shifts.

The journey is your everyday life experiences. It’s the happenings that happen, the rote and routine coupled with the moments you seek and find in any given year, month, day, or situation. Being on the journey and awake, mindful, and consciously aware lets you find all sorts of amazing new discoveries along the way.

This is why partial success might lead you to a new goal or a redefinition of what success is. Since what it means to succeed is utterly dictated by you, and you alone, the what of it is changeable. Try again, try anew, or move on to something else entirely? The choice is yours.

The best part about this is that even if you choose wrong, you can choose again. Unless what you’re doing kills you, you get to try something new and do something different if at first you don’t succeed.

The positivity of the potential and possibility within this is incredible, and you’re worthy and deserving of experiencing it.

If at first you don’t succeed, pausing, reflecting, and considering before you try again 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 are doing what you’re trying to do with your whole ass, rather than trying with half your ass, you open the way to succeed. Knowing that you can choose and decide if you don’t succeed to try again, you find yourself able to make slight changes and alterations to the attempt and use the journey and the process to get anywhere you desire to go, or even get to somewhere better.

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-eighty-ninth (589) 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 If At First You Don’t Succeed… appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Why Bother Making Choices and Decisions To Live Your Life?

Because only you can – and it’s way bigger than you probably think it is.Photo by Connor DeMott on Unsplash

I’ve been working to find, choose, and/or create my own path for nearly thirteen-and-a-half years. As I’ve explored what goes into this, I’ve shared all sorts of ideas, concepts, and tools that have helped me to become calmer, more centered, more balanced, and frankly happier in my life.

Over the course of this effort, the inescapable truth I come up against is this: Change is the one and only constant in the Universe. Sometimes slow and subtle, barely perceptible; other times, rapid, sudden, and drastic. No matter what, change is constant. And most of it is outside of your or my control.

There have been many ups and downs in this journey of self-discovery. For more than seven hundred weeks in a row, I’ve explored notions, concepts, ideas, and avenues for finding, choosing, creating, and ultimately walking paths I desire to experience.

Why do it at all? Because I believe that the meaning of life is this: TO LIVE. What does it mean TO LIVE? It means to do more than merely exist. It means you make choices, decisions, and actively seek out experiences to find potential and possibility. You do more than just survive; you learn, grow, and work to drive or ride change and thrive.

Let’s face it, there are exactly 3 truths of life nobody can escape. This applies to everyone, no matter their station, celebrity, obscurity, or what-have-you. These truths are:

You’re born.You live.You die.

We have zero control or choice in being born. Likewise, we have nearly zero choice in dying. But living? That’s all on you. And you’re approach to that – positive or negative, excitement or trepidation – is yours to choose.

It all begins with you

You are the only you that there is. There is nobody but you inside your head, heart, or soul. Despite attempts by others, both blatant and subtle, to control you – you are ultimately the one driving you and your life.

This can often feel like complete and total bullshit. Circumstances, random happenstance, and numerous external variables will create obstacles you can choose to overcome – or – allow to distract and divert you. No matter who you are, you ultimately control your life experience.

To start asserting control of your life, you need to reach deep inside. Only by looking within can you see your subconscious aspects. Specifically, your beliefs, values, habits, and memories.

Since the subconscious is the place of automation via rote and routine, it needs to be accessed by conscious awareness. That’s where mindfulness comes in.

To engage your subconscious self with your conscious self, all you need to do is be grounded and actively aware in the present. From the here and now, to gain self-awareness, ask yourself:

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

All of these can only be asked and answered, genuinely, honestly, right here and now.

Self-awareness is literal. The knowledge of who, what, where, how, and why you are is based on knowing your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions. Because once you know them, you can influence and assert control over them that only you can employ.

Empowerment and power via choices and decisions

The mysterious, hotly debated, frequently anonymous, and scattered “they” of the collective consciousness of the world prefer that you not find empowerment.

Why? Because empowered people need little more than guidance and inspiration to live. The “they” want to control you and make you act how “they” would prefer. Most of this is based on artifices of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency, coupled with consumerism to alleviate the non-existent pain of those.

Things are seldom what make life experiences memorable for good or ill. Experiences transcend the tangible/material. That’s not to say money and things don’t have a place, but they are not the end-all be-all of anything.

Any and all control you can take over your life experience comes from two places. Choices and decisions.

Faced with choices, many people prefer that someone else guide them. Even when you let another person choose something for you, you have chosen to cede your power and authority to them.

When it comes to making decisions, this is even more in your power. Deciding, from its linguistic roots, involves cutting something off. Hence, many decisions will tip any given scales in one way or another.

In the end, only you can make choices and decisions for you. When you are active in doing that, you’re finding, choosing, and/or creating your life experience. That’s your path.

Remember, however, that no matter what choices and decisions you make today, nothing is ever set in stone.

Photo by Daniel Beilinson on UnsplashChoices and decisions are fluid

You will choose wrong. Mistakes will be made. Sometimes, you’ll totally fuck it all up. Congratulations, welcome to the Human Condition.

Perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. What’s perfect to you is utterly imperfect to me. Sometimes we’ll disagree on this. This is also where a lot of conflict comes in.

Most conflict is based on artifices and lies. The majority of those come from false claims of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. The truth is that these are scare tactics intended to keep people small and dependent on the “chosen” few.

You can do little to nothing about this. The more you focus on what you have no control over, the more you cede your power. Seriously, it’s important to know what terrible people are doing to the world. That’s how you know who to boycott, what to protest, who to vote for, and so on. But making that the focus of your life is the equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Distractions are everywhere. They tend to lead choices and decisions toward someone else’s goal. Mindfulness, active conscious awareness of yourself, empowers you to make choices and decisions to live your life as fully as possible.

Know this: Your choices and decisions are seldom solid and set in stone. Choices and decisions are fluid and can change in all sorts of ways.

When I started to write about this topic years ago, my focus was on thoughts, feelings, and actions. Then I came to include intentions. With further exploration, I also added approaches to my mindfulness toolkit.

This demonstrates the fluidity of intangibles. But even the material plane is always changing. For the most part, you control very little of the world outside of yourself.

Why bother?

So why bother making choices and decisions to live your life?

The only person in your head, heart, and soul, is you. Nobody other than you knows what drives you, what lights you up, brings you joy, and ultimately makes you tick.

Birth is not yours to control, and for the most part, neither is death. But the middle, the long part between the extremes, life? Life is lived only by you for you.

That’s why you bother to make choices and decisions. Because only you know what is best for you. That’s not to say you won’t employ guides, gurus, teachers, peers, and others to assist that process. But, ultimately, it’s entirely, wholly, wonderfully on you.

Yes, wonderfully. Why? Because no two people experience life the same way. And life is meant to be experienced. Yes, that means both highs and lows, shit and Shinola, sorrows and joys, and so on. The bad helps us see, desire, and understand the good, and is ultimately the truth of the yin and yang of the Universe.

To truly live life, to find, choose, and/or create any given path, starts when you look inside yourself and make choices and decisions for you and your life. That’s not selfish, it’s empowering. And more than that, it’s a superpower.

Why bother making choices and decisions to live your life? Because that’s how you take what control there is for you to take. That’s how you live your own adventure and experience all that this amazing, unique isness of you can experience.

It’s simultaneously ginormous and complex and small and simple. But it’s for you to choose and decide the shape of.

Do you see how choices and decisions you make ultimately empower you?

This is the seventh-hundred-first (701) 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 Bother Making Choices and Decisions To Live Your Life? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How do You Find, Make, and/or Take Joy?

The choices and decisions all belong to you.Photo by Susanna Marsiglia on Unsplash

The world is crazy. Spend any time reading the news, scrolling social media, or even walking around any given neighborhood, and the uncertainty, fear, and constant reminders of division/separation feel like they dominate everything.

The narrative of the collective consciousness, if you are at all attuned, feels unnecessarily dark. It feels like people are rejecting kindness, compassion, and empathy en masse. Messages about how they make you weak and unworthy are screamed so loudly that it’s almost impossible to miss them.

I think that’s all smoke and mirrors and bullshit. Those who see kindness, compassion, caring for others, and empathy as weakness are either the minority or have allowed their reason to be overrun by that minority. Why do I believe that? Because I have never met a single human being who doesn’t desire to receive kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring.

The struggle is real. While knowledge is power, walking the fine line between knowledge and too much information (TMI) is an ongoing challenge. We need to know what the elected and unelected officials and other leader-types are doing so we can protest them, boycott them, vote for better than them, and so on. But the deep-dive into every little hideous nuance only stirs negativity that disempowers us.

In the end, you choose to be dragged into a pool of despair – or – to find, make, and/or take joy.

The choices are yours

I’m not you/you’re not me. My struggles and challenges aren’t yours, and vice/versa. What makes me feel good might not even ping your shields. The degree of privilege I recognize that I have might make it way easier for me than for you. These are all true.

Yet you and I have the same power of choices and decisions. You’re empowered to examine your life, learn who, what, where, how, and why you are. Then, you have all the power to accept that, or reject it and change. Or not. The requisite choices and decisions are all yours.

What makes a choice or decision easy or hard is as variable as the weather, motivations, experience, and all the other things that make each and every one of us singular and unique. But the truth is always the same. You are empowered to make choices and decisions.

Admittedly, sometimes a given choice or decision feels limited, like it’s between the lesser of two evils, and not much of a choice at all. Yet there it is, awaiting you to act on it.

Or not.

How you approach any given day, with joy or trepidation, is ultimately on you. And it is seldom, if ever, a constant.

Photo by Miquel Parera on UnsplashThe definition of joy

What is Joy? According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, joy is

(noun) 1a: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires 

b: the expression or exhibition of such emotion 

2: a state of happiness or felicity 

3: a source or cause of delight

(verb): to experience great pleasure or delight

In summary, joy is an emotion of possessing what one desires, an expression of that emotion, a source of contentment or happiness, and an experience. Joy goes beyond mere feeling, it’s a sensation that ties to not just your 6 senses, but also your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions.

Joy is intangible. It’s something you can’t see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. Yet those senses are capable of evoking joy.

What the definition fails to define is what finds or makes joy. And that’s because it varies from person to person. What’s more, even intangible as it is, it comes in an astounding variety of sizes, shapes, and forms.

For example, the sunlight on my face after multiple days of grey and rain is joyful. My cat curling up on my chest and purring, especially when I’m feeling anything other than positive, brings me joy. Savoring the taste of a really amazing caramel helps me feel joy.

Nothing in this list is out of reach. And that’s where the power we all have to find, make, and/or take joy gets lost.

The machine is a demanding master

Too many of the messages of life today force us into unnecessary busyness. Which, when you get right down to it, is all about distraction.

Distracted people make few to no decisions or choices, allowing rote, routine, and habit from the subconscious to do the driving. People get so caught up in what is deemed “important” and “necessary” by society at large that they neglect to work out what brings them peace, contentment, and joy.

Material things might take part in that. Yet material goods are not, in and of themselves, the source of joy. Joy comes from an intangible place and is frequently tied to kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring.

It also seldom needs to be big and important. As per the above definition, joy is the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.

You’re empowered to find, make, and/or take joy. Doing so is not selfish, it’s empowering. That empowerment opens pathways of positivity to be a more consciously aware participant in your life. And if you’re not driving your life experience by making your own, mindful choices and decisions, then who is?

Finding, making, and/or taking joy 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 have the power to make choices and decisions to direct your life, you can decide for yourself what brings you joy and act to find, make, or take it where you can. Knowing that you can choose and decide to be in a state of joy – or a state of fear and uncertainty – and that joy is in no way selfish, you can use active conscious awareness to find, make, or take joy where you can to enhance your life experience.

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-eighty-ninth (589) 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 do You Find, Make, and/or Take Joy? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

It’s Only Too Late When You Decide It Is

Life is all about learning, experiencing, potential, and possibilities.Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

No, I’m not about to get all spiritual on you or otherwise hooky-spooky. This is not some impractical, pie-in-the-sky idealism I’m sharing. This is drawing back the curtains and opening the blinds to really, truly see what’s out there.

Almost all the ideas of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are bullshit. They’re not true, they just exist because someone is trying to make money, control people and things, or are based on a false belief held and retained without question for a long time.

What’s more, nearly everything we’re told is lacking, scarce, or insufficient can be replaced. Or if not replaced, supplemented. A perfect example of this is fossil fuels. There is only so much oil in the ground, and that’s why gas prices rise and fall with little to no real logic for why.

Yet to address potential lack and scarcity, there’s the supplement of hybrid cars. Gas and electric combined. Or you have the replacement for gas in all-electric and/or hydrogen-fueled cars. These make any potential lack, scarcity, and insufficiency of oil and gas pretty flimsy, in truth.

The biggest problem is when these notions of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency creep into your psyche and you start to see intangibles through that lens. Time, love, joy, peace, and even happiness appear to have limits.

Hence, the idea of “too late” kills all sorts of goals, dreams, potential, and possibility.

Who decides that it’s too late?

The idea that it’s too late for this, that, or the other thing is a construct. It’s about as artificial as anything can be. This notion is a product of the scarcity mindset.

Who chooses what “too late” is? Is there a giant, celestial clock that only certain people have access to? No. Too late only exists when you apply it.

For example, one of the newest fencers I’ve been working with over the past few months is 73 years old. Was it/is it too late for him to learn to fence? No. Just because I started at 19 doesn’t mean that that’s the one and only option. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

The idea of “too late” is based on utter and total bullshit. That’s why and how a 70-year-old woman runs her first marathon, an 80-year-old nonbinary gets a master’s degree, and a 100-year-old keeps cooking in his restaurant after decades of doing so. They refuse to accept the lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and limitations of “too late”.

Who decides that it’s too late? You do.

You make the choices and decisions

While extenuating circumstances, random happenstance, and the overall isness of life sometimes just is, when all is said and done, you get to choose who, what, where, how, and why you are.

Yes, that’s often easier said than done. And other factors will ramp the difficulty up or down. Making choices for who, what, where, how, and why you are is easier in the United States for a white, cis-gendered male than for a black person, a non-binary, or a female. All get to choose and decide how their life is, but the challenges to overcome various obstacles are vastly different.

The notion of “too late” is the acceptance of someone else’s definition. It’s only truly too late when you choose and decide that. If you believe it’s too late to turn around this batshit crazy, hateful government, for example, you’re choosing to live in dread, fear, and uncertainty.

No, you can do little or nothing to change this batshit crazy, hateful government. But you can choose and decide how you live your life, what experiences you seek to have, who you desire to spend your time and energy on, and so on. You can focus on your being and wellbeing.

However, there’s another false narrative that gets tacked onto lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and limits. The idea of selfishness.

Photo by wenbin sia on UnsplashIt’s not selfish to see that it’s not too late

You are the only you that there is. In that body you call your own, experiencing this life, you’re it. It is not selfish to try new things, have new experiences, and seek out new things to choose and decide.

Selfishness is not what most people think it is. When you end a relationship, and the other person says you selfishly hurt them, unless you knowingly, intentionally acted to cause them pain, it’s not on you. It’s on them. You’re not selfish for ending a toxic relationship, setting boundaries with people who drain you of time and energy, or anything else that you do to protect your mental, emotional, spiritual, and/or physical health/wellness/wellbeing.

Selfishness is a billionaire like Elon Musk actively stripping people of needed benefits and assistance to make himself richer and more “powerful.” Selfishness is the jerk at every office party who takes more than his fair share of cake and leaves someone else without. Genuine, actual selfishness is always a matter of malice of forethought and choices made.

Hence, if you have the desire to do, have, be, or try something new, it’s not selfish and it’s never too late. Not unless you accept that it is. And it’s not in any way, shape, or form selfish to change your life and be/have/do different things nobody expects.

It’s only too late when you decide it is for you

We human beings get about 80 years to live life. We are not merely here to survive, but to thrive. The resources, both tangible and intangible, are abundant beyond your wildest imagination. There’s more than enough material and immaterial things for everyone, everywhere.

It’s only too late when you decide that it’s too late for you. When you focus on the world outside of yourself and see that it’s too late to change, you subconsciously apply that to you and your life as well.

The power to choose and decide things, both simple and abstract, is what makes human beings such incredible creators and destroyers. When you stop and see that for what it is, you open yourself to more potential and possibilities than you can experience in any one lifetime. It’s only too late when you decide it is.

What do you think it’s too late to do with your life that it might not be too late to do at all?

PS – This is the 700th consecutive week I’ve written this blog about Pathwalking and all that goes into conscious reality creation. Proof it’s never too late to learn new things.

This is the seventh-hundredth (700) 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 It’s Only Too Late When You Decide It Is appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Applied Positivity and Mindfulness in the Face of a Mistake

You choose how you approach things after you’ve made a mistake.Photo by Ann Schreck on Unsplash

I totally fucked up. All the formatting was done, my next book had been uploaded to multiple sources. It was available for pre-order. I had the audiobook submitted for approval. Ads were being run.

And yet, I made a mistake. I thought I’d uploaded the final proof to Amazon. Apparently, I did not.

The preorder was cancelled.

After an initial panic, I did my best to work out what to do. Then I got on a chat with a rep from Amazon and calmly explained my situation. After a bunch of back and forth, I thought that I’d gotten things restored.

I did not.

All I can do is reupload everything. And hope I didn’t lose too many potential fans or readers in this fuck up.

Yes, I probably lost some of my advertising money because people clicked on a link that is dead. The connection between the Kindle version and paperback on Amazon might be utterly fucked up. I have no idea what else this might impact.

I am mad at myself, frustrated, and very upset. Yet, as much as I want to scream, break something, and lash out, I’m maintaining my calm, reuploading the eBook, pausing the ads, and going from there.

This is a result of the choices I’m making. Rather than get super negative, self-deprecating, and upset, I’m choosing to pause, reflect, and act to fix the problem.

Without applying positivity and working with mindfulness, I’d be floundering here. This is an excellent example of how positivity – even in the face of surreal negativity – can impact choices and decisions and how you take control of your life on multiple levels.

It’s all about the choices you make

I realized my above mistake late at night. It was disheartening, infuriating, and my gut reaction was to explode. Throw some things around my office, knock over one of my monitors, shout and potentially upset the cats and wake up my wife, and let my dismay take control.

Twenty years ago, my rage would have won. My gut reaction is what would have dictated what came next, and it would not have been pretty. That was then, this is now. After more than a decade of working with conscious reality creation, mindfulness, and nontoxic positivity, I examined – rather than reacted to – my gut. Yes, very annoyed, very irked, urge to smash rising.

I paused, I took a deep breath, and chose to take action to approach the problem. Even when the nonsolution was given to me, I didn’t allow my distress to dictate terms, and sucked it up and resubmitted all the data to Amazon.

This was a choice. Knowing that choosing to go with my annoyance would be unproductive, I chose instead to act. Find a solution and apply it.

Because I made this choice, I empowered myself. Rather than let negativity wreck my sleep and possibly lead to destroying something, I recognized the issue, acknowledged my mistake, and acted to fix it the best way that I could. This was a mindfully made choice. I controlled my emotional state via choice rather than letting my emotional state control me.

Photo by Francisco De Legarreta C. on UnsplashApplied positivity and mindfulness in the face of a mistake

Rather than destroy and waste time and energy with anger and other negative emotions, I applied positivity. Applied positivity is nontoxic because it’s a choice made in the face of a negative situation.

I fucked up. There is nothing positive in that truth. The negativity could have led me to some ugly places. Instead, I chose applied positivity and took steps to fix the problem and correct my mistake.

Applied positivity is looking a negative situation in the face and more or less saying, “Not today, Satan.” Rather than get angrier, depressed, and seek vengeance on myself or an unwitting third party, I chose to recognize my mistake. Then, I acknowledged it for what it was. After that, I took steps so that I could fix it via applied positivity and active conscious awareness – i.e., mindfulness.

Sure, I could have berated myself and let my ire dominate me. I could have demanded the next level of support from Amazon and put all the blame on them. This article could have been my take-down of a system or an examination of my personal shortcomings.

Instead, I’m seeing this as a learning opportunity. I fucked up, made a mistake, and recognize how not to do it again.

As part of my conscious reality creation and mindfulness practice, I’m also choosing one last adaptation. Jen Sincero, in her brilliant You Are a Badass self-actualization book, points out that often, and I’m paraphrasing here, things turn to shit before they turn to Shinola. Okay, I’m going to apply that to this situation. Because I massively believe in this new novel I’m publishing, and am choosing to see this mistake as a sign that I am, in fact, on the right path here.

Applying nontoxic positivity and mindfulness in the face of a mistake 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 have the power to make choices and decisions to direct your life, and control your reaction to things like mistakes, you can make conscious choices for how to act and react. Knowing that you can choose what steps to take and apply positivity – or to allow negativity to dictate what comes next – you take the control that is your birthright.

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-eighty-eighth (588) 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 Applied Positivity and Mindfulness in the Face of a Mistake appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Goals Are The End, Not the Process

The process is how you achieve a given goal.Photo by Ákos Nemes on Unsplash

I’ve been postulating for a while now that the Meaning of Life is this: TO LIVE. That means to experience all that life has to offer, take an active interest in who, what, where, how, and why you are, and make choices and decisions to drive your experiences.

The more I analyze and explore this idea, the more I’m convinced that TO LIVE is the Meaning of Life. The grand and glorious notion that scientists, philosophers, theologians, and the like quest for boils down to this simple notion.

What many fail to recognize is that nobody but you can live your life. Nobody else is in your head, heart, and soul. Thus, you’re the only one who knows what you desire, who you are or want to be, and all the other things that make you tick.

That’s not to say you can’t seek guidance and learning outside yourself. You need to. It might all begin within, but nobody lives in a vacuum. We interact with the people, places, things, and overall world around us every day.

While life is not necessarily linear, it does have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Like it or not, progress occurs, change is inevitable, and you are not who you were and won’t be who you are going forward. Along the way, however, you’re empowered to make choices and decisions to drive your life experience.

This is where goals come in.

Goals are a potential future

There is an entire industry built around goals. From seeking them out, setting them, finding them, and working towards them to everything that goes into achieving them, the goal machine is well-oiled and always chugging along.

Lots of gurus, educators, pundits, philosophers, and other leader-types will tell you they have the One True Way for reaching any given goal. They most likely have a way, but not the only way. That’s because there is no One True Way.

The first reason why there’s no One True Way  is that no two people have the exact same goal. Similar, possibly. The same, however? No. The second issue is the starting point. It’s systemically a lot easier for me, a middle-aged cis-gendered white American male to work toward a goal than a twenty-something transgendered black immigrant. The third issue is that there are circumstances that are always outside of your control.

Even with these issues and challenges, everyone has goals. Most are not ginormous and earth-shattering. Goals include things like not hitting the snooze button every weekday morning, eating a vegetable at every meal, calling a parent once a week, and so forth. It’s the goal industry that focuses most of its attention on those oversized, humongous goal concepts.

Even a given larger goal, like retiring by 60, starting a business, or finding someone to marry, is potential and not absolute. Recognizing this, let’s address process.

The process is action

No idea can be made manifest without action. I might have a novel in my head, but unless I sit down and write it, nobody other than me will ever see it.

No goal is achieved without work. Ergo, action. You can’t just make something manifest with a wish. This is where prosperity gospels and elements of The Secret and “ask, believe, receive” miss the point. The Law of Attraction is real, and what you focus on you can consciously create, but not without taking action.

I can wish to be a best-selling author until the cows come home. I can ask for it, believe it, and wait to receive it for my whole life. If I don’t bother to sit at my computer and do the work and write a damned novel, it can’t be a best-seller because it won’t be manifested.

This is why developing a process for things in your life is important. To achieve any goal, no matter the size, you must apply active conscious awareness. Because if you don’t begin with self-knowledge, you are already hamstringing yourself and your goal-achieving potential.

For example, if the goal is to stop hitting the snooze button every morning, you need to get up with your alarm. If you seek to lose 10 pounds, you must take actions regarding what you eat and when and how you exercise. For retiring at 60, there are lots of small actions involving creating investment accounts, doing the investing, earning money to invest, and so on. All of these require processes, and the process is always a matter of action.

Which brings us to the meat of this article.

Goals are the end, not the processPhoto by Vince Fleming on Unsplash

The goal is what you desire to realize. The process is how you get there. You need both.

If I plan to go from Point A to Point B, I need to set a process in place to do so. If Point A is home and Point B is the other side of the country, I need to take action and drive, fly, take a train, walk, bike, or whatever to get from A to B. Hence, the goal is to get from A to B. The process is the action.

The process is in many ways more important than the goal. Why? Because the process might change the goal. For example, let’s say you have the goal of opening a coffee shop. As you start the process of taking the actions to make that manifest, you might realize that your deep desire to start a coffee shop gets changed by the process. Instead, you find you desire to start a bakery.

The process is the journey that is any path you choose to walk in life. It’s the life experience that is, when all is said and done, the meaning of life. The process is how you apply TO LIVE to your existence. That’s why it’s imperative to recognize that goals are the end, not the process. Also, there can and should be tremendous comfort, joy, and excitement in the process itself.

That’s not to say the process won’t be scary, uncertain, and distressing at times. When you leave any given comfort zone (or, truth be told, familiar setting that might not be comfortable), the unknown is uncertain. The process, however, is how you navigate this and act to make manifest your goals.

Make choices and decisions

The reality of the process is that you make choices and decisions to get from Point A to Point B. Without choices and decisions, you aren’t driving your life toward any given goal.

No matter your current circumstances, you are worthy and deserving of the effort of process and the achievement of goals. Despite other industries that are pressing their agendas to shape the world for a limited audience, the reality is that you’re not less than anyone else.

The color of your skin, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, and nothing else makes you lesser or greater than any other person on the planet. Neither do these artifices make you unworthy or undeserving. TO LIVE, to apply the meaning of life, is the right of everybody.

That’s why I’m concluding with this: If your goal involves interfering with someone else’s life, their ability to live with potential and possibility, is it really your goal? Because true goals are about you becoming, and any negative impact on others is unintentional and outside your control.

For example, if your goal is to end DEI or abortion, how is that about you? It’s not, because you probably don’t need the programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or you will never need an abortion, or you can choose to get one for yourself or not.

Don’t let yourself be distracted by the narrative of the collective consciousness when setting your processes and goals. Make your choices and decisions for you and your life experience, because that’s the only person you can make choices and decisions for.

So, do you see that goals are the end and not the process?

This is the six-hundred-ninety-ninth (699) 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 Goals Are The End, Not the Process appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Blaming “The Other” Is a Distraction

The narrative around “the other” is a bullshit concept.Photo by Thomas Bjornstad on Unsplash

Everyone has bad days. Everyone. All the people you know and don’t know experience shit happening. Nobody on the entire planet lives a life free of pain, challenges, and/or suffering. Nobody.

Human beings are unique animals. That’s largely because we can create things that allow us to overcome the environment, limitations of distance, communications, and all sorts of other matters that no other animal can overcome. Whatever you’re reading this on now is a perfect example.

The problem with this amount of creative genius is that we’ve moved away from tangibles to intangibles dominating our lives. It’s no longer about finding food, shelter, and a mate to propagate the species to survive. Now it’s about finding ways to experience contentment, joy, and satisfaction. All of which are intangible.

The world is a crazy place, and humans do ridiculous things. Thanks to our global connectivity, we’re hyperaware of everything. This is often weaponized to stir emotions, and most of that is done via negativity.

This is where the “other” gets blamed for all kinds of woes. They will tell you that “the other” is taking away your job, your rights, your way of life, and so on. Who “the other” is changes depending on who has control of a given narrative. Worse, “the other” is often defined by utterly artificial or unimportant aspects.

More often than not, the idea of “the other” is used to make you act in a way that might look like it’s in your best interest. But realistically, it’s not.

Being awake and aware makes this clear

There is this utterly moronic notion that being “woke” – as in awake and aware of the world around you – is a bad thing. Decrying “wokeness” is just another face for “the other” and having someone else to blame.

Frequently, “the other” is not out to get you. That’s part of why “the other” changes so often. In the 1920s, during the Suffragist Movement, “the other” was females. In the 1960s, “the other” was black people. After the 2001 terrorist attack on US soil, “the other” was Muslims and anyone who looked Muslim. Currently, most US politicians and leaders suggest that “the other” might be liberals, migrants, women, LGBTQA+ people, and anyone not white and cisgender male.

None of these “others” are out to get anyone else. They aren’t seeking to take your way of life, steal your job, or destroy the world with their otherness. No, all they want is a seat at the table and for their voices to be heard.

This is utterly obvious when you’re awake and aware. Hence why people take umbrage with being “woke” – because that means you recognize that the narrative about “the other” is a bullshit concept.

The problem is, due to differences both real and artificial, there are people you will see as “other”. However…

You are “the other” to someone else

I am a cis-gendered, middle-aged, white male. Hence, I am “the other” to women, people of color, and the young and elderly.

That written, I recognize that blaming those like me is not so far-fetched, as most of modern society has been dominated by cis-gendered, middle-aged, white men. But since too many of those who are responsible refuse to be accountable in any way, here we are.

That dominance is why “the other” is used to distract you from the reality of the false narrative certain people strive to maintain. Like the idea that white, heterosexual people – especially men – are the most deserving people in the world, and “the other” is actively working to take away what’s rightfully yours.

This is utter bullshit. The only ones trying to take away what’s rightfully yours are those who maintain and propagate these false narratives. If you believe that billionaires – especially those who hoard what they can and give little to nothing to anyone else – have your best interests at heart, you’ve been played. If you think someone who makes more money hourly than 98% of people will earn in a lifetime – and refuses to pay fair taxes – is looking out for you, you’re buying the lies.

To them, you’re “the other” just as much as whatever “other” they’re telling you to blame for all your woes. They maintain power and control via the distraction of “the other” and then work overtime to keep people from being mindful, awake, and aware to hold that false power.

It’s insidious and infuriating. So, what can you do about it?

Photo by Aiden Craver on UnsplashBe mindful

It really is that simple. But there is an important caveat to this. Be mindful of yourself first.

Too much time focused on the outside world distracts you from being empowered. That’s why being awake, aware, and mindful starts from within.

Mindfulness begins via recognizing and acknowledging what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, if your approach to any given matter is positive or negative, and what you’re doing.

To help that be more real, apply your senses to gain clarity of your surroundings. Together, that’s mindfulness you can apply to recognize the bullshit of “the other” and the distraction that it is.

An important last note: You cannot make anyone else be mindful. You only control yourself. But when you’re mindful, you’re empowered. Empowerment can magnetize others to you and also influence people to seek and find their own empowerment. Think globally but act locally, and start with yourself.

Recognizing that blaming “the other” is a distraction isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge that the notion of “the other” is meant to distract you from being mindful and aware, you can make choices and decisions to not fall for that trap. Knowing that you can choose what you consume and be awake and aware, you can decide from there to be proactive and seek accountability over blame by being actively consciously aware – i.e., mindful.

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-eighty-seventh (587) 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 Blaming “The Other” Is a Distraction appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

You Always Do More Awake and Aware than Asleep

Sleepers aren’t necessarily dreamers and are never doers.Photo by Sandro Tavares on Unsplash

I know people who have lucid, involved, detailed dreams. They tell me about crazy happenings they experience when they sleep.

I rarely remember my dreams. Once in a very great while, something lingers from my sleep, but more often than not, dreams elude me.

Over the past decade-plus, this idea has come into the collective consciousness where being “woke” is somehow a bad thing. What does that even mean? People use the term “woke” like it’s an evil, despicable notion. It’s as if the opposite of “woke”, asleep, is somehow better.

I get way more done when I’m awake than asleep. As far as I know, everyone gets more done awake than asleep. Further, when you’re awake, you’re capable of doing, being, and having things. Asleep, all you do is dream. Or sleep dreamlessly and recharge to a greater or lesser degree.

The truth of the collective conscious idea of reality is that you always do more awake and aware than asleep.

The literal and the figurative

When you’re literally awake, you engage your senses. Sometimes this is active, but for the most part, it’s passive. Reading this, you’re engaging your eyes. Pause a moment and listen to the world around you. You’ve just engaged your ears. If these words are having any impact on you, you’re engaging your extrasensory senses beyond the tangibles of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

When you’re figuratively awake, you engage your inner being. This is where your conscious awareness, sensing who, what, where, how, and why you are, comes in. This, too, can be passive or active. When passive, you have a vague awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and actions. When it’s active, you engage thoughts, feelings, and actions and add intentions and approach.

In both the literal and the figurative, being awake and aware is how you can navigate the world consciously versus subconsciously.

Your subconscious mind is your autopilot. This is where rote, routine, and habit engage with your embedded beliefs, values, and memories. The subconscious mind is like a sponge, absorbing everything it touches. Unchecked, it will hold onto crap that, consciously, you likely wouldn’t keep.

Nobody lives purely literally or figuratively. Everyone blends both elements into being human. Hence, you always do more awake and aware than asleep.

Photo by Pascal Debrunner on UnsplashControl is a matter of awake and aware

I think the main reason to decry and demean “woke” is a form of control. There’s a specific narrative alive today that’s incredibly backwards. Rather than work with progress, diversity, equity, and inclusion, this narrative is focused on lack, scarcity, and insufficiency. All of which are artificial.

The world is not just white people. Neither is it only male. Or Christian. Or choose your limited narrative. When you are actively awake and aware, this is incredibly obvious.

Yet change happens too fast for many. Seizing on this, certain bodies have placed the blame for that change not on the natural progressive nature of change, but instead on the “other”. Those people taking the jobs, money, and the like from the “deserving” only on the basis of being “other”. Never mind that the field has never been level or fair – or more importantly, that little to nothing is scarce, lacking, or insufficient.

To put it bluntly – white men have dominated society for centuries and can’t accept that there’s more than enough to go around. Hence, weaponizing “woke” to debase the “other” is their attempt to maintain their always artificial control.

The truth is that nobody can control anyone else. Why? Because you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul. That’s why being awake and aware is how you take control of the elements of your life experience that you can.

That control, of course, is limited to you. It’s also largely a matter of employing active, conscious awareness – mindfulness – to make choices and decisions.

All control is a matter of awake and aware.

Awake and aware and engaged

There’s no denying that this is easier for some than others. For example, as a white cis-gendered male, I know that I have a degree of ease and privilege simply because of being part of the false majority.

I say false because, in truth, white, cis-gendered males are ultimately outnumbered. Fear has driven many to work against their own best interests to maintain the false control they think they’re losing. That’s how we got Reagan in the 1980s and the mess his administration’s policies created that placed us in this ridiculous, backward, anti-progressive place.

Unfortunately, there’s little to nothing you and I can do about that day-to-day. However, for our own sanity and peace of mind, we can practice being awake and aware and engaged with the world at large.

To do so, you start by engaging with your senses. See, hear, taste, touch, smell, and consider the world you live in. Then, engage with your inner being and become awake and aware of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what you intend, if your approach is positive or negative, and what you do from there.

Awake and aware and engaged is how you become empowered. Empowered, you make choices and decisions to drive who, what, where, how, and why you are. You always do more awake and aware than asleep. So, ignore the bullshit around being “woke”, be awake and aware and make active choices for your life experience and any paths you care to take.

Can you see how you always do more awake and aware than asleep?

This is the six-hundred-ninety-eighth (698) 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 Always Do More Awake and Aware than Asleep appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Recognizing What You Can and Do Control

This is the key to less stress and more empowerment.Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash

Many of the ideas in the collective consciousness of the world today are centered around disruption. Lots of people talk about disrupting this, that, or the other thing. Interrupt the pattern, change the status quo, alter the conversation, and the like.

Because change is inevitable, and the one and only constant in the Universe, recognizing, acknowledging, and even embracing this idea of disruption can do some amazing things. However, it can also cause uncertainty, discomfort, distress, and worse. How worse? Because the idea of disruption often spins matters out of control.

Again, this can be good and bad. But when it’s a message used for both good and bad, it creates the equivalent of a tornado or hurricane. A storm that will sweep you and all you know away, removing every ounce of control you have.

To navigate through these storms and both maintain and grow self-sovereignty, you must recognize what you can and do control. This is where you become empowered to ignore, manage, or go with or against change.

Let’s start with the easy part.

What you can’t and don’t control

This can be daunting and overwhelming to recognize and acknowledge. However, doing so is key to opening your mind, body, and spirit to better self-actualization and awareness.

The short answer to the question – What don’t you control? – is this: anything and everything outside of your head, heart, and soul. That, however, is too broad and undefined for the human mind to comprehend.

Let’s start wide. You cannot control the weather, the changing of the seasons, death, or anything of that nature. Zooming in, you start to get to more things you think and feel you should be able to control, but don’t. Traffic, politicians, the economy, competition outcomes, and the like.

Let’s zoom in closer to you. Other people, bosses, coworkers, your children, how fast the kettle boils, and people/places/things you directly interact with, you can’t and don’t control. That’s not to say you don’t affect them and they don’t impact you, but they’re not within your control.

You can’t and don’t control anyone, anything, tangible or intangible, that’s not you.

This can be a bitter pill to swallow. It feels utterly disempowering. To change the narrative, let’s get into the hard part.

What you can and do control

The short answer is: you. A slightly longer answer is your head, heart, and soul. The more specific, detailed answer is your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions.

Because you’re the only one inside your head, heart, and soul, you are the only one in control of what happens inside you. Only you can make active choices about who, what, where, how, and why you are.

To gain this control, all you must do is take a moment to focus on yourself, at this moment, and ask questions like,

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

Only you can answer these questions. They can only be answered right here, right now, in the present.

It’s for this reason I can’t and don’t understand why anyone thinks being “woke” – you know, as in awake and aware of yourself – is bad. Yes, “they” prefer you asleep and unaware because then they can push, cajole, influence, and best keep you subconscious and pliable to their control.

Via active conscious awareness – yes, mindfulness – you gain control over your life experience. That control opens the way to making informed choices and decisions for you.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on UnsplashWhy does this matter?

Social media, the pushes for disruption both good and bad, instant gratification, and the constant “GO GO GO” of the world are massively distracting. If you’ve ever gone down a rabbit hole of posts on Instagram or found yourself mindlessly doomscrolling, you have been successfully distracted.

It’s all too easy for your subconscious mind to absorb lots and lots of garbage thoughts, ideas, notions, and feelings. Because your subconscious is unaware and sponge-like, it soaks up everything.

To wring the sponge of your subconscious mind out, or look at what it has absorbed, you must apply active conscious awareness. Yes, you must take control of your mindfulness to see what your subconscious is holding onto.

Remember, your subconscious is where your beliefs, values, habits, and memories live. Often, outdated info sits there, unchecked, creating clutter and havoc that wrests away your control. New info being absorbed, unchecked, causes chaos, uncertainty, negativity, fear, and other concepts to become your personal perception of reality.

I’m not saying you should live in a void, ignorant of the world at large. Far from it. What I am suggesting here is that when you take control over what you can and do control, you become empowered. Empowerment allows you to choose and decide how you live and what you do every day.

You have more power than “they” want you to believe. Active conscious awareness is how you gain more control of your self-sovereignty and be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.

One last note:

Failure is not defeat

You’re going to have bad days, days when it feels like nothing goes right, and certain circumstances will deny you full control, even of yourself. That’s okay. So long as you’re here, living, breathing, existing, you have new choices, potential, possibilities, and opportunity.  

The power of being awake, self-aware, conscious, and mindful, is so much greater than allowing life to pass you by while living subconsciously. With it, you can take the control that’s your ultimate birthright and experience the meaning of life – TO LIVE – and all it has to offer.

Recognizing what you can and do control isn’t hard

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

When you recognize and acknowledge you alone are in your head, heart, and soul, you can employ active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to take control over how you approach things, be it positively, negatively, or neutrally. Knowing that you can employ mindfulness at any time, you can choose and decide via that control who, what, where, how, and why your life is.

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-eighty-sixth (586) 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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